You’ve seen some beautiful WordPress artist website examples and now you want to build your own artist website? In this post, you’ll learn how to make an artist website with WordPress in 5 EASY steps! WordPress lets you create anything – from a simple art portfolio to a professional artist website. You’ll find a selection of the best WordPress themes for artists and the best WordPress artist plugins to choose from. Ready to make a good website for artists? Let’s get started!
You are an artist and you’ve decided that you need a website for your artwork? Then this is the right post for you!
These are the 5 EASY steps that will show you how to make an artist with WordPress:
If you’re not yet sure whether or not you need a website, then check out the most important 10 Reasons Why You Should Make A Website For Your Art. In that post, you will also find the best website builders to create an online portfolio and an artist website that sells.
WordPress comes with slightly more of a learning curve than those website builders, but it also gives you the most control over your artist website – and it’s completely free!
Is WordPress a good website for artists?
WordPress is the leading content management system (CMS) on the internet. Worldwide, WordPress makes more than 60% of all websites.
WordPress is open source, meaning it’s no proprietary software that you need to pay for. On the contrary, WordPress is maintained by a large number of experienced developers around the world and it doesn’t cost a dime!
Many personal and professional websites from all industries are created with WordPress, because it’s free, easy to use, and highly scalable.
Of course, you can also make an artist website with WordPress. I’m sure you’ve already seen some stunning WordPress artist website examples on the web.
My art website (the one you’re on right now) is made with WordPress, too. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
So why is WordPress so popular among artists?
Well, apart from being completely free, it’s also pretty easy to manage. You don’t need any coding skills to build an artist website with WordPress. There’s a huge community of developers and users and you can find how-to tutorials and videos everywhere on the web.
This website has an entire section with free WordPress tutorials to help you with the techy stuff and the design of your digital art platform!
Apart from that, WordPress also comes with some of the best website templates for artists and lots of WordPress artist plugins.
In fact, there are heaps of WordPress themes for artists for all types of purposes – whether you just want to showcase your work or start a serious art business.
With all these tools at your fingertips, it is easy to understand that creatives turn to WordPress to make a beautiful online portfolio or a professional artist website to sell products and services.
Related: → How To Start A Digital Art Business (w/ FREE Art Business Startup Checklist)
We are going to come back to the best WordPress themes for artists and the best artist plugins later on in this post.
But before we dive in, a quick note about wordpress.com and wordpress.org:
In this post, we’ll be talking about WordPress.org and I will show you – step-by-step – how to make an artist website with WordPress, the content management system (CMS).
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Our Newsletter is packed with creative tips, free tutorials, art tool reviews, and looaads of inspiration!
How do I make a professional artist website?
WordPress can be customized to look like anything – from a personal blog, to an art portfolio, to a professional artist website with ecommerce store.
You can use WordPress to simply showcase your art in an online gallery, you can add text, articles, images, videos, and so on. Likewise, you can launch a web store with WordPress and sell physical and digital products as well as services, such as consulting, subscriptions, and memberships.
To add more functionality to your professional artist website, you can choose from more than 50,000 WordPress plugins available.
Many of them are free and allow you to add more functionality, such as contact forms, ‘Buy Now’ buttons, calls to action, shopping carts, email opt-ins, search engine optimization, and much more. More about that in a minute.
Is it hard to use WordPress for artists?
WordPress comes with a learning curve, but it’s not as hard to use as you might think.
WordPress has its own inbuilt Gutenberg block editor – a drag-and-drop editor that lets you design your web pages. The Gutenberg editor just needs a couple of hours getting used to and will also allow you to create a basic portfolio gallery for your artist website.
For more flexibility and design options, you can download more powerful drag-and-drop editors. Some of the best and most used WordPress editors are Divi, Spectra, and Elementor, which of the latter one I also use for this artist website.
Those editors come with dozens of useful widgets. Even the free versions provide you with the basic tools to create a decent website. With the premium versions, however, you’ll get more widgets, more premade templates and building blocks to make a professional artist website with just a couple of clicks.
Particularly interesting about Elementor Pro is the Premium Gallery Widget that enables you to beautifully showcase your art. You’ll get heaps of design features to create a portfolio gallery (grid, tiled, and masonry galleries with filters, overlays, borders, spacings, image titles and descriptions, social sharing, etc.).
