Information, guides, how-tos, etc.
The WordPress Codex: The official documentation for WordPress, on WordPress.org. From first time installation and basic usage for beginners to advanced customizations and themes and plugins development, this is the number 1 reference for everything WordPress.
WPbeginner: A large collection of tips, tricks, tutorials and how-to guides for beginners and more advanced WordPress users alike.
FirstSiteGuide’s resources: Comprehensive guides on how to build your website or blog, with specific tips for various businesses and niches. Primarily aimed at complete beginners, some resources can prove useful even to more advanced site owners.
Free Plugins
WordPress SEO by Yoast: If you are concerned about SEO and helping your site climbing to the top of search results, this one is a must have. It provides a complete SEO solution for WordPress with a huge set of optimizations. Moreover, it is constantly updated to catch up with the latest WordPress Core updates as well as the latest SEO best practices.
Advanced Responsive Video Embedder: If you are embedding videos from sites like youtube or vimeo, the player is not responsive by default, even if you are using a responsive theme. This handy plugin adds a simple button in your post editor allowing you to easily embed your videos responsively from many tube sites. Click the button, paste your video link, and voilà!
WooCommerce: Turn your WordPress site into a full-fledged e-commerce platform with the most popular ecommerce plugin. Sell physical or digital goods, bookings and subscriptions, offer instant download and manage inventory, taxes and shipping fees, accept credit cards, paypal and dozens of other payment gateways.
Contact Form 7: Our themes feature a simple and easy to setup contact form, but sometimes you need more. Need a contact form with custom fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, file attachements, captcha challenge, and more ? Contact Form 7 has it all!
Cookie Law Info: You know these annoying bars on top or bottom of almost every website that tells you the site uses cookies ? European law made them mandatory since 2012. This plugin provides a simple way to comply, with just the few settings you need to make the bar match you site’s font, color and style. (Yep, we’re using it on this site to comply with this law too!)
(Please note: iceablethemes.com and Iceable Media are not affiliated or otherwise connected to these plugins and their authors in any way. This list is a selection of plugins that we tested and thought they could help you improve your WordPress site. It is provided here in the sole hope that it will be useful. All of these plugins work correctly with WordPress and themes from iceablethemes.com at the time of writing, but this does not guarantee it will still be the case in the future. Should you encounter any issue or have any question about of one of them, their respective authors are the most likely to help. In such case, please head to the “support” tab of the concerned plugin in the WordPress repository.)
Free images
Images are a must to make your content more attractive, more shareable, and so much better than just a wall of text. Sometimes though it is not easy to find an image that just looks good, that you have to right to use, and that doesn’t cost you an arm in royalties. Below is a selection of great resources to find great-looking public domain or creative common licensed images that are completely free for you to use on your site:
Pixabay: A huge collection of beautiful, high resolution images and photography, all licensed Creative Commons CC0 (public domain) meaning you can use them freely, any way you see fit in any project.
Skitterphoto: Another large collection of completely free pictures, all licensed Creative Commons CC0 (public domain).
Unsplash: Ten free photos every ten days. Unique, unusual, high-res and high quality photos, completely free (Creative Commons CC0).
jaymantri.com: Similar to Unspash except for the “ten every ten day” schedule. Unique, unusual, high-res and high quality photos, completely free (Creative Commons CC0).
PicJumbo: A large database of high-res photography, completely free to use in personal and commercial projects. The license is not exactly public domain however, be sure to check the license details (especially: you may include images in a product you sell, but you cannot resell images themselves as the main product)
HiResStock: Another database of high-res photos organized by categories, completely free to use in personal and commercial projects. The license is not exactly public domain however, be sure to check the license details (especially: you may include images in a product you sell, but you cannot resell images themselves as the main product, and you cannot distribute them as an image package)
If you know about another useful resource and want to suggest a link to be added here, please feel free to let us know!