WordPress is one of the best, accessible, and easy-to-use content management systems. With its versatile platform that can be used for any businesses across any niche be it blogging, e-commerce, corporate or organizational website, news website, artist e-gallery, and much more, wordpress powers more than 40% of all the websites on the internet. This versatility may not be achieved without the incorporation of plugins which brings us to the question: what are wordpress plugins?
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What are WordPress Plugins?
WordPress plugins are small software that are incorporated into wordpress websites to add new features or functionalities to the website or enhance existing functionalities. Plugins make the process of adding new features to wordpress websites without having to write any codes or programs. WordPress plugins are mostly built by individuals or corporate organizations and added to the official wordpress directory. There are over 55,000 wordpress plugins in the official directory and this makes it really tricky and difficult to decide which wordpress plugins are essential for your website. It is essential to note that having too many plugins installed on your website will slow down your website which will, in turn, hurt your website ranking and user experience.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to minimize the number of plugins you have installed on your website while ensuring you have all the necessary ones in place to cover your website needs. Some of these include wordpress plugins for SEO, wordpress plugin for security, Analysis, page builder, lead generation, and much more. This brings us to the must-have plugins on your website
1. UpdraftPlus
wordpress powers more than 40% of the entire internet and for this reason, it’s a continual target for hackers. A study reveals that there is always an attack on the web, every 39 seconds on an average. Also, your website can run into some compatibility issues which you may not be able to resolve through any other means than to migrate your website, and this will not be possible without a backup.This is where this must-have wordpress plugin comes in. Updraft plus is a crucial wordpress plugin that is used to backup website data. Updraft plus integrates with several cloud storage options to keep your backup data safe, and can as well automate your backup using a recurring schedule which is the best option.
Features of UpdraftPlus
- It creates automatic or manual backups of your website data.
- It allows you to save your backup files on the cloud or locally.
- It helps restore your website to a previous date prior ( this date would be prior to when your website suffered an attack or ran into a compatibility issue)
Updraft Plus comes in both Freemium and Premium versions.
2. Yoast SEO
As the name implies, this is a wordpress plugin for Search engine optimization and it is one of the most popular wordpress plugins. Yoast SEO helps improve your website SEO right from your content. It helps check your content readability and suggests ways to improve it, keyword density, image alt usage, and lots more. All these help increase your user experience and the chances of retaining your readers’ attention as well as the possibility of your post ranking higher. As far as the internet is concerned, there are several ways to drive traffic to your online business, and search engine optimization is one major and essential every serious online business owner must not joke with as there are over 8 billion searches on google alone everyday, and every business owner wants to tap into this.
Features of Yoast SEO plugin
- Yoast SEO helps you optimize your website post and webpages through meta descriptions and keywords
- It provides simple tips to improve your content’s readability
- It reveals how your content is structured, and suggests tips to make better and easy improvements
Yoast SEO plugin has a base version that is totally Free, and a premium feature that comes at a cost of $99 per year, with some amazing features.
3. Wordfence Security
Research reveals that 70% of the total wordpress installations are vulnerable to hacker attacks. It is essential you treat the safety and security of your website as a top priority, and therefore take measures to avoid or protect your website against attacks by hackers. Wordfence security is a plugin that is dedicated to protecting your websites from hacks and malware. Wordfence security plugin ensures real-time protection and is designed to keep your website secured at all times. It has features to block suspicious traffic, and external attempts to your website and also sends an alert whenever there is an unusual occurrence on your website.
Features of Wordfence Security
- It adds a second layer of protection to your website using two-factor authentication
- It offers advanced manual blocking
- It protect against leaked password and randomizers
Wordfence security plugin has a base version that is completely free to use as well as premium versions with a starting price of $99 per year.
4. WP Forms
Having a contact form is very essential for every website as it serves as the major means of direct communication between you and your website visitors. WP forms is a great wordpress plugin for building awesome forms such as contact forms, email subscription forms, online order forms, online polls or surveys, and many more. WP forms is very easy to use and highly mobile responsive. The WP forms plugin can also integrate with several marketing and payment platforms, and allows to build very interactive forms without writing a single line of code.
Features of WP Forms
- It allows you to create an interactive contact form.
- Comes with pre-built templates to create contact forms.
- It allows you to build multiple-page forms so as to enhance your website user experience
- It has geo-location option which to display your website’s user geographical information
WP Forms has a base version that is totally free to use and also a pro version with lots of useful templates at $39.50 per month.
