30+ Essential Blogging Resources I Swear By

Big Body coming to you live from…my couch. Scratch that. I don’t own a couch anymore. I’m sitting on one of those butt pillows on the floor of my apartment. That’s beside the point and just to answer your follow-up question, no I don’t eat canned cat food anymore.

I receive a lot of questions from readers about the tools and resources I use for this blog (and my newsletter). So, I’ve created this central hub and repository with information and links to my favorite and essential items.

This isn’t a resource page that frivolously lists every single platform, tool, and resource under the sun as I like to keep it 55th Street like Crip Mac and only write about things I actually use/have used.

The tools and resources on this list have allowed Pale Ale Travel – along with several other websites I run – to grow and have proven to be far from vaporware, so I hold a relatively high degree of confidence in them helping you on your blogging journey.

Almost all of the tools are free or budget-friendly. I’m quite barebones with what I pay for these days and also understand that most people (myself included) want to get their site up and running with minimal overhead.

If you ever have any questions about getting started, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Domain Providers & Hosting

BlueHost – A semi-expensive domain and hosting provider that is incredibly reasonable for the first year’s hosting cost but exponentially increases for the second year. Occasional downtime but overall has been reliable and one of the providers I recommend if budget isn’t a concern. Get a free domain and 75% off monthly hosting when you use my custom sign-up link here.
Lyrical Host – Recommended domain and hosting provider for affordable, no hidden fee, low-renewal cost services, and built for speed. Fantastic support and is great for both beginners and SEO gurus. This is the provider I use for all newer sites in my portfolio.
GoDaddy – My first love of a domain and hosting provider that is more of the ‘Wal-Mart of hosting’. Great for simple, easy to use websites, and getting started but fails to compete when it comes to more technical features. It’s also priced considerably higher than its competitors.
NameCheap – An affordable domain and hosting provider. However, think of it more as a website registrar and domain provider. I typically purchase domains at an affordable price from here and then transfer them to a separate hosting provider due to NameCheap’s basic hosting/lack of hosting space.
10Web – A domain and hosting provider with the added value of AI website customizability and design. I’ve used 10Web for 2 sites and highly recommend it for anyone who has already mastered/plans to integrate AI workflows and customization into their website’s design and growth. Get started for free with my 10Web link here.
Beehiiv – A lot of people don’t know that you can actually use Beehiiv as a free blogging platform that acts similar to WordPress. That’s right, it’s completely free. Read my Beehiiv vs. WordPress for blogging comparison + get a free 30-day trial and 20% off for 3 months with my link.

Blog Theme

Current Theme N/A – The number of inquiries I’ve received about the theme (design) of Pale Ale Travel damn near tops the list. The unfortunate reality is that I can’t actually recommend it in good faith anymore as the developers behind the theme have ceased operations and maintenance. So, inevitably, I’m going to have to transition themes at some point as I find little bits and bobs constantly breaking or being incompatible with WordPress updates over the months/years.
Kadence – I’d hazard a guess that this is the single most used travel blog theme on the internet. It’s highly customizable, clean, and highly intuitive and also enables creation with AI. Recommend either the free or
Vantage – One of the most established multi-purpose themes that’s especially popular for businesses and e-commerce. That means you can expect high-res images and powerful product merchandising tools/features.

Top Plugins

WP Rocket – The ultimate caching plugin for anyone who wants to speed up website performance and not be looked down on so poorly by Google’s Core Web Vitals. Some website hosts have a cache but if yours doesn’t, I definitely recommend shelling out the USD 60 per year if you want your site to load in a reasonable amount of time.
WPForms – Drag and drop, highly customizable forms with 2000+ templates. I used the free version WPForms Lite for the first half of my blogging career, I switched over to the paid pro version as I wanted to use its entry management system (instead of having form submissions only sent to my email). WPForms Lite is so robust that I really don’t think it’s necessary to pay for Pro unless you feel strongly about having a central dashboard.
WWSGD – A popular, simple plugin that inserts a small customizable text box above each post on your site. Many people use it as a way to encourage subscribing to their blog or publishing mandatory affiliate disclaimers and language (ex. Disclosure! Keep in mind that some links in these posts are affiliate links and if you click one of them, I may earn a small commission (for which I’m extremely grateful) at no extra cost to you. Thanks for visiting!”).
LuckyWP Table of Contents – I’m too lazy to add the table of contents for each post myself so Lucky WP takes care of this/makes my nonsensical, unstructured posts a tad more sensical and structured.
Popup Maker – I pair this free popup plugin with my Beehiiv newsletter subscription form. It’s highly customizable in the way that I can choose where on a page it appears, after how long a user is on the site before it appears, and how much of the page it takes up. If you want a free lead generation plugin that doesn’t quit, this is it.
Smush – A leading image optimization plugin that allows you to easily optimize, resize, and compress images on your site (and serve them in next-gen formats), improving speed and overall website performance. I wouldn’t use this in tandem with WP Rocket as I think there is an incompatibility but it works well with both W3 Total Cache and Regenerate Thumbnails (other free plug-ins).
Solid Security Basic – An essential plugin for any site that doesn’t want to fall victim to cyberattacks like malware infections or brute force attacks. Specifically, it secures the most attacked part of every WordPress site, user login authentication.
Simple Author Box – You see that gorgeous headshot of me with my ridiculous bio at the bottom of every post? You can do that too with this plugin.
UpdraftPlus – I’ve had more than one occasion where my site has gone down and I needed to restore a prior version of my website due to an incompatibility issue with plugins. I wouldn’t have been able to return to nearly the same form if it weren’t for UpdraftPlus, which backs up my site every 12 hours.
W3 Total Cache – A completely free caching plugin that I’ve used on several past websites. It more than passes muster for sites that don’t need highly optimized features like LazyLoad and Google Font Optimization and is generally where most people start before migrating to a paid plugin like WP Rocket.
Cookie Notice & Compliance For GDPR/CCPA – Since I have some European readers, I do my best to be compliant with all privacy and data protection laws. This plugin is an ethical, proactive way for users to control their data privacy decisions.
WP AutoTerms – As mentioned directly above, I’m a law abiding citizen like Gerard Butler, so I use WP AutoTerms to generate my privacy policies, terms and conditions, and assorted legal pages.

