Blogging Resources

Welcome to my blogging resources page!

The list below represents tools that I use myself. I list a couple of WordPress plugins that I don’t use on SideGains, but I am using them on other sites I manage.

Some of the resources listed contain my affiliate links. If you click these and make a purchase, I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you… I need to make some money somehow!

The products below are not here solely to generate sales for me though and I have not been solicited by any company to promote their products on my blogging resources page. 

As I say, these are the tools I use almost every single day and so I have a very clear conscience about promoting them to you.

Many of these resources are free, however some require a paid subscription or a one off charge.

Adobe Photoshop – THE Graphics Editor!

Adobe Photoshop is THE graphics editor. It is the tool of choice for almost every graphics professional and is literally a behemoth!

For the average Joe it offers way more functions than you’ll ever use (especially if you’re a newbie) but it truly is the Rolls Royce of digital graphics editors.

Years ago you could purchase Photoshop as standalone software but Adobe moved into subscription-based pricing some time back. Consequently, the starter package (Photographer) will cost you:

• UK: from around £10 per month upwards (depending upon the options you choose)
• US: from around $10 per month upwards (depending upon the options you choose)

The Photographer package gives you 20GB of storage for the images you create, which is enough space for around 4,000 JPEGs.

Photoshop is a truly amazing blogging resource but it may be like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut for the newbie blogger.

Canva – Recommended for Beginners

Canva is a drag-and-drop graphic image creator that’s ideal for creating images for social media.

It comprises a bunch of templates, images, videos and icond for you to use in creating banner images, Pinterest Pins, Instagram posts… and way, way more.

I use it predominantly for Pinterest because it’s a huge timesaver and it results in beautiful Pin designs. Look at any under blogger on Pinterest and you’ll see that many of them use and highly recommend it. In all honesty, it’s become one of the blogging resources I rely upon the most.

Canva offers three subscription levels: Free, Pro and Enterprise. Each of the subscriptions (even the Free package) give you an incredible number of templates and images.

• Free – Useful for for individuals and small groups , the Free package gives you more than 8,000 templates, over 100 design types (social media, presentations, letters) and more than 100,000 free photo images and graphics.
• Pro – Canva’s Pro package includes everything from the Free subscription as well as +60,000 templates, over 60 million premium stock images and videos and custom templates.
• Enterprise – The Enterprise package adds to the Pro subscription with unlimited storage, admin privileges to manage teams, workflow management and 24/7 support.

I highly recommend Canva if you want to create images for your blog and / or you need to create lots of images for social media.

Sign up for a free Canva account, use it and see if you like it. For most things you’ll be fine starting off with the Free package. When you get used to it and you’ve been using it for a while, you may find you need access to more premium stock images. At that time the Pro subscription would likely be a better fit for you.

Snappa – Recommended for Beginners

Snappa is an online graphic design tool that’s perfect for generating and optimizing images for blog posts, social media and… well, pretty much anything to do with running a website really!

It includes quite literally thousands of free templates, from Facebook headers to infographics that help you create strikingly effective artwork…. even if (like me) you’re NOT a seasoned graphic designer!

There are different subscription levels, each giving you full access to 5,000+ templates and 1,000,000+ HD stock photos & graphics. However there are some differences between each subscription package:

• Starter (FREE) – The Starter package gives you a license for 1 user but it limits you to downloading only 3 images you create with it per month.
• Pro ($10 per month) – The Pro package also gives 1 user access but it allows you unlimited downloads for any image you create and you can upload fonts to keep your branding consistent / give you more options when creating graphics.
• Team ($20 per month) – The Team package gives you everything from the Pro package but also permits multiple people to use the account.

Sign up for a free Snappa account and get to know it. When you’re comfortable with how it works, you can always upgrade to the Pro package if you like it.

Unsplash – Huge FREE Image Resource

Unsplash is an incredible blogging resource for high-quality, high-resolution images for you to use as you please to copy, modify and distribute absolutely FREE for commercial or non-commercial use!

