Introduction
WordPress plugins are the equivalent of apps for smartphones. They are extensions that you can add to your website to get extra functionality. Depending on what you need, you’ll find wide variety of different plugins available in the WordPress repository. Both free and paid.
To add a plugin, simply navigate to the Plugins > Add New option within your Dashboard. Then enter the name or feature of the plugin in search bar. Once your search results have loaded, hover over each individual item and click on “Install Now” when you’ve found something that suits your needs.
Top Plugins list:
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin that allows you to build your own online store right on your WordPress website. It makes it easy to sell physical and digital goods, as well as services, subscriptions, and even memberships or donations.
WooCommerce comes with a lot of features out of the box (like payment gateways for Visa/MasterCard), but you can extend its functionality with a wide range of extensions. You can also customize how your store looks with themes.
As far as plugins go, WooCommerce is free, easy to use, and has lots of options.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO. This plugin is one of the most popular plugins on WordPress and can be used to improve your site’s performance in search engines.
It allows you to add meta descriptions and titles to pages, posts, custom post types, archives, and more. In addition to giving you the ability to create a sitemap for your website, Yoast SEO also allows you to show/hide certain content from search results based on whether or not it’s been indexed by the search engine of your choice.
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP by MonsterInsights
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP by MonsterInsights is a plugin that helps you to view Google Analytics reports and real-time stats right inside the WordPress dashboard.
It makes it easy to act on important data without having to leave your website.
MonsterInsights is easily one of the most popular analytics plugins around — at the time of writing, it has over 2 million active installs!
And because of its popularity, there are endless guides and tutorials available online if you need help or have any questions.
Jetpack
Jetpack is, in my opinion, the most important plugin you will ever install. Used by over one million WordPress users, Jetpack comes with a ton of features that can help any website owner.
It’s best for beginner and intermediate sites because it’s easy to use and doesn’t require you to know code like:
- Easy social sharing: Jetpack has an inbuilt social sharing tool that allows your readers to share your content on Facebook and Twitter with just one click.
- Image optimization: The numbers show that web pages laden with large images take longer to load. Jetpack optimizes your images automatically so they don’t slow down your site’s loading times. This tool also gives you the ability to add retina graphics or lightbox effects to them.
- Free hosting on WordPress servers: You can create a basic website using WordPress servers without paying a dime if you have Jetpack installed .
OptinMonster
If you’re looking to grow your email list, the best plugin for lead generation is OptinMonster. Not only is it used by over 1 million websites, it’s also created by the team behind WPBeginner.
OptinMonster offers several different types of opt-in forms that include lightboxes, sidebar forms, floating bars, inline forms, and more.
This allows you to choose the right form for your needs without having to worry about using multiple plugins. Plus each type of form comes in several different templates that are fully customizable with their drag-and-drop builder.
Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is a free WordPress plugin you can use to protect your website from hackers. It will also scan your website to detect any malware that’s already been installed.
Wordfence Security has a ton of useful features such as:
- Firewall
- Malware scanner
- Blocks brute force attacks
- Notifies you of security issues
If you’re looking for more advanced features, the premium version has them and is only $8 per month. However, I recommend just using the free version for now and upgrading if there are specific features you need.
All in One WP Migration
This plugin is an all-in-one solution to migrate, back up, and restore your site. It allows you to create backups of your WordPress site with just a few clicks.
You can use it to import and export WordPress content as well as store your backups safely in the cloud.
The free version comes with limited features but the paid version supports cloud storage, import and export functionality, and migration of sites between different domains.
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular WordPress caching plugins. It improves website speed and user experience, resulting in improved conversion rates.
The most popular WordPress cache plugin is W3 Total Cache. This plugin has been downloaded over 27 million times!
That’s a whole lot of websites that are faster and more reliable thanks to this free plugin. W3 Total Cache reduces page load time, increases server performance, reduces bandwidth usage, and provides transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
W3 Total Cache improves your SEO rankings because search engines like fast websites (and so do your readers). It also speeds up your website so you can serve more users without reaching your server resource limits. This means fewer crashes for you and a better experience for your visitors!
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is an extremely popular plugin, boasting over five million active installations.
Described as a “free and simple contact form plugin”, Contact Form 7 allows you to create multiple forms with different fields and use them in any post or page.
Akismet
Akismet is a spam filtering service used by millions of WordPress sites. It automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam.
This plugin requires an Akismet.com API key, which you can get at the link above.
Smush Image Compression and Optimization
Smush automatically compresses and optimizes your images on upload, so you don’t have to do it manually.
Unlike some other plugins that let you compress images in bulk, Smush will process each image individually (up to 50 at a time) so that the server doesn’t get overloaded with multiple processes running at the same time.
Smush lets you do all of this for free and there are no file size limits either. So even if you’re uploading large photos taken with a DSLR camera or hi-res screenshots from your latest game demo video review. Smush will still be able to optimize them without slowing down your website performance.
Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps is a plugin that automatically generates an XML sitemap for your blog. It notifies search engines when you publish new content, helping them to index it more quickly and improving your SEO.
Once installed and activated, you can find the settings under “Settings” in the left menu.
TablePress
TablePress allows you to easily create and manage beautiful tables.
You can embed the tables into posts, pages, or text widgets with a simple Shortcode. Table data can be edited in a spreadsheet-like interface, so no coding is necessary.
Tables can contain any type of data, even formulas that will be evaluated. Furthermore, tables can be imported and exported from/to Excel, CSV, HTML, and JSON files.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a caching plugin that will greatly speed up your WordPress website. It’s the only caching plugin that I can recommend to most users, especially beginners.
It combines all the best features from various other popular plugins such as W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache into a single package. Its user interface is clean and easy to use. And it comes with recommended settings for beginners – just install it and you’re done!
Other than being extremely easy to set up, WP Rocket also has unique features that simply aren’t available in any other caching plugins. This includes the ability to lazy load images (only load them when they’re needed) and minify HTML directly on your server.
Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons
Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to add share buttons for all the major social networks and display them on your site.
The plugin lets you select from over 100 different social share button styles.
Once Installed and activated, you can configure various options for your social media icons such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and many more.
All in One WP Security and Firewall
The All in One WP Security & Firewall is the ultimate security plugin for your WordPress website. It lets you easily customize your website’s security settings, as well as monitor any suspicious activity that might occur on it.
It also allows you to take action against potential threats, such as banning IP addresses that are engaging in malicious activities.
UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore
UpdraftPlus simplifies backups (and restoration).
Backups of files and databases can have separate schedules. The paid version also backs up to more cloud options.
WP Super Cache
Caching is the process of storing previously generated data so that it can be delivered faster the next time it is requested. Caching has many different meanings, but in a web environment, it usually involves storing HTML files on disk or memory.
WP Super 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.
Conclusion
WordPress is popular, time-saving web software that lets you get things done and add features to your site in just a few clicks. The core of WordPress makes it a great choice for managing your own website, but if you want to make it even better, there’s an enormous variety of plugins like listed above.
The best thing about WordPress plugins is easy to search and install. With a little determination and skill, most users can get up and running with working plugins.
I hope you liked the blog post about WordPress plugins.
Check out the following blog post about for more about WordPress:
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