WordPress templates and plugins: what to use and what to avoid.

A theme controls how your site looks and a large part of how fast it loads. Choose one that is lightweight, regularly updated and from a developer with a track record. A theme packed with demo content and visual effects looks impressive in the preview and is often slow on a phone.

Buy or download themes only from the official directory or from the developer. A free copy of a paid theme from a random site is a common way for malicious code to get onto a website.

Every plugin is extra code that has to load, be updated and stay compatible with the rest. Install only what you need, and remove what you stop using. Two plugins that do the same job are a frequent cause of slow pages and conflicts.

For search engine optimization, two plugins are very widely used: Yoast SEO and Rank Math. You need only one. A plugin helps you set titles and descriptions, but it does not do the SEO for you: the pages still have to be useful and fast.

Updates left undone for months, a page builder layered on a heavy theme, large uncompressed images, and a long list of plugins none of which anyone remembers adding. A site can look fine and still take eight seconds to load on a phone.

The other common mistake is updating everything at once with no backup. Take a backup first, update one thing at a time, and check the site after each change.

Call someone when a form stops sending, an update breaks the layout, the site is slow and you cannot see why, or you want a feature the plugins do not give you. We fix WordPress sites we did not build: bug fixes start at $120, usually done in 24 to 72 hours once you approve the quote, with a 14-day warranty.