AWPGuide Blueprint: Look Behind Scenes How We Built AWPGuide!

Do you want to start a business online like ours?

So many folks had asked that what are the tools and WordPress plugins that we use here. In this blueprint page, we will show you all of them which you need to consider if you are a blogger.

AWPGuide Blueprint

These tools will help you to improve your WordPress blog’s performance! Have a try and let us know your experience with them.

Blogging Platform

At this time of writing, there are so many blogging platforms available like

WordPress.com.
WordPress.org.
Mozello.
WIX.
Blogger by Google.
Squarespace.
Weebly.

and more.

For us, we have chosen the right and powerful one!

WordPress.org

It’s an awesome CMS (Content Management System) for creating websites. By using WordPress, you will be able to create anything and everything. Yet, we have created

Fashion blog.
Product review website.
Food blog.
Non-profit organization.
News website.
Small business website

and many more using the WordPress.org. Self-hosted WordPress is more simple and faster than other CMSs. For a detailed guide, check out our post: WordPress.com VS WordPress.org.

WordPress Hosting

You must consider the best web hosting for your business website. We will not recommend free web hosting for the official blog. But for testing plugins, themes, and codes, you can try free web hosting.

WP Engine

WP Engine is one of the best and powerful managed WordPress hosting provider. For powering up our website, we use them!

We are happy with them. If you are a pure beginner, you don’t need to choose any managed WordPress hosting for your website, All you need is, a shared hosting plan from a branded web hosting provider.

Some of the web hosting providers that we trust are,

Bluehost – Bluehost coupon.
HostGator – HostGator coupon.
A2 Hosting.
DreamHost.
WPX Hosting.
iPage.
InterServer.
GoDaddy.
GreenGeeks.
Media Temple.
Kinsta – Managed WordPress hosting.
Flywheel – Managed WordPress hosting.
Liquid Web – Managed WordPress hosting.

Some folks are starting local web hosting businesses and providing web hosting for cheap something like $5 a year, unlimited everything!

Well, don’t go for them. If you do, you will not get expected performance from them. Servers must be always busy, result in slow loading time.

According to Google, Google wants faster loading websites to rank.

WordPress Theme

After installing WordPress, you must choose a simple, professional looking, clean and SEO ready WordPress theme. If you are on a huge theme, your website will take some more seconds for loading.

It will affect your website’s revenue and sales. So, choose your themes wisely.

Genesis Framework

In our website, we are using a custom child theme which is created on top of the Genesis Framework by StudioPress. If you are planning to run an authority website or if you are a developer, you must consider Genesis. I am pretty sure that you will love it.

We have also tried the Aspire Pro theme for our projects. The theme is awesome and suitable for business websites. For more, you need to check out our Aspire Pro theme review and Aspire Pro documentation.

If you want to know more about the framework, read our Genesis Framework review.

If you are not good with Genesis, check out these theme shops.

Those theme shops got the best and powerful designs. You need to try them all and find your perfect design. For more theme shops, read our post best WordPress theme shops in 2019.

Best WordPress Plugins

For the same purpose, there are so many WordPress plugins available. Well, we will only use the best one on the market. If you are wondering which plugin is best for a purpose, check out the below section.

Yoast SEO

The best SEO plugin for WordPress that we have tried. At this time, there are so many other plugins are available like All in one SEO pack, Rank Math, SEOPressor etc.

But for our projects, we will always choose Yoast SEO. The right configuration on Yoast SEO will give you more traffic.

They have a free and premium version plugin available. We are using the free one here. Well, some folks are also using the nulled/ pirated version of Yoast SEO premium. If you are planning to give a try, don’t.

It will ruin your entire business. We have an article on that. Check out why you need to avoid Yoast SEO nulled.

Akismet

Most spammers are spreading comments using the comment form. If your blog is being targeted, this plugin will help you to stay away from spam.

The plugin will filter all added comments and put spam comments in a dedicated section. All you need is an API key. No additional configurations!

WPForms

For creating powerful forms in WordPress, we use WPForms. The free version is good enough for beginners. But for unlocking more features, you may want to try the premium version.

Another alternative is Contact Form 7. Most beginners will prefer Contact Form 7 or WPForms Lite.

Use our WPForms coupon for a charming discount.

ThirstyAffiliates

Our primary income source is affiliate marketing. In that case, we need a dedicated plugin for managing our affiliate links. In our blog, we are using ThirstyAffiliates for link management.

The pro version add-on will help you to link all keywords with the affiliate links. It’s an awesome feature to maximize your revenue.

We have a guide on that. Check out how to clock affiliate links in WordPress.

ThirstyAffiliates Review.

BackupBuddy

You must consider generating a complete website backup. You know that there are so many hackers are available on the internet. Maybe your competitor. They are looking for how to hurt you and ruin your business. In that case, they can do it by simply hacking your website and clearing the website files.

If you have a backup, you can simply restore the file and make the blog just like old days. Some managed WordPress hosting companies like WP Engine and Kinsta are giving daily backups and one-click restore.

Well, most beginners prefer shared hosting. For those, BackupBuddy is the best backup plugin! We have tested it and loved the plugin. It will help you to send the backup to any remote destinations like Google Drive, Dropbox or Amazon cloud.