Beehiiv – A burgeoning newsletter platform created by the early Morning Brew Team that allows you to design, deploy, grow, monetize, and track your newsletter. As someone relatively new to the newsletter game, I am in awe at how straightforward the Beehiiv team/platform makes things. Read my article on why I recommend beginner bloggers should consider starting with Beehiiv vs. WordPress for further information!
Kit (ConvertKit) – The initial newsletter tool and platform I used to create a landing page, capture leads, and publish content to them. Unlike Beehiiv, which can also double as a website, Kit is purely email marketing.

Ad Networks

Mediavine Journey – The most recent offering of the premium ad network Mediavine but with less rigid traffic requirements. On paper, Mediavine Journey says it requires 10,000 sessions per month to join, however, I was accepted around 8,000 or so. RPMs are not fantastic at all for me so I’d like to transition away/get enough traffic to join Mediavine’s flagship network (50,000+ sessions per month) or Raptive (100,000+ pageview per month requirement). You can read more about my thoughts on Mediavine Journey under my ‘Income Reports’.

Digital Products, Affiliates, & Growth

TravelPayouts – a single platform to join travel affiliate programs, generate unique affiliate IDs, track everything, and earn some skrilla. The funny thing is that before I joined TravelPayouts, I was rejected by several travel affiliates (cough Agoda cough) after applying directly on their site. After joining TravelPayouts, I was accepted almost instantaneously.
Canva – One of the most underrated marketing tools out there. Canva is an ‘everything under the sun’ design platform. From blog post graphics to social media posts, PDFs, professional presentations, custom videos, and everything in between, I use Canva far more than I ever thought I would when I first heard about it.
Tailwind – I’ve tried to diversify traffic and move away from Google. My second biggest source? Pinterest. And it’s all thanks to Tailwind – a Pin creation, editing, and scheduling tool that allows you to publish eye-catching, engaging content in a fraction of the time.
Dropbox – To be frank, I’ve just run out of space to store images and videos on my phone – something that’s crucial for travel blogging. I bit the bullet and paid for the ‘Plus’ plan, which gives 2 TB of storage and allows me to upload everything directly from my phone. I should have done this sooner.
KeySearch – A more reasonably priced keyword research tool that has grown in popularity over the last several years as SEMRush and Ahrefs prices become untenable. If I were just starting blogging and wanted an affordable, reliable tool for keyword research, I’d go with this 100%. Get started with my link here.
SEMRush – Frankly, I just use 10 different email addresses to get my 10 free daily searches on SEMRush per day as I can’t afford to pay for it anymore. And you know what? I think that’s all you need if you’re a small-time blogger.
Ahrefs – In my marketing and blogging tenure, there isn’t any other tool I’ve used more than Ahrefs. With that being said, it used to be a fantastic keyword research tool but over the years it has dropped off in value for me as a small business/small blogger. Pricing-wise, it also doesn’t make sense for small bloggers as it is prohibitively expensive. However, if you are an agency or have a robust portfolio of websites, then it may be worth exploring. Maybe one day I’ll reengage but today is not that day.
Answer The Public – A very general keyword research tool that gets the juices flowing by generating related queries to a targeted word or phrase you enter.

If you found any of this helpful, please feel free to buy me a coffee! It helps go toward general blog maintenance costs and lets me know you enjoyed the content!

Blog well everyone,

Big Body