I have spent quite awhile reading through related posts and the information is overwhelming. I am not experienced enough to sort through it and pick and choose which items suits my criteria properly.
I am creating a newspaper blog. Very simple.
No ads.
No online stores or sale’s products.
I want people to find, enjoy, and spread the site, but I don’t want to advertise it. I want to see how far I can take it without advertising it at all for two years.
Which plugins are essential to my site? I want it to run safely, securely, and smoothly. I also love numbers, so any plugin that gives me in-depth knowledge about views would be great.
My second question is: My site layout is very simple. Should I purchase a theme or try and create it from scratch. Which program should I use if I create it from scratch?
As you can imagine with a newspaper theme, there will be several categories spread horizontally up top and the news articles listed under them. It seems very simple but I’m not a programmer so maybe it is very complicated to create. Not a big deal because I do have one simple theme in mind to buy.
Thanks in advance.
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On your first requirement. You hope that people will find your site by using search sites like Google, Duck Duck Go, and similar. To set that up, you install the free version of a SEO plugin. It creates an object called an XML Site Map for you. The search engines grab that and use it to index your site. The SEO plugin will also offer you ways to put in a summary of each post and page, to help the search engines know what they are about. Then you create an account on Google Webmaster Tools and register your site. This is all “white hat search engine optimization.” The search engines serve their users by showing them useful content, and by using the SEO plugin you are helping the search engine understand your site. Be patient. It takes forever, seemingly, for a site to start showing up in search. The Rank Math plugin is good. So is Yoast, but it pesters you relentlessly to buy premium SEO stuff you prolly don’t need.
Second requirement: Don’t overthink it. Start creating your content with a simple theme. You can polish up he theme anytime. As long as you don’t change your permalinks, changing the theme (subtly or drastically) will not disrupt your search engine indexing.
For the SEO, I suggest you go with Rankmath, I’ve had good experience with it in that past, so should be good for the SEO part.
For the theme, I suggest you purchase a pre-made theme. However, be very careful, the wrong choice can make your website very slow, so find a lightweight theme that achieve only what you need, no extra bills and whistles.
Additional note: do not install a plugin for every feature you want. The more plugins you have, the more likely you’ll have to deal with performance and other issues.
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
I am the owner of a local news website that uses WordPress. I would be happy to share with you what I have found to work for us.
Safely and secure doesn’t exist unless you learn how to troubleshot and have a proper backup of your site, you will likely get hack or buggy plugins in WP unlike other modern solutions.
Beased on my experiences with web development for the last decade.