DM's Recommendations
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All of my recommendations are based on my personal use of the products or experience from using them for clients. I will keep updating this page to show my latest choices.
Hostings
Hostings are where your website files are stored. Getting a good host is important for website speed.
Page Builders
Page builders help you build your wordpress website using visual building tools.
Plugins
Plugins are one of the main components that is used in wordpress. Good plugins are important for website speed and stability.
Themes
Plugins are one of the main components that is used in wordpress. Stable and Fast themes are important for good experience.
Recommended Hostings
I provide hosting recommendations based on my personal experience and my experience working with clients’ websites hosted on various platforms.
Hostinger
Currently, I am hosting this website on Hostinger with its litespeed cdn (quic.cloud). Hostinger as of 2023 has the best speed for a cheap price. Hostinger has 10 data centers in eight countries which makes it good choice if your business is world-wide.
NameHero
I used Namehero from 2019-2023 with turbo cloud plan. Namehero is good if your business only runs in US or Europe as their data centers are not around the world. This leads to slower loading speed to rest of the countries but they do provide litespeed CDN (quic.cloud) which can help to bypass this limitations.
Recommended Page Builders
Currently, I only have 1 preference, that is Elementor page builder. The other page builder that I used is DIVI page builder but I quickly found that even the free version of elementor feels better than DIVI page builder which only has paid option.
Elementor (Free & Paid)
I have created over 80+ websites with elementor. If that is not enough to let you know my preference. Then let me tell you that I did majority of websites in my early career with elementor free version. Lots of plugins available to extend elementor features which makes it lot easier to built quality websites. Right now, 20% of wordpress websites use elementor page buider (source) .
Recommended Plugins
Currently, I only have 1 preference, that is Elementor page builder. The other page builder that I used is DIVI page builder but I quickly found that even the free version of elementor feels better than DIVI page builder which only has paid option.
WPcode (Free & Paid)
WPcode eliminates the necessity for a child theme when incorporating custom functions into your WordPress website. WPcode streamlines the management of various code snippets, making it effortless to enable or disable them. This functionality is especially valuable in preventing potential complications stemming from problematic child theme updates or alterations.
Premium Addon For Elementor (Free & Paid)
An extension to already good elementor page builder plugin. Rarely I require other plugins when using premium addons.
Royal Addons for Elementor (Free & Paid)
Provides lots of new widget to elementor page builder. Mainly adds custom CSS panel for elementor widgets. The custom CSS option is only available for elementor pro(paid), so royal addons can be used as a free alternative.
Recommended Themes
Almost 90% of my projects are made with elementor page builder. So the themes I used are compatible with elementor page builder. If you get elementor pro version then you can simply use hello elemenetor theme but if not these are my recommended themes.
OceanWP
The amount of customization free oceanwp provides is more than lots of paid themes. If you want you can get paid version to further increase the features. OceanWP provides good woocommerce shop page with filters which as of 2023, not possible with elementor pro unless you buy other plugins to extend on it. But I would recommend to get elementor pro and use hello elementor theme if your website isn’t ecommerce or if you don’t need filter option.
Astra
Astra is also a popular theme that uses elementor page builder. There are lots of similarities between oceanwp and astra when it comes to features. I have found free oceanwp to have more features than free astra theme. But astra seems to be more lightweight than oceanwp which makes it better for sites if you don’t have much advanced customization.
Hello Elementor
This theme should only be used if you have elementor pro. It’s the most basic and lightweight theme which doesn’t provide much as all the work is done by elementor pro. As elementor pro doesn’t have good woocommerce shop page builder, functionalities like filters for price, category are not present. In those cases, we use other plugins to add those features or simply use a theme like oceanwp to add filter features.