Similar gallery widgets are also available with Essential Addons for Elementor and Ultimate Addons for Elementor — some Elementor extensions that I also use for this website.
→ Elementor For Photographers And Artists – QUICK & EASY Page Builder
→ Is Elementor Easy To Use? – Elementor Tutorial For Beginners
How do I make an artist website for free?
As I mentioned above, WordPress itself doesn’t cost any money. You can start making an artist website on your local computer and test the waters, without committing to any hosting platform!
However, once you want your website to go live, you’ll need to purchase hosting and a domain name.
This doesn’t have to be expensive. Nowadays, you can get professional web hosting and a domain for as little as a few dollars per month.
The big advantage is that a website built with WordPress completely belongs to you. A self-hosted WordPress site gives you far more flexibility than the one-stop offers from Squarespace, Wix, and other website builders, because you are not reliant on a specific company. Plus, WordPress hosting is also much cheaper.
Apart from that, you can freely decide where you want to host your website. If you are not happy with the hosting provider anymore, you can move your website to another hosting service without any problem.
In the following sections, we are going to look at the essential 5 steps you need to follow to set up your own artist website with WordPress. For each step, you’ll find tips and recommendations and a selection of products and services to choose from!
Let’s jump in…
How to make an artist website with WordPress in 5 EASY steps
STEP #1. Choose a domain name for your artist website
When you want to make an artist website with WordPress, the first thing you need is a domain name. The domain is the address where people can find you on the internet, for example something like https://yourartistname.com.
As a rule of thumb, your website URL should be rather short and memorable. Avoid using numbers and dashes, and make sure that it doesn’t infringe upon existing trademarks.
I always recommend choosing a .com address. First of all, it’s easy to remember for people because most web addresses are .com domains. Secondly, .com domains seem to be doing better in Google search results, and they look more professional than the less common .club, .online or .photography domains.
If you have been creating art for some time, you probably already have an artist name. This can also be your domain name.
In case you cannot get your artist name as a .com domain, try to get an .org or .net domain for your art website. If you want to work on a local level, something like .co.uk, .nl or .de is ok as well.
You can get a domain with the hosting providers that I’m going to mention in the following section.
STEP #2. Get hosting for your artist website
A web hosting company lets you purchase space on their servers to store your WordPress site, so people can access it from all over the world. The hosting company will make sure that your website is available 24/7 and safe against hacker attacks.
Most hosting providers also sell domain names, so you can get both from the same place.
Bluehost is a popular web hosting company. They are officially endorsed by WordPress, so you can be sure to get great performance and reliable support. Plus, you’ll also get a free domain for the first year!
Bluehost.com
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Great performance at low prices
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Recommended by WordPress.org
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1-click automatic WordPress installation
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Managed WordPress Updates and Malware Scanning
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FREE domain name upon new sign-up
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30-day money back guarantee
Bluehost not only offers great performance but also excellent value for your money. Their pricing plans are extremely affordable, even if you’re just starting out.
All plans provide ample storage and an extensive security suite, including malware scanning, firewall, DDoS protection, and daily backups so your WordPress site is safe at all times.
STEP #3. Install a WordPress theme for artists
Installing the right WordPress theme for your artist website is key. Because the WordPress theme determines – to a great extent – the look and feel of your website and its functionality.
A WordPress artist theme should be customizable, so you can make everything fit your personal liking and brand. Apart from that, the theme you are choosing should be scalable enough to keep up with changing needs and your expanding portfolio.
For example, it’s possible that you want to start out with a simple art portfolio in WordPress and later on integrate an art shop as your online business is growing. Your WordPress theme should support that scalability.
I have listed a selection of the best WordPress themes for artists that are ready to use, highly customizable, and able to handle ecommerce functionality, so you can launch your web store whenever you feel ready!
OceanWP is a powerful WordPress theme for artists who want to showcase their portfolio, open a web shop, or run an art blog. OceanWP offers heaps of customization options and also provides premium extensions (including portfolio pages) to add more functionality. By the way, my art website is built with OceanWP as well! 😌
If you are looking for a minimalist and edgy theme for your artist website, then Minimal might be right down your alley. If not, there’s an even greater selection of OceanWP starter templates for you to check out!
