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You’re a tech-klutz. Wordpress terrifies the daylights out of you. And, plug-ins keep you up at night. You have a website, but you don’t know if it has all the essential plug-ins or not. But, that’s okay.
Plug-ins are a tricky business. Each website owner will have a different list of plug-ins he uses and that he swears by. That’s because every website has different requirements. An ecommerce website will require different plug-ins than a website dedicated to blogging. You can’t download all the plug-ins everyone recommends because that’s going to destroy your website – make it slow and expose it to security threats.
So, what do you do? You go with the essential few initially and download more eventually according to your website requirements. While choosing plug-ins depend on your website’s goal, there are a few that most websites require to perform basic functions efficiently. To make it easier for you to navigate this maze, I’ve put together a list of 10 essential plug-ins that will kick-start your WordPress journey.
• WordPress SEO by Yoast: Want a higher Google page rank?
When mentioning plug-ins, it is impossible to miss out WordPress SEO by Yoast. It improves your website’s SEO performance on all levels. This plug-in not only helps you optimize your content for SEO by helping you choose keywords and sprinkle them throughout the content for optimum results, but also takes care of your site’s technical optimization.
Jetpack is another useful plug-in that most wordpress websites need. It’s tagline, ‘Your WordPress, simplified’ does a great job at summing up its importance. Along with several other vital functions, Jetpack helps you increase your website traffic, provides you with visitor stat and analytics, has subscription management features, and takes care of your site’s security service by protecting it from brute forces.
In short, a must-have plug-in in your WordPress arsenal.
• Updraftplus: Save future headaches. Make a backup of your website.
Updraft helps you schedule backups of files and database to cloud storage such as Dropbox, S3, Google Drive email, and many more. And restoring it is just a click away.
• WordFence: Want a website bodyguard to keep malwares and hacks at bay? Enter WordFence.
WordFence plug-in protects your website from malware and hacks. It has the following features, blocking features, login security, security scanning, WordPress firewall, monitoring features, Multi-Site Security, Caching Features along with several others. An all in one plug-in not only provides security to your site but also makes it faster. You’ll find this plug-in in most websites.
• W3 Total Cache: Slow page-loading speed? Bye bye, user.
Optimizing page speed is an important part of crating positive user experience. W3 total cache is one of the best caching plug-ins, and produces great results by reducing download times and increasing server performance.
• Akismet: Don’t want to deal with spam comments? No problem.
Akismet goes through all the comments your websites receives, filters them, and puts the one that scream spam in the spam folder for you to check out. It has saved my life more times than I can begin to count, and it will definitely help you keep spam comments at bay.
So, what are some of your favorite plug-ins? Which ones can you not live without?