WordPress is a very popular Content-Management System (CMS). Released about a decade ago, the most recent version has seen close to six million downloads until today and counting. As more and more people who are not very technically sound are building websites for themselves and their customers, the popularity of WordPress is increasing.
A well-known feature of WordPress is its amazing plugin architecture, which lets developers and users customize their websites. There are more than 26,000 plugins ranging from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools to social buttons. With a multitude of options available, choosing the plugin that suits your website the best does become a bit tricky. Here’s a compilation of plugins that every wordpress blog should have.
In addition to Akismet plugin, which is a standard inclusion while setting up your WordPress website, you can consider installing the ones listed below as per your requirement. They are in no particular order, so you can select the one that suits your website the best.
#1-Yoast’s WordPress SEO
By far Yoast’s WordPress SEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress. It lets you control the page titles and meta descriptions of every page. It also lets you customize the page titles and meta descriptions of tag or category pages.
Its other useful features are 301 redirection, index and noindex, follow and nofollow, and customization of Google+ and Facebook descriptions.
#2-Simple URLs
This is a great plugin to track your outbound links and control them within the backend of WordPress. If you have an affiliate website, you’ll be able to calculate the conversion rate via the amount of clicks to the number of people who have bought something using your affiliate link.
#3-Growmap Anti Spambot
Spamming is an ever-increasing issue with all the websites these days. The best way to avoid spam is by installing Growmap Anti Spambot. By using this plugin, you can ensure that there is no spam on your website.
#4-Better WP Security
The number of ‘how to hack WordPress website’ videos doing the rounds publicly is not funny. Without this plugin, your website can be at a risk too. Better WP Security plugin will let you run a security check in only one click. It’s also advisable to change your Admin login details from time to time.
#5-Tiny MCE Advanced
Always wished that you could represent your content better in WordPress? Well, this plugin does all that and much more as it adds some great features to the content editor.
#6-W3 Total Cache
No one likes to wait for a website to load. Google also hates slow websites. If one website is taking time, visitors are quick to go to another website. Why decrease the number of people visiting your site when this one plugin has the ability to make your website load faster. W3 Total Cache makes use of browser cache and other optimization to reduce the loading time of pages, and also increases your website’s speed.
#7-SEO Friendly Images
This plugin is a gold mine for people who have websites loaded with images. It adds TITLE and ALT attributes to all images for better SEO. Along with increasing your images’ visibility in search engines, it also improves the entire page’s SEO. If you’re a photographer or an artist and would like to display your portfolio so that it appears in Google, this plugin is your best bet.
#8-Automatic Updater
This plugin enables the WordPress plugins, versions and themes to update automatically. With so many continuous updates, this will be just one less thing to do as far as keeping your website maintained and up-to-date.
#9-Broken Link Detector
Broken links are one thing that is disliked by all, search engines and users alike. The Broken Link Detector helps locating the broken link and fixing it. You will get a notification via your email or WordPress dashboard informing you of a broken link in your website.
#10-Contact Form 7
A contact form on your website is a great way for people to get in touch with you, especially if that is what you want your visitors to do. Contact Form 7 plugin is a simple, yet effective form that is quite light and will not slow down your website. What’s more is that, it’s compatible with practically every theme out there.
#11-LiveFyre
If you have a website that thrives on people commenting and exchanging ideas in the comments section, then you need to install LiveFyre. It’s a clean plugin that is very easy to set-up. It gives your posts a personal touch that will garner more comments.
#12-Digg Digg
This plugin has social sharing buttons like Tweet, FB Like, Google+, FB Share, Linkedin Share, and others. The best part about this plugin is that these buttons are floating on the website, so, as the user scrolls up or down, these buttons follow them around. A great way to promote your content and website on social media.
#13-Wordpress Backup to Dropbox
It’s rather important to take a backup of your website’s content. Downloading it locally on your machine and then re-uploading onto a cloud storage service is time consuming. Instead, if you use this plugin, it will directly save into your Dropbox account without downloading. It has a simple user interface, backup settings that are customizable and is also cross-browser compatible.
#14-Post Ender
If you want to thank your visitors for reading your post or simply want to remind them about something, the Post Ender plugin is a great way to do that. You can add text at the end of every post or use a shortcode for adding text to selected posts.
#15-Tweet Old Post
Most of the blogs have a lot of old content that can be useful at all times. If you’d like to draw attention to any of your older posts on your blog, then Tweet Old Post plugin can automatically tweet about any of your older posts, hence, driving extensive traffic from Twitter to your website. It also supports posting to Google+ and Facebook, in addition to sleep time and post priority.
#16-WPtouch
WPtouch is a cool plugin that lets you make your website mobile-friendly. It creates a elegant and simple app-like mobile theme for your website without writing any extra code. Compatible with Android, iOS and other mobile phones, you can customize it very easily via the admin panel.
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