Over the past year, the global travel industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with widespread travel restrictions and a decrease in consumer demand leading to a significant drop in tourism. This has also had a major impact on the world of travel blogging, with many bloggers finding it difficult to continue their travels and document their experiences for their followers.
Before the pandemic, travel blogging was a popular and lucrative activity for many people. Bloggers would travel to different destinations, document their experiences through writing, photography, and video, and share their content on social media and their own websites. Some bloggers even turned their passion for travel into a full-time career, working with travel brands and creating sponsored content.
However, with the onset of the pandemic and the resulting travel restrictions, many bloggers found themselves unable to continue their travels as they had before. Many were forced to cancel their plans...
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Quick poll of members who have WordPress blogs — what are your favourite plugins?
I crunched the numbers on more than 6,000 WordPress blogs hosted by Travel Massive members (that's a big network!) to discover the most popular plugins:
1. Yoast (50% use premium)
2. Jetpack
3. Instagram feed for WP
4. Monster Insights
5. Slider Revolution
6. Visual Composer
7. WP Super Cache
8. Mailchimp
9. Wordfence
10. Autooptimize
What plugin are a "must have" for your blog, or you can't do without? And what plugins are you willing to pay for? Any other plugin tips to share?
If you answer this discussion please feel free to share a link to your blog as well.
My must have was definitely Yoast Premium and Shortpixel optimizer!
My selections might be more relevant as a web designer/developer:
Elementor - I cannot do without this when it comes to flexibility in building websites the way I want them without having to go deep into the codes! I also save from searching for and spending on themes only to find them not up to par. I couple this with the Pro version (MUST for their full template function) and their own Hello theme.
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) + Custom Post Type UI (CPT) - When I want a post type beyond blog posts and pages, these are amazingly efficient. On my blog, Destinations are more than just post categories but are info pages as well, so these plugins helped me achieve this by creating a whole new post type and fields that let me easily enter various information like weather and activity types. Super efficient!
Akismet Anti-Spam - Needless to say, without this, the comments will be nothing but spams.
UpdraftPlus OR All-in-One WP Migration - My personal preferences for backing up the website and restoring. In my job, I'm always migrating between environments so this is a huge must for me. I have an extension for the latter that lets me import without a file size limit.
Elementor is #11 most popular plugin in my study!
I agree with ACF from a developer perspective.
For SEO I switched to RankMath instead of Yoast
Not a fan of Yoast... I prefer RankMath SEO Pro. I also like Anti-Spam by Clean Talk, Smoosh for images and Easy Table of Content. I'd love suggestions to improve loading speed.
Are you using a cache plugin? Google Pagespeed reports a slow initial response time (2+ seconds) which you could address with a cache.
WooCommerce, Google Site Kit and Hubspot
LinkWhisper! A very powerful tool for internal linking.