→ Is OceanWP A Good Theme For Artists? – Hands-On Review By An Artist
Divi is a popular WordPress theme that comes with its own integrated page builder, the Divi Builder. (You can as well use any other builder.) Divi offers dozens of designs that can be customized to almost anything and allow you to build an artist website in no time. All layouts are SEO-friendly and mobile-responsive. Just like with OceanWP, you will have access to ecommerce functionality to add your own web shop.
Fashion is one of the templates that I recommend for artist websites. It comes complete with home page, landing pages, about page, contact page, gallery, shop, and blog. For more choices, you can have a look at Divi’s entire collection of themes.
3. Astra
Astra is a fast multi-purpose WordPress theme for artists and other visual creatives. It comes with plenty of ready‐to‐use WordPress artist website templates that let you add custom widgets, sidebars, and ecommerce features. Just like Divi, Astra has its own visual page builder, called Spectra, but also works with the native WordPress block editor as well as with popular page builder plugins.
Astra’s starter templates include lots of choices for visual creatives. Photographer is an excellent pick for showcasing your portfolio and offering art-related services. It includes beautiful parallax effects and provides ample opportunity to flaunt your work.
4. Automattic
Automattic is a widely known name in the WordPress industry. The company develops some of the most popular WordPress plugins, including WooCommerce, Jetpack (comprehensive security suite), and Akismet (spam protection). Besides ecommerce-ready themes, they also offer managed WordPress hosting. Basically, you can get everything in one place from Automattic!
Affiche is one of their WordPress themes tailored to creatives who want to sell through their own web store. The homepage allows you to show off your best artwork at the top and comes with a variety of pre-made shop pages as well as a blog. More of Automattic’s WooCommerce-ready themes can be found here.
5. Themify
Themify is another developer of top performing WordPress themes with a variety of designs for artists, photographers, and other visual creatives. You can showcase your artwork within a classical portfolio style but you can also add ecommerce functionality to sell your work online.
Ultra Fashion comes with some nice image effects and parallax effects that are particularly interesting for artists. The minimalist design with white background and a few color elements can be easily matched to any artist brand. Another one of Themify’s themes particularly adequate for selling art is Shoppe.
STEP #4. Add WordPress plugins for more functionality
WordPress is not only highly scalable and free, but it also has more than 50,000 plugins to extend the functionality of your website. You’ll find everything from page builders, to ecommerce tools, to gallery and portfolio widgets, email opt-ins, e-learning sytems, and so on.
The following is just a small selection of essential plugins that you should consider using for your artist website.
1. Page Builder
Using a page builder for WordPress makes designing and customizing your website much easier—without needing any coding skills.
WordPress page builder plugins are visual drag-and-drop editors, allowing you to design pages intuitively and view changes in real time.
Compared to the default WordPress Gutenberg editor, they provide greater design flexibility and customization options. You can easily adjust the layout of your pages, adapt colors and fonts, and add animations—to just name a few examples. In other words: there’s endless creative design freedom and no need for hiring a designer!
Most page builders come with free versions that include the essential features to build a decent website. Some of the most popular and powerful WordPress page builders include Elementor, Divi Builder, and Spectra.
But those plugins are not only powerful page builders, they are also an excellent WordPress artist plugins.
You’ll get access to heaps of sophisticated design elements – including galleries with grid, tile, and masonry layouts, image sliders, media carousels, flip boxes, and portfolios. Everything you need to make a professional artist website!
Elementor is the world’s leading WordPress page builder with more than 5 million active users, while still maintaining an impressive 5-star rating on WordPress.org.
If you don’t want to build your artist website from scratch, Elementor offers you hundreds of ready-made templates and blocks that you can insert into your website and customize to your liking. There are also Elementor themes especially for photographers and artists.
A great addition to Elementor are the Essential Addons for Elementor and Ultimate Addons for Elementor that also offer image galleries and that I’m using for my artist site, too. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
Divi Builder is another popular drag-and-drop editor for WordPress, developed by Elegant Themes. Just like Elementor, Divi offers a wide range of pre-designed templates that make it easy to build professional-looking websites in no time. It also includes customizable modules like sliders, galleries, forms, testimonials, and buttons.
