Choice of plugins
Plug-ins and widgets are essential in enhancing the front-end of the site and also ensuring that the back-end can support the intended functionality of the entire platform and any third party applications that may need to integrate. Here are some of the plug-ins that i have implemented on my portfolio site:
Plug-in 1 . Gallery with overlay
when users land on the page “My Work” this is the first interaction that they will have with my range of projects, I had many ideas about how this might look. Firstly i was going to use a gallery that would have a peice of artwork within each gallery item with a title and snippet of text underneath to provide an overview of the project.
However, the above solution overcomplicated the page and there was too much content which made it busy. Also considering that all of the work was produced with different clients with different branding, i felt that the gallery tiles looked inconsistent from each other and the overall theme of the site.
After many reiterations i landed on a solution that would provide a clean consistent look, and also provide the user with enough information to want to interact with the elements.
I decided to produce a gallery that was simple in its design, simple in its content, and include an interaction that would provide the user with enough information to want to click .
The solution was a staggered gallery view, with just the logo of each in isolation, in doing this i was able to produce a consistent style throughout.
Gallery view
In addition, when the user hovers over a gallery item, an overlay animates over the tile and provides information about the project name and the type of project it is, for example; “support for life” “identity / Branding”
gallery hover state
Plug-in 2 . Newsletter integrated with Mailchimp
Rather than a complex submission form, I actually opted to allow users to contact me via email or connect with me on linked-in. The reason for ths is that i would hope that i would drive people to my linked-in profile to extend my professional network.
And for those who may want updates from me i have introduced a simple subscription model, and have integrated this with Mailchimp so that i can nurture my subscription base and market my services to them via email marketing.
This was a little more complex to set up than i thought, the newsletter widget in YOO theme allowed for options for a secondary opt in and stylising of the newsletter form, however it was required to get an API key from Mailchimp and also to create a client list in Mailchimp first for my subscribers to be added to.
from there i created a welcome email auto responder for first time responders
Site Security
Plug-in 3 . SSL certificates
An SSL certificate is extremely important, Firstly to comply with search engines and secondly, it is an expectation that helps to create a level of trust with the end user. I installed a plug-in called “really simple SSL”, and funnily enough it was really simple. I easily updated the certificate for the site. we now have HTTPS: on all pages.
Really Simple SSL certificate
Plug-in 4 . Site security
It’s important to protect your site from cyber attacks and malicious activity. I installed a plugin called “Wordfence”. The plugin provides me with a real-time dashboard and notifications about my current security status, it also notifies me of any attempts to attack my site and highlights plugins that require updating and therefore pose a security risk.
Wordfence dashboard
Plug-in 5 – Akeeba Backup
A rather stressful and frustrating YooTheme and WordPress technical problem forced me to create an emergency back-up of my site, which i did via the installatron within C- panel.
What this ordeal highlighted was that i needed to consider a plug-in that would enable me to easily create backups and also schedule backups that i can easily restore at a later date.
Akeeba Backup was a plugin that suited my needs with a one click backup feature, back up restore features, and site transfer capabilities should you wish to transfer hosting.
Akeeba Backup options
I have set Akeeba backup to create monthly backups of the site, if there is an intense period of site development i may change this to more frequent backups.
Plug-in 6 – Yoast SEO
SEO is such an important factor when considering visibility of your site and the features it offers. Yoast SEO is a plugin that evaluates the current standard of your pages in terms of current SEO benchmarks and makes recommendations for improvements and therefore. I installed Yoast SEO and have ran through the recommended improvements page by page and whilst i am not getting a perfect score there have been notable improvements to the way i now write content.
Generally, i see the SEO for the site being an ongoing process that will become more emphasised as the content grows and will also influence how i write future content. Yoast is a great tool to see where your site is at in terms of SEO.
i also linked Yoast with my google search panel via the Yoast Webmaster tools