You do not have to obtain permission from either Unsplash or the image creator. You also do not have to provide reference links to either.

Unsplash has a collection of over 1,000,000 images for you to choose from… by the way, did I mention that creating an account is FREE?

It’s an amazing resource for images, which I use across the SideGains blog and social media accounts.

Namecheap – My Choice for .com Domains

Namecheap is my personal recommendation for registering .com domains. I’ve always found domain prices to be extremely competitive and so I’ve been using Namecheap for almost 15 years.

I’ve never had any issues with Namecheap and support has been excellent on the few occasions I’ve needed some help.

The service is easy to use and well-documented to help get you through some of the more demanding domain configurations you might need to put in place.

123 Reg – My Choice for .co.uk Domains

As with Namecheap, I am a long-time customer of 123 Reg, pretty much for the same reasons as above. I made some of my first ever domain purchases through them in the early 2000s.

I find 123 Reg offers good support and a user-friendly interface.

Domains are also competitively priced

I generally use 123 Reg for purchasing .co.uk domains.

SiteGround – Excellent Support and Fast Servers

I began using SiteGround in June 2019, when I migrated SideGains from HostGator. It’s not that I was unhappy with Hostgator, but I felt that SiteGround would offer me more robustness for what I plan SideGains to become.

I haven’t been disappointed! SiteGround has given the SideGains blog an incredible boost in terms of load speed, which you can read about here: SideGains Page Load Speed Test.

There are three packages available:

• StartUp
• GrowBig
• and GoGeek.

I opted for the GrowBig package because it offers unlimited website hosting and 20 GB of web space storage. It also allows for up to 25,000 monthly visits.

Current pricing for the GrowBig package is:

• GrowBig UK Year 1: £4.95/month and £14.95/month after the first year (prices exclude VAT).
• GrowBig US Year 1: $5.95/month and $19.95/month after the first year.

I found the SiteGround support team incredibly responsive and knowledgeable when I initially spoke with them about configuration changes I needed to make quickly after migrating to them.

One of the most highly recommended tools on my blogging resources page… read my full SiteGround review to see why.

WordPress – The World’s Most Popular Blogging Platform

I use (and have used) many blogging platforms over the past 20 years but WordPress is the one I’ve used the most consistently during that time! It’s also one of the most feature-rich and surprisingly it’s FREE!

WordPress is a highly flexible and customisable blogging platform but it can be used for almost any type of online property from online stores to forums.

It’s the most popular platform on earth, used by over 60 million websites (according to Wikipedia).

WordPress can be run with FREE hosting on WordPress.com but for increased control over customization it’s better to install it onto your own host.

The beauty of WordPress is that you can add FREE themes to improve the look, feel and functionality of your site… and there are tens of thousands from which to choose! If you don’t like a particular theme you can uninstall it and install another simply and quickly with the click of a few buttons.

You can also install FREE (and paid) plugins to add specific functionality over and above your core WordPress installation and theme. These too can be installed and uninstalled very simply within a couple of clicks.

WordPress is highly recommended!

MH Newsdesk – Super Clean News Style Theme

The first theme I used for SideGains was the MH Newsdesk theme by MH Themes. MH Newsdesk has a newspaper / magazine layout I wanted for SideGains when I started out. It also included enough “out of the box” functions to get a beginner blogger up and running.

MH Newsdesk is a responsive theme meaning it renders nicely for mobile and tablet devices. Additionally it provides numerous layout options and feature areas for you to highlight content you want people to see.

For those of you starting out with WordPress, there is a FREE “lite” version. I used this to test on SideGains before upgrading to the Pro version… the Pro version gives all the functionality available to the theme.

At the moment the MH Newsdesk Pro theme is a one off cost of $49.

Yoast SEO for WordPress – Don’t Start Blogging Without It!

Yoast SEO is one of the most widely respected SEO plugins for WordPress. It’s very comprehensive and will certainly take most of the strain out of your search engine optimization efforts.

