Theme and Page Builders

Theme
Beaver Builder Theme
We're using the Child theme.

Edits to functions.php
Please do not edit the functions.php file, instead ensure all edits to functions.php are made via the 'code snippets' plugin.

Adding code to headers/footers
Please use the WPCode plugin

Page Builder:
Beaver Builder

Page Builders Addons:
Beaver Builder Themer
Power Pack for Beaver Builder
Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder
Classic Editor

Site speed

WP Rocket
Please ensure we use the following settings:

  • Minify CSS
  • Optimize CSS delivery
  • Minify JS
  • Load JS Deferred
  • Delay JS execution (one may need to exclude js files if functionality is impaired.
  • Media - Lazy Load is active
  • Media - Image dimensions are added
  • Preloading - activated
  • Preloading - link preloading activated
  • Fonts - please ensure to preload Google fonts
  • Database: set automatic database clean to weekly
  • Heartbeat - set reduce activity for backend, post editor, and frontend

Please do not install any further caching or asset-cleaning plugins.

Basic Plugin SEO, Google, Site Settings, Forms and AntiSpam

Yoast, please use for;

  • optimising site titles and metadata
  • creation of xml sitemap
  • the site set-up in completed
  • redirects
  • robots.txt

Schema Pro
Please ensure key page types are set-up

Google set-up
The official Google Site Kit plugin has been added, please follow the set-up when adding site to Search Console, Google Analytics etc.

WP Settings

  • Search Engine Visibility: Please uncheck 'Discourage search engines from indexing this site'
  • WP Permalinks: please ensure these are set to Post Name or Custom Structure
  • Set data format to:  28 September 2022
  • Set time format to 24 hour
  • Uncheck 'Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts'
  • If using posts and comments - please ensure all comments are help for moderation (the site is correctly set as a default)
  • If no comments are to be allowed, please disable 'Allow people to submit comments on new posts'
  • Ensure 'show avatars' is unchecked
  • Media - ensure 'Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional)' is unchecked
  • Media - uncheck 'Organise my uploads into month- and year-based folders'

Gravity Forms

  • Please use this form builder and no others
  • The Gravity Forms Active Campaign plugin is installed

Anti SPAM

  • Please ensure Google's Captcha Level 2 is set for ALL forms, and set as visible check box (one will need to set this up using Cardell's Google account
  • Anti Post SPAM - Akismet has been added, to 'Silently discard the worst and most pervasive spam so I never see it.'

On Page SEO
Please ensure the following is set with each added page/post/ etc.

HTML

Some of this may be obvious, however, many sites have a mixture of HTML tags which require a lot of on-page SEO cleaning-up, to help avoid this on all new sites, please ensure the following;

  • H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 - the correct usage per page (i.e. 1xH1, 3-4xH2, and so on
  • ALT text - when adding an image please ensure the ALT TEXT, CAPTION, and DESCRIPTION are set.
  • Please ensure the H1 and P font sizes, colour, and bold settings are set in the Beaver Builder to ensure consistency

Before Going Live

Please follow these steps before going live;

  • Use WP Rocket to clear ALL caches
  • Next, please use an On-Page SEO checker to review all page, ensuring TITLES, etc. are all present and the correct length, and all ALT text etc. are set.

Before Going Live

Please follow these steps before going live;

  • Use WP Rocket to clear ALL caches
  • Next, please use an On-Page SEO checker to review all page, ensuring TITLES, etc. are all present and the correct length, and all ALT text etc. are set.