WordPress is the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today. WordPress has many plugins/addons that when installed will provide your website with new features and functionality.
If you have a WordPress blog you have probably already experimented with several plugins. The process of finding good WordPress plugins can be daunting. We have compiled a list of 10 essential WordPress plugins that we recommend that you install on your blog A.S.A.P. These plugins are essential to you having a successful blog.
1. Contact Form 7
One of the most important features of a website should have is the ability for customers to contact you. Creating contact forms manually in HTML and PHP can be difficult. Contact 7 makes it easy to place a contact form on your website without any coding experience.
There are many awesome features to this plugin. First and most important feature is the plugin lets you determine what kinds of information you would like to collect from the customer (Input Fields). Another awesome feature of the plugin is that it will send the customers information to a custom email address. The plugin also allows you to set successful or error message upon submit. You can also place a shortcode on your pages or posts so you can determine what page or post your form shows up on.
This plugin allows for multiple types of forms as well. You can have a form that collects specific customer information on a services page and then have a form that collects your customers contact information on your contact page. Contact Form 7 also works with Akisimet Anti-Spam plugin which we will discuss later on in the post. Last but not least, there is an option to add Google’s Recatcha to your form to be a bigger deterrent against bots and spam.
Contact Form 7 Summary
Contact Form 7 is an amazing plugin that makes adding a form to your website really simple. One of the most important features a website can have is the ability to collect visitor information. It helps turn your visitors into customers and provides you a lead to get a possible sale.
2. Yoast SEO
As far as search engine optimization goes, Yoast SEO is seriously a powerhouse. It contains all of the features you need to optimize your website for optimum SEO performance. Yoast allows you to define the meta information including the titles and descriptions for all your posts. It will also allow you to specify the order of how the categories and post title is shown within the page title. It allows you to specify canonical URLs and specify a schema. It will also automatically generate an XML Sitemap. Each post and page will also allow you to specify social media related open graph titles, descriptions, and featured images to be shared on social media.
Yoast SEO Summary
Every WordPress blog needs to have this installed so that search engines can not only show the correct information for the page but also so it can properly index the pages.
3. Akismet Anti-Spam
Spammers (human and automated) love WordPress as much as bloggers do, so to say you need a spam blocker is an understatement. Akismet filters out hundreds of millions of spam comments from the Web every day. They keep a record of who is spamming and helps prevent those spammers from spamming your website.
The installation on your website is fairly simple. You have to generate a key from akismet.com. Once you install, activate, and configure the plugin, it should start blocking spammers.
Akismet Summary
This is a necessary tool to help block spammers from spamming your website. Akismet is owned by the creators of WordPress. This is a very trustworthy plugin and highly recommended for any blog.
4. WooCommerce
This plugin is the best e-commerce plugin for WordPress. This powerhouse of a plugin will turn any WordPress website into a fully functional e-commerce store. It has every feature you would ever want in an e-commerce store. You can add products, prices, descriptions, and attributes. It also allows you to manage orders, manage customers, track inventory, create coupons, and manage customer reviews.
There is also a very awesome reporting feature which will give you deep insight to your sales and customers. You can catch specific buying trends and adjust your website accordingly. It has a custom date search feature so you can look at reports withing a specific time-frame.
5. WordFence Security
When it comes to security, WordFence Security has all the features you need to keep your website safe. One of the first features you will notice is that WordFence will email and notify you when a user logs into WordPress. This will help give you peace of mind of who is logging into your website.
It comes with a built in malware scanner. This scanner goes in-depth and searches all your files for anything that could hinder your websites security. It has several modes of scanning which allow you to determine how strong a scan you would like. Each section contains a la cart options you can customize.
The plugin also comes with a built-in application firewall. It has automatic brute force protection installed to stop people from trying to gain access to you website. The plugin also checks spam servers to determine if your website would be on a black list. It also provides you the ability to whitelist URLs. You can also set the login security so that it a user has to you 2 factor security in order to log in.
WordFence Security Summary
Of all the security plugins out there, this one is the best. It has everything you need to properly secure your website. From Malware scanners to application firewalls, WordFence Security has all the features you need in a website security plugin.
6. Google XML Sitemaps
XML Sitemaps play a vital role in how search engines decide to index you. It ‘s primary purpose is to inform search engines about pages on your sites that are available for crawling. They are for the benefits of Google or search engine crawlers. It is an easy way to help robots to crawl all listed web-pages and index them within search engine.
Google XML Sitemaps makes it easy to generate automatic sitemaps containing a list of all of the pages of your website. It will generate the URL, Last Updated, and Priority of each page of your website and automatically create an XML Sitemap. When you add a new page to your website Google XML Sitemaps will automatically add the new page to your sitemap.
Google XML Sitemaps Summary
This is a excellent SEO plugin. If you want to keep search engines up-to-date on new pages of your website then this plugin is for you.
7. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
W3 Total cache has many awesome caching and minification features. It will automatically compress and minify your html, css, and javascript files. This will decrease website download time. You can then cache all the pages of your website so its loading a static file. This will also decrease the download speed.
You have the option to clear and rebuild the stored cache at anytime. You can activate database caching, page caching, objects caching, and browser caching. It also allows you to configure a CDN to manage your images. All of which decreases website download time.
W3 Total Cache Summary
I recommend to install this plugin on all WordPress sites. This is one of my essential plugins that I like to put on all my websites to insure the website loads quickly as possible. Every feature with this plugin is useful. You can not lose installing this plugin on your blog.
8. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
This is the ultimate WordPress Backup plugin. Backing up your files and databases are extremely important when running a WordPress driver website. This plugin allows you to run full and incremental backups of your databases and files. It allows you to schedule a backup at a specific time, date, and frequency the backups should run.
You can create manual backups or schedule them to automatically run. You can restore backups as well. When you run a backup, it will segment the backup into 5 pieces. A full backup includes database, plugins, themes, uploads, and other system files. There is a log file generated when anything is backed up itemizing action taken when backing up your website.
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Summary
This is by far the simplest and easiest to use backup plugin. It works flawlessly backing up all the databases and files. It easily allows you to restore a backup which makes migrating servers simple. The more you build your databases with posts, the more your going to need this plugin. You always want to make sure you keep constant backups of your data and this is the plugin to do it.
9. Smush Image Compression and Optimization
A website’s load time is very important. Some factors that can slow a websites load time is the download size of the website. This plugin is can help lesson that download size by compressing all your images to the smallest size possible without effecting quality.
It comes with several awesome features to help lesson the download size. You can set the plugin to automatically “smush” your images when you upload them. It also has a bulk smush feature where you can tell it to smush an entire directory of images at once. The free version will only smush 50 images at one time. You will have to get the paid version to unlock some additional features.
Smush Summary
This is one of my favorite plugins. As a web designer, I am always trying to lessen the download size of a website. This plugin makes it easy by automating the whole “smush” process. Smush Image compression provides you the freedom of not having to worry about file size of your images.
10. Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights
The most details website statistics reporting is now available with an integration to WordPress. Google Analytics is an amazing tool which allows you to see many different types of data regarding your website’s visitors. This plugin allows you to see Google Analytics results inside WordPress.
Some of the statistics are sessions, pageviews, avg. session time, and the bounce rate. You are also shown the most viewed pages on your website. You are provided charts that show new / recurring visitors. You can also see what kinds of devices and browser resolutions are viewing your website.
Google Analytics Summary
Google Analytics shows you detailed information regarding the visitors of your website. It is differently recommended to use this plugin. Especially if you plan on advertising and incorporating Google Adwords campaigns into your website. This plugin brings the statistics into WordPress making finding out about your traffic easier.