Also, you can schedule backups. The plugin is created by the fine folks from iThemes.

Sucuri Security

Normally, security experts will charge a minimum $250 for an hour for fixing a hacked WordPress blog. We are using Sucuri Security for keeping the blog safe from hackers.

The Sucuri free plugin is an also good one but doesn’t have the WAF feature. WAF stands for Web Application Firewall. Plans start from $199 a year.

Polylang

Last week, we have translated our blog to Malayalam, Hindi, French, Spanish, and other 16 languages. We used this plugin for translation.

Polylang is a free WordPress multilingual plugin. If you need to make your blog multilingual, you must consider it. Or if you need a powerful one, check out Weglot.

OptinMonster

If you want to get success from your website, blog or small business website, you must consider collecting your website visitor’s email address.

Studies show that more than 80% of the website visitors won’t come back to the website. As a blogger or online entrepreneur, this is very bad for us. But by collecting the visitor’s email addresses, you will be able to send friendly newsletters and keep them engaged!

For generating leads, we are using a premium plugin called OptinMonster. This is one of the best WordPress lead generation plugins available. If you are looking for alternatives, get your hands on Bloom by Elegant Themes or Hello Bar.

WP user Avatar

For adding custom user avatars, we are using this plugin. This is totally a free version plugin. The free version is enough for us. You can upload an avatar from your device’s local storage.

We have a detailed guide on this topic. Check out our post how to add custom user avatar in WordPress.

WP Coupons

Have you seen our deals section? It’s not a custom made. In the beginning, we were using a custom post type for registering all deals and coupons. Later, we have moved to a powerful coupon plugin called WP Coupons.

It’s the best coupons plugin for WordPress that we have used. As a result, we have a WP Coupons review and post about how to add coupons section inside WordPress.

Use our WP Coupons discount code for a discount.

Table of Contents Plus

We have a nice table of contents box in almost all posts. We use this plugin for adding it! The plugin is totally free and lightweight.

TOC+ plugin will make subheadings (according to your plugin settings) as the heading in the TOC box. Styling is customizable. So you can design the box according to your theme styling and CSS. There’s no need to add additional CSS.

BJ Lazy Load

BJ Lazy Load plugin is using for image lazy loading.

Normally when a visitor comes to your post and you got too many images on it, probably it will take more time to load the post.

From now on, say goodbye to that. By using this BJ Lazy Load WordPress plugin, you will be able to load the images when the user scrolls down. It will definitely save you the loading time and maximum conversation.

In 2019, everyone must consider a lazy load plugin for improving speed.

Compact Archives

Have you seen our archives page? We used this plugin for styling it. You know that we are using Genesis and its inbuilt archive page is something like horrible.

In our archive page, we have categorizes posts monthly basis and yearly basis. It’s a great feature. You don’t need to write any additional HTML for showcasing them.

You can do it by adding shortcodes.

WP Rocket

For making a WordPress blog faster, you may want to use a caching plugin. For our website, we are using the WP Rocket caching plugin.

It’s the best caching plugin for WordPress. At this time, they don’t have a free version. The plugin is a completely premium one.

But, you can use our WP Rocket coupon for a charming discount.

SyntaxHighlighter

While running a WordPress and blogging resource website, we must need to showcase some codes. Using this plugin, our day made simple!

This is a free and customizable WordPress plugin for showcasing codes. All you need to do is, use specific shortcodes. For example, if you need to showcase some CSS in the blog post, use the CSS shortcode. Here’s a live example.

.breadcrumb {
font-size: 15px;
font-style: italic;
text-decoration: none;
}

ShortPixel

Image optimization is essential these days. In our blog, we are using the plugin ShortPixel for compressing images. That is a freemium plugin.

The free plan will help you to optimize 100 images a month. If you want to optimize more, you may want the premium plans. Trust me, the plugin is worth it. In our images, we can see a total of 67% compression rate.

The plugin almost helped us to save more than 500MB by compressing images. Try WP Smush if you are looking for free one.

OneSignal

Last day, we have started using OneSignal for web push notifications. Before that, we were using another free tool called Subscribers.

OneSignal is the best free web push notification service for WordPress. The configuration is pretty simple. When you publish a new post, you can send a notification from your WordPress admin area.

Also, you will be able to send custom messages from your OneSignal account.

Insert Post Ads

We are not using any display ads like Google AdSense. But, will add some affiliate banner ads for promotions inside post content or before the post content.

For our use, we are using the Insert Post Ads plugin. The plugin is very simple to use, lightweight. It will allow you to add ads before post content, after post content or after specific paragraphs.

For a detailed guide, check out our post how to add ads inside WordPress posts. Other alternatives are,

These are the best ad management plugins for WordPress.

All In One Schema Rich Snippets

While reviewing a product or service, we must add the product review schema. This is the free WordPress plugin that we use here for adding the schema.

This plugin is completely lightweight and wouldn’t affect your website performance. If you need more powerful one, you may want to check WP Rich Snippets.

Some of our review posts are,

and much more.

