One of the most accessible, manageable, and user-friendly content management systems(CMS) is WordPress. It can be the front page of a magazine, business website, or blog. The flexibility of the CMS system is what makes WordPress so popular. However, matching WordPress’s appeal with its various themes, useful WordPress plugins, and extensive support takes a lot of work.
A standard WordPress website will become more adaptable thanks to WordPress (WP) plugins. WordPress plugins are programmes that help websites add additional features and functionalities, much like applications do for smartphones. There are currently over 54000 plugins in the official WP plugin repository.
This means you can add practically every feature we require for our WordPress websites via plugins. But not all WordPress plugins are built the same way. Only some of them have active coding compatible with your theme. We’ve put together the ten most popular WordPress plugins that can maintain your website operating at its best at all times.
What Are WordPress Plugins?
Software that “plugs into” your WordPress website is known as a plugin. Using plugins to extend or add additional capabilities, you can build almost any website, from e-commerce stores to portfolios to directory sites.
Depending on their functionality, plugins can make minor or significant adjustments to your website. For instance, you might install a plugin to make your website fully multilingual or include a WhatsApp share button. Or, if you operate an online store, you might add a plugin to help with payment gateways or let customers make reservations online.
Plugins can improve your contact forms, create stunning sliders, provide a backup of your website in case of data loss, and make it simple for users to opt-in to receive emails. In addition, some plugins alter the back end of your website, while others alter the front end, making maintenance easier. You might, for instance, use these plugins to check your website for broken links, do A/B tests, or put it in maintenance mode.
Let’s examine our top 10 WordPress plugins now that we have a better knowledge of what plugins are.
1. Yoast SEO
One of the most popular plugins is Yoast SEO. Many people with a blog or a site on WordPress use this plugin. According to research, 5,842,524 live websites are currently using Yoast SEO. Therefore, it can be hard to find websites that don’t use Yoast SEO.
The most popular feature is that it helps you improve the overall SEO score of your articles and pages. Using this plugin, you can set your keywords, SEO title, meta description, and alt attributes of images. In addition, it recommends what you can do to improve the flow of the content.
It also includes a Powerful Redirect feature to build 301 easily directs, which makes it straightforward. However, you can try the free alternative WordPress Redirection plugin if you don’t want to upgrade to import your redirects.
2. WPForms
5,115,260 websites currently use WPForms. It is a contact form essential for every website as it allows visitors to contact your busy easily, which is why this is a must-have WordPress plugin. If you want to insert a contact form (for example) into your WordPress site, this plugin allows you to do so in just a few clicks. The WPForm allows you to create an effective contact form using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
It enables the creation of online order forms, contact forms, email subscription forms, polls, surveys, and payment forms with a few clicks. This plugin can work with all leading payment and marketing platforms and quickly build you a powerful form.
If you want more features from WPForms, you can upgrade to access an extensive assortment of different form templates, donation and payment collections by PayPal, and so much more!
3. WooCommerce
WooCommerce allows you to turn your WordPress website into an online shop to sell your products on the web. With various extensions and customisable features, this plugin makes selling on WordPress simple!
Due to its variety of themes and custom options, selling digital and physical products, affiliates and many conversation optimisation tools, it is unique with WordPress Plugins and its usability. In addition, it’s very flexible in terms of customisation built.
Many people love WooCommerce due to its ease and flexibility. In fact, according to research, over 5,106,506 live websites are using WooCommerce, and the plugin has been downloaded 161,908,802 times from WordPress.org!
4. All-In-One SEO
SEO is a popular topic across the web. According to research, SEO is the second most interesting topic (after plugins). So if you wanted an alternative to Yoast, the All In One SEO Pack is to help beginners and advanced users.
Apart from the SEO instructions, the plugin offers XML sitemap, Google AMP support and Google Analytics. It also provides SEO integration for e-commerce sites. This plugin is effective if you want to grow a personal blog, own a business, or be a professional blogger.
This plugin is a favourite as, according to research, AIO SEO is used by more than 3 million wise website owners to optimise their sites for better search results.
5. Akismet Spam Protection
Akismet is a tool created to block spam comments automatically. We are always spammed by promotional links, malicious content, promotional links or by mistakes. It is hard to filter them by yourself, especially if you are a company that receives many daily comments.
As well as being good for automation, it is also good for security purposes, as it won’t allow malicious or problematic content to be published on your website. The plugin also checks content from your contact form submissions against their worldwide spam database, so only the relevant information gets to you.
Akismet states that they have removed 538,261,377,543 spam items from the internet, or nearly 7,500,000 each hour. That means they prevent roughly twice as much spam every hour as people in Los Angeles.
6. Meta Slider
Meta Slider is an easy-to-use plugin that allows WordPress users to add custom slides to posts, widgets and pages. A slider is a slideshow displayed on a WordPress site’s homepage to feature photos, videos or other content. It gives a smooth, eye-catching display to emphasise content on the page.
Meta Slider allows the creation of content or media slideshows that you can insert into pages, posts or widgets. It also brings the availability and customisation of a slideshow to any WordPress Theme.
More than 800,000 WordPress websites have used Meta Slier, the simplest and most powerful WordPress slider, to construct attractive, responsive sliders and carousels. Additionally, it contains a live theme editor and strong slider capabilities like intelligent image cropping.
7. WordFence Security
According to WpWhiteSecurity, around 73% of WordPress websites are vulnerable to security attacks. If you want to stop cyber attacks, installing WordFence Security on your WordPress website is essential. WordFence is designed to keep your site fully secure from any hackers. It puts up a firewall on the website to defend it from malicious traffic.
The plugin checks files, plugins, malware, SERP spam, code injections, malicious redirects, bad URLs and backdoors. Therefore, it offers a secure login system and scans for malware to block unknown external attempts. In addition, it features a notification when unusual activity happens (in terms of security).
8. Redirection
Redirection helps you with 301 redirections and 404-error monitoring. In addition, redirection is the go-to plugin for tracking any broken links or unknown pages. This enables you to auto-track viewers of URLs or manually embed 302/307 redirects.
The plugin is easy to install and provides great performance and speed. It tracks and logs 404 errors which WordPress pages that visitors have gone to that don’t exist. It’s simple to control 301 redirects, monitor 404 issues, and tie up loose ends. This might lower errors and raise the rating of your website. Redirection can be utilised on any size site, from those with a few redirects to those with thousands.
9. Events Calendar
Using the Events Calendar plugin, you can create and manage an events calendar on a WordPress site. It is currently active on over 800,000 WordPress websites. It is a quick and easy technique to publish events on websites. Also, thanks to the user interface, it doesn’t take long to understand how it works.
The plugin allows you to create venues and organises, and these entities can be assigned to the events created. It also has a feature to allow you to create categories and tags for better organisation.
10. Slider Revolution
This plugin allows beginner and mid-level designers to create amazing visuals. It has multiple features to create anything you wish for, not just responsive sliders. In addition, it has eye-grabbing hero sections that stand out to visitors and full web pages that glue visitors to the page!
It is currently powering 2.5 million websites worldwide! With Slider Revolution, you can create image sliders, featured post sliders, hero blocks, front pages, and social media feeds. Moreover, you can get all features without installing any add-ons.
Contact Us
Here at Interact, we are experts in creating websites and web designing as we have been doing so since 1995, and all our work is carried out in-house. So, if you need help managing your plugins, contact us today! We’d love to help.
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Call us on 01257 429217 Or fill in the form underneath.