The plugin is free though there is a pro version which gives enhanced functionality.

Personally, I am running the free version on SideGains and have no plans to upgrade at the moment.

If I was only ever allowed to have one plugin it would be Yoast SEO!

Another highly recommended item on my blogging resources list!

WP Rocket – Super Fast Caching Plugin

WP Rocket is a premium WordPress plugin (i.e. you have to buy it) that helps optimize WordPress sites so they run super-fast. It is widely considered one of the most powerful caching plugins and is simple to install and configure.

Although I don’t use this plugin on SideGains (I use an optimization plugin that comes FREE with SiteGround), I have installed and configured it for some of my clients. Optimization improvements have been substantial!

The basic WP Rocket starter license for a single site is $49, which includes 1 year of support and updates.

W3 Super Cache – Super Fast Caching Plugin

W3 Super Cache is another WordPress plugin designed to improve user experience by improving page load speeds across your website.

It’s a highly popular FREE optimization plugin that currently has in excess of 2 million active installations on WordPress sites… so it’s a biggie!

Again this isn’t a plugin I use on SideGains, but it is one I use on my consultancy portfolio site, OK 200, which has dramatically improved page load speed across the board.

Tailwind – Pinterest Scheduling Par Excellence

Tailwind is simply the best scheduling tool for Pinterest I’ve used. Ask any Tailwind user and they’ll likely say the same thing.

This is one of the tools I am happy to pay a subscription for since it delivers a bunch of useful benefits in spades.

You can sign up for a free Tailwind trial, which gives you 100 pins and 30 Instagram posts to play with. I did this myself and then upgraded to a pro-package, that costs around $10 a month.

Tailwind will not only schedule your Pinterest pins but it also offers a feature called “Communities”, which function like a much more powerful version of Pinterest Group boards.

I won’t ply you with all the benefits it gives here, so check out my detailed Tailwind App review to see in detail why I can’t live without it.

Google Ads Keyword Planner – Suggestions from Google!

The Google Ads Keyword Planner is a tool that can be found in the Google Ads pay per click advertising platform. Google Ads is FREE to set up (you need to set up a Google Account to gain access) although using it for advertising online will cost you money.

Once you have a Google Ads account, you can use the Keyword Planner tool within to generate keyword ideas. You can also see estimated monthly search volumes for them and how competitively people are bidding upon them in Google Ads. If they are competitive in Google Ads, they’ll likely be competitive in Google’s organic results.

Bing Ads Keyword Planner – Suggestions from Bing!

Bing Ads is Microsoft’s pay per click advertising platform and like Google Ads offer its own Keyword Planner.

You can set up a FREE account with Bing Ads and gain access to the Keyword Planner. However, creating advertising campaigns in Bing Ads and activating them will cost you money.

The Bing Ads Keyword Planner tool can help you generate keyword list ideas and give you insight into estimated search volumes and competitiveness for keywords that people are bidding upon in Bing. This can perhaps indicate how competitive they might be in Bing’s organic results.

Ubersuggest – Great FREE Research Tool

Ubersuggest is online marketing guru Neil Patel’s FREE keyword research tool… and much, much more.

It’s a sophisticated tool and one that I use frequently.

Ubersuggest provides reports not just on keyword search volumes but also which pages rank highly for them.

Further detail shows you SEO details about each ranking page such as:

• Estimated number of visits the page receives
• The number of inbound links to the ranking page (and the pages that links to them)
• A domain score for the ranking page
• The number of times people have shared the ranking page in social media 

This is very useful because it gives you greater insight into what it takes to rank a page for a given keyword in Google’s search results.

For a relatively inexpensive tool, Ubersuggest brings a whole new level of sophistication to keyword research, offering not just phrase matching but also related keywords that may be of interest to you.

There are other subscription-based keyword tools available that provide even more detailed analysis, but if you’re starting out Ubersuggest is highly recommended.