Restore Image Title

For making our images more search engine friendly, we use this plugin. This Restore Image Title plugin will help you to pull the image title in your posts, pages, and custom post types without adding the manual image title or editing HTML version of the post.

You can’t add a title to old images. This plugin will only add a title tag to new images. When you hover your mouse over our images, you can see the image title.

Title and Nofollow For Links

In our website, we are linking to external sources like WordPress.org and other useful websites. But the default WordPress installation won’t help you to add a title tag to links or adding nofollow tag to links.

While you lining external resources on a blog, you must consider adding nofollow if the page is not enough value. We are using this plugin for adding title tags and adding a nofollow tag.

For adding title tag manually, you might want to edit the HTML version of your link or post. This plugin made our life easy!

Tools

Choose the right tools for keyword research, keyword position tracking, website auditing etc. Here are the tools that we use here for our projects.

SEMrush

For keyword research and website audit, we are using SEMrush for our projects. The tool might be a little expensive for every newbie bloggers. The plans start at $99 a month.

But using our SEMrush link, you will get 14-day free trial absolutely free! You won’t get any bill during this period. You must try SEMrush.

Longtail Pro

Another awesome keyword research tool for every blogger. You must know that targeting long tail keywords will help you to rank your contents higher on search engines than the shorter one.

In our cases, we will make the long-tail keyword around 4 or 5 words. This is the tool, Long Tail Pro, that we use here for finding long-tail keywords.

KWFinder

For finding keywords and finding the difficulty, we are using KWFinder. The free plan will help you to analyze 5 keywords a single day.

For unlocking the limit, you may want to upgrade to a paid plan. The best tool. Simply think about this.

In a day, 5 keywords. In a month, 30*5, 150 keywords. The free plan is good enough, isn’t it?

Keyword Planner

We are using Google Keyword Planner from day 1. It will show you the best keywords that you can use on your blog for ranking content. Also, monthly searches, bid rate, keyword competition etc.

It’s free! Try it!

BuzzSumo

Do you want to find the trending content right now? This BuzzSumo tool will help you to find the trending content of that time and you could write a detailed post about the topic.

Guess what? You can generate more traffic to your website using that method. Anyway, you must consider BuzzSumo for a better content.

Ahrefs

We are using Ahrefs for backlink analysis. The tool is 100% premium one. They don’t have any free version. They were offering a 7-day trial. But, some folks misused this feature for registering a trial account again and again.

Due to that, they shut down the plan. Now, you could get a trial account for $7 for a week.

Grammarly

For improving our contents, adding proper punctuation marks, avoiding spelling mistakes, we are using Grammarly. It’s a freemium tool. We are using the free version.

The tool got Chrome extension which you can add to Chrome and improve your writing skills. If you are blogging through an android device, you can use the Grammarly Android keyboard.

SendinBlue

OptinMonster will help us to collect email addresses. Here, SendinBlue will help us to send email newsletters and promotions.

They have also a free plan which will allow you to collect unlimited emails and send 300 emails a day. That’s enough for beginners.

Other email marketing providers are,

You must build an email list.

Cloudflare

For speeding up your website performance, you must consider using a CDN. CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. In our blog, we are using the Cloudflare. We are pretty happy with their services.

Cloudflare is a freemium service. They have a free plan and also premium plans. If you are a beginner, you just need the free plan.

They will give you free SSL also. The certificate must be shared. For a detailed guide, you may want to check out our blog post how to use Cloudflare on WordPress blog.

If you want another alternative, check out MaxCDN and KeyCDN.

Shutterstock

We are using Shutterstock for images. Most of our featured images are got from Shutterstock. It’s a great place for finding royalty free images.

The free version got some limits and the images come with a watermark. For removing watermarks, you must consider purchasing the paid plan.

Canva

For creating infographics and related image works, we are using Canva. We are using the free plan. That’s good enough for us.

You must try Canva.

Ad Networks

At this time of writing, we are not using any display ads like Google AdSense or Media.net. We are only using affiliate networks for monetizing our blog posts and website.

NOTE: We will recommend you only tested resources which is used by us. We will not share any affiliate links just for making money.

At this time, we are using 2 affiliate networks.

ShareASale

ShareASale also got brands like WP Engine, Namecheap, StudioPress, ThemeIsle, DIYThemes, Scala Hosting etc. They are simple to use and provides the best user experience.

The minimum payout is $50 by Wire/ cheque or PayPal. With more than 4000 merchants, you can find the best and high-paying merchants for your blog.

The company is growing day by day.

CJ

GoDaddy affiliate program got hosted here. We are signed up for CJ for promoting web hosting products. At this time, they have and we enrolled in iPage, InterServer, GoDaddy and much more web hosting companies affiliate programs.

GoDaddy is offering awesome coupons for their customers. In that case, we will be able to provide the best coupons to our customers.

If you want to start a blog like ours, you must consider this tools and plugins. Those are the best tools available in the market for managing a blog.

We hope this blueprint page helped you to know the plugins and tools that we use here. When we try a new tool or plugin, we will definitely add it here. If you liked this post, please consider sharing this one with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media.

If you are a beginner and want to know more plugins, check out our post about must-have WordPress plugins in 2019.