Introduction

The world of WordPress plugins is vast, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of plugins that are available. However, there are some excellent WordPress plugins that can make your life much easier. In this article, I’ll give you my personal list of the best WordPress plugins available today so that you can get started using them on your website.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a must have plugin for any WordPress site. It will help you optimize your site for SEO, as well as check the on page SEO of your site. You can also use it to check off page aspects of your site’s SEO, such as external links and social metrics. There are other plugins that do this too, but Yoast is arguably the best one out there and has been around a long time.

2. Smush

Smush is a plugin that will help you compress images. It’s an easy way to save on bandwidth costs and server space, because when an image has been compressed, it takes up less space on your website. It also means your site will load faster—a big factor in search engine rankings.

3. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a caching plugin for WordPress. It optimizes your site by caching the pages you visit most, so they load faster and take less server resources. It improves your site’s performance and speed by reducing load times and bandwidth usage, which can increase customer satisfaction with your website.

4. Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security is a WordPress security plugin that protects against hackers, malware, and spam. It has a firewall, malware scanner, and intrusion detection system to keep your website safe from threats.

It also has a database backup and restore feature to protect your data in case of an attack or accidental deletion; a vulnerability scanner that can check for outdated software on your site; brute force protection which blocks unauthorized access attempts to reset passwords on your WordPress website.

5. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps is a plugin that helps you to generate an XML sitemap for your website. This helps search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing to index your site. It also helps users to find your content more easily and improve the performance of your site. The plugin can be configured by adding the pages, posts or even categories that you want included in the sitemap on its dashboard or using shortcodes in the content area of each individual page or post on your site.

Google XML Sitemaps supports internationalization and localization through .po files (Portuguese) and .mo files (German).

6. Elementor

Elementor is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to create custom page layouts with ease. Once installed, the Elementor builder will appear in the visual editor of your site and allow you to drag and drop elements onto your pages. It has a wide variety of elements that can be used for headers, footers, sidebars, full-width sections and more.

There are also templates available to help you get started with building out a new page or post from scratch. You can choose from different templates such as blog posts, portfolio items or even contact forms. These templates come with pre-built layouts so it’s easy for anyone who isn’t familiar with coding sites like WordPress will be able to get started right away!

If you need some inspiration for your site then check out their Inspiration Section where there’s hundreds upon hundreds of designs ready for download within minutes!

7. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

ShortPixel Image Optimizer is a lossless image compression plugin for WordPress. It can compress images up to 80%, making it one of the most efficient ways to optimize your website’s images.

ShortPixel has a free version and paid version, but both are equally useful in reducing file sizes while maintaining quality. In fact, ShortPixel was used on over 1 million websites as of May 2019!

8. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It’s the most popular eCommerce platform in the world, powering over 40% of all online stores. Since 2011, WooCommerce has been downloaded more than 100 million times and currently powers more than 3 million active online stores. In fact, we use it here at Buffer!

9. Contact Form 7

The plugin allows you to create contact forms and collect email addresses, information about your website visitors, feedback, and information about your products. It’s a great tool to use if you want to create a simple form that will allow users to fill in their name and email address so they can get in touch with you. You can also use this plugin as an alternative to the standard WordPress comment system by adding it into any post or page on your site.

This plugin offers many different options for creating forms that are easy to use and look professional. You can choose whether or not users will be able to see each others’ responses before submitting their own answers (great for allowing them time for reflection), whether or not they need cookies enabled on their computer before using the form (the default setting), what type of image should appear next to each input box (such as checkboxes), how long each question should be displayed onscreen before moving onto another one (from 1 second up until infinite), etc..

10. Google Analytics by MonsterInsights

• Google Analytics by MonsterInsights is a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily add the tracking code to your site, and has a simple interface with many features.
• The plugin allows you to view all of your analytics data in real time, including: page views, bounce rate, average session duration and more. So if you’re looking for some insight into how people are using your site then this is the way to go!

11. TablePress

TablePress is a plugin that allows you to create tables in WordPress. Tables are a great way to display data, such as a list of products or a list of blog posts. TablePress can be used to create tables with columns and rows. You can also customise the appearance of those columns and rows by adding background colours, borders and text colour.

TablePress has many options for creating tables:

• Table templates – pre-designed layouts with different column types
• Columns – customisable column settings like width/length, alignment etc..
• Rows – customisable row settings like height/spacing etc..

There is a long list of plugins that are great for WordPress.

WordPress is a powerful and popular platform. This is why there are a ton of plugins out there for WordPress that can help you improve your website. These plugins will make your life easier when it comes to managing content, making sure you’re compliant with security standards, and strengthening the overall performance of your site.

You’ll find these great tools in both free and paid versions so that everyone can benefit from their functionality. Some of them may not be as well-known or used as frequently as others so I’ve gone ahead and compiled my list based on popularity (from most-to-least).

Conclusion

There are many more plugins available for WordPress, but this is a good start. If you need more help choosing some specific ones for your website, then contact us today!