5. WP Rocket
Every smart online business understands that fast page loading time is very crucial to their online success, and catching seems to be one of the very effective ways to get this done. WP Rocket is an efficient premium wordpress plugin that speeds up your webpage loading time. This is achieved by creating cached copies of each dynamically-generated webpage on your website which in turn reduces the workload on your servers. WP Rocket also minimizes the weight of your CSS files, HTML, as well as JavaScript, and can decrease your loading time by more than 50%.
Features of WP Rocket
- It helps cache your website’s dynamically-generated web pages.
- WP Rockets integrates your caching solution with a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- WP Rockets enables lazy loadings for quicker webpage loading time.
WP Rocket is a premium wordpress plugin with a starting price of $49/per year per website.
6. MonsterInsights
Data analysis and tracking is critical to the growth and success of your website. For without the facts and figures, you will be totally confused as regards what to do to achieve your goals. The monster insight WordPress plugin eases your data tracking tasks for it can help you customize, add, and as well manage the google analytics website tracking services all within your WordPress dashboard. Monster insight plugin reveals all the basic data such as your website session, bounce rate, outbound links, internal links, downloads, and many more.
Features of Monster Insight
- It reveals real-time data and web stats.
- It’s very fast and easy to setup.
- It allows you to track files’ download count.
- E-commerce tracking, and lots more
Monster insights is a premium WordPress plugin with a starting price of $99.50 per year.
7. Optimole
If your website loading time is above 3 seconds, more than half of your website visitor will abandon the webpage. Speed is such a killer factor and should be paid close attention to at all times. Images take up to 50% of the size of an average webpage, therefore, optimizing your website images will have a big impact on our website’s loading time. Although website images are not the only factor responsible for your website loading time, they are a crucial component to decrease your loading time. Optimole automatically optimize your website images by compressing and minimizing their sizes and also resizing them to fit your website visitors’ devices’ screen resolution be it mobile or PC.
Features of Optimole
- Optimole automatically compresses your website images.
- Resize any image you upload for a better user experience.
- Uses global Content Delivery Network.
- Bulk optimize your website’s old images
Optimole is a premium WordPress plugin with a starting price of $19.08 per month.
8. Elementor Website Builder
The WordPress inbuilt page editor is a pretty basic one with lots of restrictions and gives less room for creativity. To create varying designs for your several webpage needs, you either have to code this unique design or use a page builder such as Elementor. Elementor is a “front-end” page builder/editor that allows you to craft unique and original designs for your individual web pages which are somewhat independent of your current website theme.
With Elementor page builder, you do not have to be a web design guru before you can design awesome landing pages for your business. It’s as easy as using drag and drop tools, with some pre-built templates, coupled with a little touch of editing to suit your needs.
Features of Elementor Website Builder
- It’s one of the best Drag and drop editors available on WordPress.
- It comes with over 300 pre-built templates.
- It allows you to create unique and original designs for your webpages.
- It comes with action links to easily connect with your audience on WhatsApp, google calendar, and many other apps.
- And Many More
The Elementor Page Builder plugin has a base version that is completely free to use as well as other Pro versions.
9. Redirection
The redirect WordPress plugin is a URL redirect manager for the WordPress platform. It allows you to set up more than 300 custom redirects within your websites and keep track of the clicks. The redirect plugin can also track broken redirects on your website. This is very essential for we all know how much Google hates broken links.
Features of Redirect WordPress plugin
- It helps create and manage redirects fast and easily.
- It allows for conditional redirects.
- It tracks all 404 errors on your website.
- Query parameter handling.
- And many more.
The redirection WordPress plugin is available for free.
10. JetPack
This is the all-in-one tool kit for your WordPress website. JetPack comprises several tools or apps to help you design your WordPress website, track its real-time statistics, improve its social sharing, and above all shield your website from attackers. The best part is that all the aforementioned core features are free.
Features of JetPack WordPress plugin
- It enhances the functionalities of your website.
- It helps track your website’s growth and statistics.
- It enhances your websites’ security.
- And many more.
The Jetpack plugin is free to use but also comes with some extra features at an additional cost starting at $4.92.
Conclusion
Running a successful website is a whole lot of work and these plugins are meant to simplify these tasks for you. Your website plugin needs might be a bit different depending on what you do, but the above WordPress plugins are more of a general need for all websites across all niches.