Divi is available as part of Elegant Themes’ membership, which includes access to the Divi theme, other plugins, and premium support.
If you want your artist site to get found, you will have to optimize it for search engines.
RankMath is one of the best WordPress plugins for Search Engine Optimization. The plugin helps you improve your web pages to rank higher in the search results of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.
In return, you will be able to drive more traffic to your website, reach a greater audience, and sell more of your art!
RankMath shows you how well your pages, posts and products are optimized. It provides you with tools and features to improve your on-page SEO, thus enhancing your website’s visibility. If there’s something that needs to be fixed, you get real-time SEO recommendations for content optimization!
Optimize your art website: → 5 Game-Changing SEO Tips For Artists.
3. Email Opt-In
Building a subscriber list is a great way to stay in touch with your fans and followers. You can send them regular newsletters or special announcements whenever you have new art for sale or other interesting offers.
All you need is an email opt-in somewhere on your WordPress site, so users can give you their email address. Having sign-up form is essential for building a targeted email list, as it allows you to engage directly with potential customers without relying on ever-changing social media algorithms of third-party platforms.
Email subscribers are more likely to stay with you longer than any social media follower. They are more likely to open your emails, interact with your content, and convert into loyal customers!
To create an effective opt-in, it’s important to use a clear call-to-action (like “Sign up for exclusive discounts!”), offer an incentive (like a free e-guide or discount code), and keep the form simple by only requesting essential information, such as email and first name.
To learn more about subscriber incentives, download your free guide to the best lead magnet ideas for artists in the the Freebie Library!
- The Best Lead Magnet Ideas To Grow Your Email List
To be able to collect the email addresses on your WordPress site, you’ll need to sign up with an email marketing provider. Such a provider will give you the tools to create opt-in forms, manage subscribers, and create email campaigns. Signing up is completely free!
Here are some of the best email marketing providers in the market:
- AWeber is a popular email marketing provider for small businesses. The company offers lots of ready-made templates for sign-up forms, emails, and landing pages that you can easily customize with the included drag-and-drop builder. AWeber is free to use up to 500 subscribers.
- MailerLite is an email marketing platform that is both easy to use and affordable, even for beginners. Just like AWeber, MailerLite comes with a drag-and-drop editor, customizable templates, and automation tools. Free to use up to 1,000 subscribers.
- ConvertKit, now rebranded to Kit, is an email marketing platform specifically tailored to creators, bloggers, artists, and similar small business owners. It’s free to use up to 10,000 subscribers and Kit’s very own Creator University provides you with free workshops and tutorials.
All of the above-mentioned email marketing providers offer beautifully designed opt-in forms out of the box. If you’d like to have highly personalized forms on your site, check out Bloom—this plugin allows you to customize your opt-ins down to the T!
4. Spam Filter
One of the advantages of having a blog is that it is interactive. People can leave feedback, share ideas and their own experiences in the comments section below the posts. That’s a great thing.
Unfortunately, a huge part of the comments you’ll get on a daily basis are spam—many of them likely generated by bots and not even a human. The more your website grows, the more spam comments you’ll get.
I know first-hand that it can be a tedious task to work through the comments and filter out those that are spam, each and every day. That’s why I recommend installing an anti-spam plugin, right from the beginning.
Akismet helps to keep your website free from spam comments and unwanted messages in contact forms and other submissions. It is developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress, and continuously updated to detect new spam techniques.
STEP #5. Launch your website, shop & blog!
Once you’ve chosen a theme for your artist website and installed the essential plugins, you can start building your artist website. That means you fill you preferred template with your own content and customize everything to your personal liking. You decide what you want your website to look like, what colors you want to use, what fonts you like, and so on.
1. Choose the right hyperlink colors
One thing you should pay special attention to is the way you format hyperlinks on your artist website. Color is key for hyperlinks, because some colors are more enticing for people to click on than others.
To find out more, check out the Best Hyperlink Colors For Your Artist Website – With Hyperlink Style Guide.
