WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems(CMS) for making a new website and every WordPress developer has a toolkit of plugins they can’t live without. There are over 30,000 plugins available, allowing you to customise the software to your personal preferences. Choosing the best plugin for your WordPress site will help make your day-to-day life easier and deliver a better experience for your users as well, but with so many plugins available, how do you decide which ones to use?
We’ve compiled 15 of our favourite plugins that we use for our own business.
1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress SEO is not just an SEO plugin, it is the complete website optimisation package. This plugin, written by the team at Yoast, helps you to improve your site’s SEO and to write better content. WordPress SEO forces you to choose a focus keyword when you’re writing your articles, and then makes sure you use that focus keyword in all of your SEO optimisation. Apart from adding titles and descriptions to your articles, it also allows you to add open graph meta data, do page analysis, publish xml sitemap, and so much more. It is easy to install and setup and is an essential plugin to ensure you have a fully optimised WordPress site.
2. Limit Logins
By default, WordPress allows unlimited login attempts your site with no cap on the number of incorrect attempts. Most hacking attacks usually rely on breaking into your site’s admin area by using password lists. Limit Login simply puts a limit on how many times a user can try to login, helping prevent brute-force hacking on your site. After a given number of login attempts it locks down the admin area for a limited time.
3. JetPack
Jetpack adds powerful features to your site such as site stats, email subscriptions, forms, social networking, performance tools and more. The plugin brings many of the features from wordpress.com and it comes with 24 free modules including Publicise, WordPress Stats, Sharing, Contact Form, Shortcode Embeds. The latest version of Jetpack introduced support for Multisite. In the past, super admins had to manage the connections on an individual site basis, even though Jetpack could be activated network-wide. Now you can administer all your connections from your super admin accounts.
4. Akismet
Akismet is an essential plugin for dealing with spam. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review them in your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. A simple, yet effective plugin that means you spend less time sorting through spam and helps speed up your site.
5. Google Analytics by Yoast
Google Analytics by Yoast allows you to track your blog stats easily and it always stays up to date with the newest features in Google Analytics. This plugin puts all the important statistics right in front of you with attractive charts and graphs in your WordPress dashboard. Installation is simple through integration with Google Analytics API.
6. Google XML sitemaps
Google XML sitemaps does a single job well: it generates an XML sitemap for your sites, helping search engines to better index your site.
Sitemaps make it easier for search engine crawlers to see the complete structure of your sites and retrieve it more efficiently. Google XML Sitemaps supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages and custom URLs, and also notifies search engines each time you post new content.
7. Contact form 7
Contact form 7 is easily one of the most popular free form plugin out there, it has had more than 16 million downloads. This plugin manages multiple contact forms, plus you can customise the form and any email content with simple markup. The form also supports AJAX-powered submission, CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filtering.
8. Broken Link Checker
This plugin’s name is self-explanatory. It will check your posts, pages and comments for broken links or missing images. Depending on the size of your site this can take from a few minutes up to an hour or more. You will then receive notifications by email or on your dashboard if these links are found, allowing you to fix them before they’re noticed by your customers. There is also an optional feature that prevents search engines from following broken links.
9. Nextgen Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is the most popular WordPress gallery plugin, and one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time, with over 12 million downloads. The plugin allows you to upload and manage galleries of images, with the ability to batch upload, import meta data, add/delete/rearrange/sort images, edit thumbnails, group galleries into albums, and more. You can view images as either a slideshow or thumbnail gallery, both of which come with a wide array of options for controlling size, style, timing, transitions, controls, lightbox effects, and more.
10. Simple Social Icons
Simple Social Icons allows you to insert social media icons in any widget area. It is easy to use and a customisable way to display icons that link visitors to your various social profiles. With it, you can easily choose which profiles to link to, customise the colour and size of your icons, as well as align them to the left, centre, or right, all from the widget form.
11. Mailchimp For WP
The MailChimp plugin allows you to quickly and easily add a signup form for your MailChimp list as a widget on your WordPress website. It’s very quick to set up, the time from starting installation to have the form on your site should be less than 5 minutes. This plugin is a great way to gain more people on your mailing list, ensuring they don’t forget about your business.
12. Lightbox Plus
Lightbox Plus permits users to view larger versions of images without having to leave the current page, and is also able to display simple slide shows. The plugin is able to add a lightbox to WordPress gallery images,videos and content all in an overlay. The use of the dark or light background, which dims the page over which the image has been overlaid, also serves to highlight the image or video being viewed. A simple plugin that can make your website look professional.
13. Cookie Law Info
This plugin uses implied consent, adding a subtle banner to your website either in the header or footer so you can show your compliance status regarding the new EU Cookie Law. You can fully customise the style so it fits in with your existing website- change the colours, fonts, styles, the position on the page and even how it behaves when you click “accept”. You can choose to make the cookie bar disappear after a few seconds and it also has a Cookie Audit module so you can easily show what cookies your site uses and display them neatly in a table on your Privacy & Cookies Policy page.
14. iThemes Security (formally Better WP Security)
iThemes security will help to keep your website/blog safe from hacker attacks. iThemes Security works to fix common holes, stop automated attacks and strengthen user credentials. With one-click activation for most features, as well as advanced features for experienced users, iThemes Security can help protect any WordPress site. Features include 2-factor authentication, tracking when users log in/out, malware scanning and password expiration. This plugin is crucial to maintain a secure website.
15. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is by far the most popular eCommerce plugin available. The plugin allows you to keep track of incoming sales and reviews, stock levels and general store performance and statistics from the WordPress dashboard or go to the reports section to view stats in more detail. You can choose one of their many ecommerce themes or build your own, allowing you to give your shop a design tailored to your business. This plugin is essential for any business that relies on an online shop.
Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.
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