Top 10 must-have WordPress plugins
Since the launch in 2003, WordPress has become one of the world’s most popular content Management system (CMS), powering a staggering 74.6 million websites worldwide and almost 26% of the web. WordPress is one of the popular choices for Individuals, Small business owners, Bloggers, Startups & Fortune 500 companies who are looking to setup online web presence. And WordPress is a Open-Source CMS platform. There is a “X” factor that makes WordPress a “Winner” : “Extendibility” – Yes, you get to access thousands of plugins which can used to extend your websites functionality.
WordPress plugins are a small bits of code that can be easily added to the site. Note: Plugin installation is very easy but you need to check if the plugin supports your sites WordPress version and updated regularly. There are thousands of plugins in the market, some plugins may help you in increasing website conversion rate, while others may help you in increasing user engagement (or) to secure / backup your site. Below, you’ll find a list of Top 10 WordPress plugins that I think is must for your WordPress website. We have listed the plugins that you’ll need in order : From Development till Launch.
#1 Page Builder by SiteOrigin
Page builder plugin to assist you with Content Creation
SiteOrigin Page Builder is one of the trending page creation plugin for WordPress. You can easily create responsive column (or) row based content / widgets that will accurately adapt to all mobile devices. It makes your job easier and you can extend your site’s functionality in no time.
Here are some of highlighting features:
- Works on all themes.
- No coding skills required.
- Unique row & widget styles.
- Multi-language (Available in 17 languages)
#2 WP Smush
Image Optimization Plugin
Optimize, Compress / Resize all your images with this super cool “WP Smush” plugin. Scales down unwanted data and uploads the images for you. This will make your website load faster and it increases site performance. Here are some of highlighting features:
- Compatible with media library plugins
- Processes any image type: JPEG, GIF & PNG
- Can compress any images in any directory
#3 Contact Form 7
Form Creation Plugin
This flexible plugin helps you to create , customize & manage multiple contact forms. It supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on. Here are some of highlighting features:
- Translation option available on //translate.wordpress.org
#4 Yoast SEO
Search Engine Optimization Plugin (SEO)
Improve your site’s overall SEO aspects with yoast SEO. It’s one of the updated & “out-of-box” plugin. My favorite choice is Yoast SEO. Write better content that will be loved both by users & search engines with Yoast plugin. SEO by Yoast has many features to focus on, but here are some of highlighting ones:
- Page analysis tool with Technical Search Engine Optimization suggestions.
- XML Sitemaps functionality
- RSS Optimizations
- Multi-site functionality
Yoast SEO can scan any page for images, ensuring the image has alt tag that matches the focus ( primary ) keyword for the post.
#5 Google XML Sitemap
Sitemap creation plugin
With this plugin you can generate XML sitemaps for your site to index in search engines like Google, Bing & Yahoo. The plugin supports all WordPress pages & custom URLs.
#6 Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
Google Analytics in your Dashboard
This WordPress plugin will help you to track your website’s visitors and their flow and it provides in-depth Page & Post reports. The Google Analytics tracking code is fully customizable so you can set your own dimensions & events. Here are some of highlighting features:
- Real-time Stats ( Visitors, Session, Traffic)
- Analytic reports, Tracking
- Download the reports, events & dimensions
- Fully customizable
#7 W3 Total Cache
Improve site performance
W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin helps in improving SEO and user experience of your site by reducing load times via CDN integration. Here are some of highlighting features:
- Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters
- Transparent content delivery network (CDN) management with Media Library, theme files and WordPress itself
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support
- Secure Socket Layer (SSL) support
- Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript
#8 WordFence
Security Plugin
Keeping site secured is one of the critical task but “WordFence” will be handy tool to help you in this. Secure your WordPress website with Wordfence from malware attacks & hacks. A complete security solution. You will be notified via email whenever there is an attack, update available for WordPress versions or plugins and thus making us to keep website up to date. Here are some of highlighting features:
- Supports IPV6
- Supports all themes & plugins
- Multi-site support
- Real-time monitoring
#9 Updraft
Database backup Plugin
Once you’re set with your WordPress site, you must ensure to take regular backups for your site. UpdraftPlus simplifies the backups process. You can back-up your files and store it on cloud Amazon S3 , Dropbox, Google Drive, email,..etc and restore your site whenever needed. Here are some of highlighting features:
- Automatic backups options
- Duplicates sites & migration option is also available
- Debug mode
- Supports all PHP versions( 5.2 -7.1)
#10 Akismet
Spam prevention plugin
Akismet checks all your website’s spam (comments and contact form submissions) and prevents your site from malicious attacks. You can review the comments and remove unwanted ones immediately. Akismet is one of the best spam WordPress plugin that gives you more control to remove / have them in your site. Here are some of highlighting features:
- Auto checks for spam & filters the comments.
- You can discard comments and save the disk space.
Conclusion
From WP Smush to WordFence, these plugins can make your site functional & user-friendly. Have you used any one of these WordPress plugins? Would you like to add any others to the above mentioned list? Let me know in the comments below.
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Great list! I have used most of them and can say these are really the must have ones for any WordPress site.