2. Add all necessary pages to your artist website
Up next, it’s time to add all the necessary pages to get your website going: about page, contact page, portfolio galleries, etc. It’s important that your visitors know how to move around on your website and how to contact you, if need be.
To learn what shouldn’t be missing on your artist website, have a look at the 8 Must-Haves Every Good Artist Website Should Have.
Also, to get an edge over everyone else in your niche, find out about these 5 Pages An Artist Website Should Have That Nobody Tells You About!
3. Showcase your art portfolio
The heart of an art website is always the portfolio. As I mentioned above, there are different types of galleries you can use to present your work. Which one you eventually select is down to personal preference. Feel free to have a look at my step-by-step tutorials to find out how to make an art portfolio in WordPress:
Understandably, you want to present your artwork in the best way possible. To make your work look good, it’s important to use the Best File Type To Save Digital Art.
You want to use high-quality images, and also show some high-resolution close-ups of your work.
To keep your website user-friendly, you want to make sure that the majority of your image files aren’t too big (ideally below 300KB). However, a few high-resolution images here and there to show off your skills in detail don’t harm…
Plus, all premium art gallery widgets from Divi and Spectra come with lazy load capability, meaning images will only be loaded as the user scrolls down your gallery. This optimizes your website’s load time and keeps it both user- and search engine-friendly!
When you make an artist website with WordPress, WooCommerce is the way to go to launch your own online store. It offers top performance and is completely free.
You can sell both physical and digital products, as well as services, online courses and subscriptions. You’ll get all ecommerce features that you possibly need, including coupons, discounts, shipping zones, tax rates, and much much more. To just name a few examples.
Apart from that, you can add payment gateways like Stripe and Paypal using Woo Payments, shipping providers, newsletter opt-ins, wishlists, live chats, Trustpilot reviews, printing providers like Printful that will handle physical print sales for you, and many, many more.
To get an idea of what is available, check out the WooCommerce Marketplace.
To learn more, read the → Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress – WooCommerce For Artists.
Your own store will open up lots of ways to monetize your art skills. Some of the most popular and profitable methods for artists to earn an income include selling physical prints and virtual files of their creations.
Sell physical prints of your art.
Fine art prints are high in demand and are one of the easiest ways for artists to turn their passion into profit. Before jumping in headfirst and offering your art for sale in printed form, it’s crucial to understand the basics. After all, you don’t want to disappoint your customers by sending them a poor-quality print on an inadequate printing paper, right? ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
So, if you are new to selling art prints, I suggest starting here:
To retain happy customers that are willing to come back for more, it’s important to only use high-quality prints from a professional printing provider. The highest-quality fine art prints you can get in the market are giclée prints. Some of the best giclée printing providers are Pictorem and Printerpix. They have a large selection of print media and sizes and will also drop-ship your prints worldwide.
→ Fine Art Explained: What Is Giclee Printing And Where To Get It?
Two other widely used drop-shipping printing providers that you can also connect to your web shop are Printify and Printful. They provide a range of printing options on both photographic paper and canvas, as well as framed and unframed prints. Just have a look at their product portfolio and see what best fits your needs!
But wait, there’s more to a successful art prints shop than just the printing quality.
The most important thing to make selling art prints profitable is to present them in an attractive way. Why is the way you display art prints so crucial?
Well, the answer is pretty straightforward: the more easily customers can envision the piece in their own space, the more likely they are to purchase it.
Show potential buyers how your artwork looks when hung on a wall, in different environments, and from various angles.
But don’t worry—you don’t need to print out every single piece, hang it in multiple rooms, and take numerous photos from diverse perspectives.
All you really need is one high-quality image of your artwork taken from a straight-on angle and a mock-up.
Mockups allow you to showcase your art prints in realistic settings and from different perspectives with just a few clicks. They typically come as PSD files that you can edit in Photoshop or similar programs. Adding your artwork is simple—just double-click the Smart Object layer, insert your image, save, and you’re done!
You can get pre-made mockups that display your prints in various sizes, with or without frames, under different lighting, and in a range of settings. Some great places to purchase such art print mock-ups allowed for commercial use (i.e. for displaying your art prints for sale online) are Etsy and Vecteezy.
