Discover now the WordPress plugins that everyone should use on their websites. These are plugins that add very important functionality to the website that are not present in WordPress by default.
The use of plugins in WordPress is extremely necessary, since by default it does not offer certain features that are essential for every website. The great attraction of WordPress is precisely the plugins that transform WordPress into a complete content manager and leaves your site full of essential features.
You can install plugins that add functionality to optimize the site for search engines or simply increase security. There are plugins that have very basic functionality, but that make all the difference when it comes to facilitating the administration of the site.
See the indispensable WordPress plugins for a website:
1. Yoast SEO
SEO accounts for approximately 85% of a website 's traffic, making it vitally important to your success. Due to this importance, it is almost mandatory that you install an SEO plugin on your website. As much as WordPress is SEO Friendly , an SEO plugin adds several features to the website that will allow a more optimized SEO work.
Therefore, installing an SEO plugin such as WordPress SEO (By Yoast) is essential. There are several SEO plugins, but WordPress SEO (By Yoast) is one of the most complete and easy to use. Besides, it's a free plugin.
2. Elementor
Also, because it is a very popular plugin, you can find a wide variety of WordPress themes that offer ready-made websites built for Elementor. Even in its free version, Elementor beats all other premium page builders . And for those who want even more features, there is also a paid version, known as Elementor Pro , which adds functionality to customize the header, footer, custom fonts and many other functions.
3. UpdraftPlus Backup
Don't risk losing your website files, store them on a reliable cloud service and never on the same server as your website. This amazing plugin also offers a paid version that lets you save files in even more locations and provides incremental backup .
4. Contact Form 7 (Contact Form)
Adding a contact form to your website requires a WordPress plugin like Contact Form 7 . With it, you can insert a contact form on any page of the site, very easily and quickly. You can customize fields, add new field options, and much more.
It's important to provide a way for people to communicate with you. And through the contact form, people can send proposals for partnerships, make suggestions, etc. This is done securely and efficiently without disclosing your email address.
5. Akismet Spam Protection
Akismet is a free WordPress plugin for personal websites and blogs that offers excellent spam protection. It works as a filter that automatically sends suspected spam comments directly to the spam box .
When creating a website on the internet, one of the most annoying problems is receiving a flood of spam posing as people commenting on your posts. These comments even manage to deceive many people who believe they are from legitimate people commenting, but they are actually bots created by spammers.
To use Akismet is very easy, it only requires an API Key to work which can be generated for free for personal websites.
6. Wordfence Security
Wordfence is a very complete WordPress security plugin . It has the function of blocking hacker attacks, preventing the exploitation of security holes and many other features that aim to increase security and protect the site.
Websites are very targeted by hackers to spread malware and all kinds of scams over the internet. Even if you think you won't have this kind of problem, know that every website on the internet suffers from several invasion attempts on a daily basis . For this reason, security plugins such as Wordfence are so important .
7. Clean Image Filenames
This plugin has a very simple operation, but it is important to avoid annoyances and problems on your website. It removes all special characters, accents, etc. the name of the media uploaded to your site. It is common to have problems with certain hosting companies when uploading an accented image on your behalf.
To avoid these problems it is important to install the Clean Image Filenames plugin . It will not interfere with the performance of the site because it is a lightweight plugin with a very simple operation.
8. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is one of the best known and most complete WordPress caching plugins . It has several features that allow you to optimize your site's loading time . With W3 Total Cache, pages load faster because they are cached, thus avoiding multiple queries to the database each time the site is accessed.
In addition to optimizing loading times, W3 Total Cache is able to considerably reduce the use of memory and CPU on the website hosting server. It also optimizes browser cache usage.
9. Autoptimize
Autoptimize performs various optimizations on JavaScript and CSS files, caches them and significantly increases website performance . It is an important ally to optimize a website. Unlike W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize only caches JavaScript and CSS files, but it is very efficient at this task and allows for a good performance gain. If you use W3 Total Cache you will not need this plugin.
10. WP Last Modified Info
WP Last Modified Info adds a very simple but very important feature that does not come by default in WordPress. It adds the “Last Modified” column and allows you to sort posts and pages by last modified date. This is very useful for finding old posts that haven't been updated in a long time .
In this way, it is possible to check which are the oldest posts and update the information, when necessary, to achieve better rankings in search engines. Old and outdated content makes your site lose authority . For this reason, a plugin like this is very important.
11. Disable Emojis (GDPR friendly)
Emojis are usually very user friendly and everyone uses them frequently. But when it comes to a website, blog or virtual store, hardly anyone includes an emoji in the content. It turns out that WordPress includes a feature to ensure emojis are compatible with older systems, even if you've never used them on your site.
To make WordPress not include emoji scripts on all your WordPress pages install the Disable Emojis (GDPR friendly) plugin . It is possible to do this without using a plugin, however, with the plugin you guarantee that it will be updated when WordPress makes any changes to this resource. This is an extremely lightweight plugin that will not consume server resources, quite the contrary, it will make your site faster .
12. Regenerate Thumbnails
Changing media dimension settings in WordPress has no effect for already uploaded images. This is extremely bad, especially when we change the theme and it uses images of different sizes that end up being “broken”. Normally, we would have to re-upload all the images for WordPress to create new files following the new dimensions defined in the settings.
Regenerate Thumbnails serves precisely to end this problem. If when changing WordPress themes or changing media settings, Regenerate Thumbnails recreates all images following the new default file size .
13.External Links
External Links allows you to automate part of the link building tasks. With it you can create rules to define which types of links will open in a new tab or automatically add/remove settings like nofollow, dofollow, noreferrer and noopener (for security).
If you are having problems with WordPress adding “noreferrer” and breaking your affiliate links , know that External Links is excellent for creating rules that aim to solve this WordPress problem automatically.
14. WordPress Popular Posts
WordPress Popular Posts allows you to display the most popular posts on your site in a widget . It offers a number of settings, such as displaying post thumbnails (thumbnails). It is also possible to define the time interval to select the most popular articles and it has support for shortcodes, which makes using the plugin simple.
15. WP-PageNavi
If you don't like the “Next” and “Previous” buttons, you can use this plugin to make WordPress paginate posts using numbers . It is much more efficient and allows for better navigability between pages on the site. This is a very important plugin, as by improving the site's navigability it is possible to make the user experience even better .