WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS (content management system) web development platform today.  I have been designing websites since 2001, but finally made the switch from html to WordPress in 2015.  When I did, I was kind of kicking myself for talking so long.  It’s just So. Much. Easier.

Since making the switch to WordPress, I have designed many WP sites for clients and collected some great resources along the way. Below is a list of some of my favorites that I wanted to share with you here:

All-in-One WP Migration – Use this free plugin to backup your site or move it from one location to another.

Duplicate Page and Post – This simple but useful plugin will create a duplicate clone of pages and posts.

Email Encoder – Protect Email Addresses – Use this free plugin to encode email addresses in your site, so that spam-bots can’t scour your site and harvest your email address.  It can also be used to protect phone number links, ftp, skype, file and other custom link attributes.

Forminator – A great free plugin for creating contact forms, payment forms and custom forms on your WordPress site.

ICO Converter – Use this great little tool to make a favicon!

Palx – Automatic UI Color Palette Generator

Photopea – Program you use right in your browser (no software installation necessary) to edit photos and other images.  It’s pretty advanced for a free program. Think of it as a very basic cloud version of Photoshop. You can even open and edit PSD files (native Photoshop format files) and save to PSD format.  Works great to crop images and save to an optimized reduced file size in preparation for your website.

Pixabay – Stunning free images & royalty free stock. Free for commercial and non-commercial use. No attribution required. (It’s your responsibility to double check the terms of license to make sure you are using the images in an OK way.)  The images are user-submitted and there’s some pretty good free photos there for your website, marketing or personal use.

Web FX – A color picker. Use this free tool to select a color scheme for your site.