10 plugins that belong on your WordPress website

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10 plugins that belong on your WordPress website

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WordPress plugins provide additional functionality to your WordPress website. With over 55,000 plugins in the library, it can be overwhelming, especially for beginner WordPress users. Choosing the right plugins that are reliable and up-to-date is crucial.

To help you, we’ve compiled a list of 10 essential plugins.

Yoast

Yoast SEO is the leader among WordPress SEO plugins. This plugin allows you to perfectly optimize your website for Google. Moreover, it’s free. While there’s a premium version available, the free version offers plenty of features and is sufficient for most websites.

Link: Yoast SEO Plugin

Wordfence

The name says it all: “fence.” It creates a wall around your website to protect it from hackers and data breaches. Initially, this is done via a firewall. Additionally, it includes a malware scanner to detect harmful pieces of code. With the premium version, you can further upgrade your firewall in real-time and continuously update malware signatures.

Link: Wordfence Plugin

Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is the ultimate (free) solution for creating forms. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can add fields to your form without any coding required. Beyond the free functionality, you can purchase additional add-ons, such as one that integrates with Mailchimp or another that enables conditional fields.

Link: Ninja Forms Plugin

WP Super Cache

Your website is dynamically built, which means it may slow down as information is constantly fetched from the database. WP Super Cache converts pages into static HTML pages. Serving these static pages is much faster and puts less load on the server. This ensures your website responds faster than without caching.

Link: WP Super Cache Plugin

Smush Image Compression

Overly large images can cause slow website loading times. The Smush Image Compression plugin ensures that all uploaded images, as well as previously uploaded ones, are compressed. This plugin is free, but there is also a premium version that allows for even greater compression.

Link: Smush Image Compression Plugin

User Role Editor

Are you satisfied with the standard roles and their capabilities in WordPress? With User Role Editor, you can define custom capabilities for any role or even create new roles with specific permissions. For example, you can enable an editor role to add new links to the website’s navigation.

Link: User Role Editor Plugin

InfiniteWP Client

InfiniteWP allows you to manage all your WordPress websites from a centralized dashboard. This tool provides an overview of which sites need maintenance (outdated plugins or WordPress versions). From this environment, you can update plugins for all your websites. It’s very convenient as you no longer need to log into each site individually.

Link: InfiniteWP Client Plugin

WP Mail SMTP

When you have a WordPress website with, for example, a contact form, WordPress by default uses the PHP mail function to send emails. This is not the best solution as these emails often end up in spam folders. Using WP Mail SMTP, as the name suggests, allows you to send emails over SMTP. We often use this plugin in combination with Mandrill’s mail servers.

Link: WP Mail SMTP Plugin

WPML

This is the ultimate translation plugin. If you want to offer your website in multiple languages, we highly recommend this plugin. It not only translates your custom theme but also the output of all activated plugins!

Link: WPML Plugin

Redirection

When your website’s URL changes, it’s essential to create a redirection plan. This plan ensures that old URLs redirect to their new equivalents. The “Redirection” plugin handles this process efficiently for you. Without a redirection plan, many users will encounter 404 pages, which can lower your ranking on Google.

Link: Redirection Plugin