Tag
Making WordPress sites load faster.
Plugins
WP Rocket is a caching plugin whose real product is defaults that work. There is no free version, the licence renews annually, and on good hosting some of what it does is already done.
Plugins
wpDataTables handles the tables a simple table plugin cannot — thousands of rows, live SQL sources, filtering and charts. That capability is why it is heavy, and why most sites do not need it.
Plugins
Site Kit connects Search Console, Analytics, AdSense and PageSpeed to your admin and shows you the numbers there. It is the least risky way to add tracking, and the dashboard is the least useful part of it.
Plugins
FacetWP builds the filter sidebar that shops, directories and archives keep asking for. It is very good at it, and it is a subscription your templates end up depending on.
Plugins
Social Warfare is a share button plugin with an emphasis on speed and control. The harder question it raises is whether share buttons still earn the space and the requests they cost.
Themes
Hello is a near-empty theme designed to get out of Elementor's way. That is genuinely the right choice when Elementor builds the whole site, and the wrong one the moment it does not.
Themes
OceanWP gives away a capable theme and sells the extensions around it. Understanding that model — free core, paid modules, bundle pricing — is most of what you need to evaluate it.
Themes
Avada is a multipurpose theme with its own builder, sold as a complete website platform. It genuinely is one — which is the strength, the weight and the lock-in in a single sentence.
Plugins
WPBakery is the builder most people meet by inheriting a site built with it. Understanding how it stores layouts explains both why it is everywhere and why leaving it is genuinely expensive.
Plugins
Beaver Builder's reputation is for stability and for behaving reasonably when you remove it. Both are real, and neither means a builder-built site is portable in the way people assume.
Themes
GeneratePress is deliberately small. Its free version is a genuinely complete lightweight theme, and its premium tier is a set of modules you enable only where you need them.
Themes
Kadence is a light theme with its own header and footer builders and a block library alongside it. That split is the thing to understand: the theme is portable, the blocks are the dependency.