Just search for “wall art mock-up” or “photo mock-up” and you can pick your favorite mock-ups from a ton of results! For more tips on selling art prints, check out these posts:
TheStudioBlank on Etsy offers a whole range of appealing, high-quality mock-up bundles to choose from. All canvas mockups come in different dimensions and can be moved and resized. In many of the templates, you can modify the color of the walls, plants and furniture to make it match your artwork.
Sell virtual files of your art.
Alternatively, you can also sell downloadable files of your artwork. Many photographers and artists actually choose to sell their work as virtual downloads because it’s such a convenient way to generate passive income.
It eliminates the hassle of shipping and inventory management, and once you’ve created a digital file to sell, you can sell it over and over again, without any extra costs and efforts!
All you need is an image license agreement where you closely define the scope of use. For example, you can release your image for commercial use or for personal use only.
Learn here how to write a digital image license agreement and download your FREE customizable license agreement templates in the Freebie Library!
- FREE License Agreement Template To Sell Digital Files Of Your Artwork
5. Start an art blog
My last tip for you when you make an artist website with WordPress is to start a blog. WordPress originally started out as a blogging platform, so it comes with all the necessary features and functionalities out of the box.
Blogging is a great way to make your website visible because it allows you to create content around specific topics your target audience is interested in and thus drive organic traffic through search engines.
In other words, by optimizing your posts for specific keywords relevant to your niche, you can attract targeted traffic, increase your search engine rankings, and reach an audience genuinely interested in your content and products.
As I already said above, RankMath is a popular WordPress plugin that helps you improve your website’s SEO. However, before optimizing your posts for specific keywords, you actually need to find those keywords that are easy to rank for.
That is to say, you want to find keywords with high search volume and low competition. By focusing on those keywords, you can improve your website’s visibility without going head-to-head with well-established sites.
Now, how to find those keywords?
Well, keyword research tools will do the job for you! They help you find those terms that are a good fit for your niche, balancing between high search volume and low competition to maximize your chances of ranking and attracting traffic.
I’m using the KWFinder to find the best keywords for my art blog. Other option are AlsoAsked, Semrush, and Ubersuggest. They are some of the best keyword research tools in the market that you should definitely give a shot. Especially when your website is new, those tools will help you get it found in the search. You can try all of them for free.
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That's all from me for now. I hope you found this post on how to make an artist website with WordPress helpful!
Let me know if you’ve already built your own artist website. What are your favorite WordPress themes and plugins that you are using? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!
Also, don’t forget to sign up for my email list so you don’t miss out on new quotes and other cool stuff. ♥
Have you ever considered writing an e-book or guest authoring on other blogs? I have a blog centered on the same subjects you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my audience would value your work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an email.
Hi, thanks for asking. Unfortunately, I don’t do guest posts at the moment. However, I indeed have an e-book on a related topic. My Ultimate Guide To Build An Artist Website For Success shows you everything you need to know to create a successful artist website. Feel free to check it out, if you’re interested!
Of course, what a great website and illuminating posts, I definitely will bookmark your blog. All the Best!
Hey there, thanks so much for the great feedback. Highly appreciated ♥︎
This article convinced me to give WordPress a try for my art blog, and I’m so glad I did! The SEO capabilities have significantly increased my visibility, and the user-friendly interface allows me to focus on creating content rather than dealing with technical issues. Highly recommended for fellow artists! 👍
Hi Erica, good to hear that! I think that WordPress is one of the best platforms to build your artist site, and probably even start an art blog. There’s hardly anything that can beat its versatility!
I’m considering starting a blog alongside my portfolio. Are there any particular themes or plugins you’d suggest for artists who want to share not only their visual work but also insights into their creative process and experiences?
For blogging, you can basically use any WordPress theme. They will all do a great job. However, if you are planning to also open an online shop later on, you should make sure to use an ecommerce-capable theme right from the beginning, to spare you the hassle of switching themes at a later point in time. You can find a selection of themes that I recommend for ecommerce sites here.
As for plugins, I would recommend using a plugin to optimize your blog posts to rank well in Google and other search engines. There are free plugins like YoastSEO and RankMath that will help you optimize your posts. They both come with a free version that works just fine. I’m using YoastSEO for my blog posts.