As developers, one of the first things we always do on a shared host is install a full-page-caching plugin called WP Super Cache. Some shared hosts now offer caching outside of WordPress; SiteGround does. If they do, use that instead of WP Super Cache. It’ll be faster. But if they don’t have a caching layer from the host, using WP Super Cache made by Automattic (makers of WordPress.com) is the way to go.

One of the most annoying parts of maintaining a WordPress site effectively is dealing with spam submissions. CAPTCHA, a type of challenge-response test that’s used to tell if a user is human, is one of the most common ways of protecting against spam. It’s also one of the most obnoxious for users. We’ve all had experiences on sites where we had to decode unreadable, broken numbers in an image multiple times before we could sign up for a mailing list or submit a question over a contact form. The WPBruiser plugin (formerly  Goodbye CAPTCHA) is one of our favorite plugins for dealing spam and boosting the security of your site (this isn’t a sponsored post, so you know we must really love it!).

If you’re trying to increase traffic to your website and improve your SEO, Yoast SEO for WordPress has quickly become the go-to SEO solution for most WordPress developers. It’s a multifaceted SEO plugin that’s full of features that make optimization easier to keep up with! One of our favorite features is the snippet editor, which gives you the ability to edit your meta title and meta description in WordPress which we’ll cover in this post.

While WordPress itself is already one of the best tools you could be using to improve your site’s SEO, optimization is a large, ongoing task that should be fully integrated into your marketing and PR strategy. Without thoughtful consideration, your site could easily become invisible to the people who need your content the most. Luckily, Yoast makes a great plugin to help you stay on top of SEO.

Now that you have a working design for your site and have created a few new pages of content, you’ll want to make sure your visitors can find the right information easily by adding your new pages to your menu. It’s a very easy task, so let’s get started!

Adding a custom logo to your site’s header is one of the very first things you’ll probably want to do after you’ve set up your site on your new host and installed a theme you like. Luckily, it’s also one of the simplest things you can do in WordPress. Here’s how to make it happen:

Installing a new theme on your WordPress site is one of the most basic tasks for any WordPress user. In this quick guide, we’ll walk you though how to do just that with any premium theme. If you need some help selecting the right theme for your project before you’re ready to tackle installation, check out our step by step guide to Choosing a Well-Built WordPress Theme.

If you recently signed up for SiteGround hosting (thanks to our awesome 70% off deal!) and read the fine print, you already know that you can host multiple WordPress sites though the same hosting account! After migrating my existing site over to SiteGround, I wanted to set up a new site and put the free new domain that came with new hosting account to good use. If you’re ready to launch your new site too, here’s how to do it though SiteGround:

One of the most exciting parts of starting a new site is being able to give out a new email address at your new domain name. In last week’s quick guide, we taught you how to set up and forward a new email though SiteGround hosting. This week we’ll teach you how to set up your new address with Gmail so you can send mail with your new email without having to login to a separate inbox.

Transferring your site to a new host can be a bit scary if you haven’t done it before. We thought this would be a good time to teach you how to tackle that site transfer yourself—in this case, to our favorite host, SiteGround (see our review of SiteGround for more). Now that you’ve successfully transferred your domain, this week, we’ll walk you through how to install WordPress on your new host.