So you’ve created your website or blog on WordPress and you’re thinking on how to quickly integrate various features and functionalities to make your site complete.
Rest easy, there are plenty of WordPress plugins specially designed to make sure your website is not only functional but also marketable and secure. However, it can be quite a hassle knowing which plugins to reach for first considering the sheer number of options.
Here is a list of 5 essential plugins for beginners:
1. Wordfence:
Your website’s security should be a priority that comes second to none, and that is why you need the wordfence plugin.
Fully packaged with a firewall and login security measures, Wordfence acts like a watchdog, protecting your site from possible security breaches and malicious viruses or scripts.
Precisely, you’ll not only be able to track down and block suspicious links but also avoid being blacklisted by Google. The good thing is that wordfence is free and easy to learn and use, and therefore ideal for beginners.
2. Akismet:
As a blogger, spam comments is the last thing you want on your blog or website if you want to demonstrate a certain level of professionalism.
Remember, your comment section is where your audience leaves and collects feedback and therefore spam comments, often with links to products that may be fake, can easily damage your reputation.
Akismet is designed to find and block comments that are not genuine, keeping your comment section spam-free.3.
3. Yoast SEO:
If you are thinking of driving traffic to your website, then SEO by Yoast is a must have plugin. Yoast optimizes your website, helps you create quality content around certain keywords and improves your rankings, making it easy for users to find your website on the various search engines such as Google.
It’s more like putting your site on the map. Additionally, the plugin has many amazing features at your disposal such as social media integration, XML sitemap functionality and much more, not to mention it’s easy to use and free.
4. Contact Form 7:
The core essence of creating a blog or website is communication, which is a two-way street; you’ll want to send and receive feedback on certain issues.
To that effect, Contact Form 7 plugin enables you to create functional contact forms where your audience can get in touch with you (very crucial especially if your site is a business platform).
Even better, the plugin allows users to attach pictures, documents and other files they may want to send. Furthermore, you can add a CAPTCHA to protect against Spam messages.
5. WP Smush:
You will definitely need to enhance your website’s user experience with high quality pictures every now and then.
However, high quality images come in large sizes, which may give your users problems while loading pages or make your website slow and difficult to maneuver; this may drive away users, costing you dearly in the long run.
This is why WP Smush comes up as a necessary plugin for beginners. The plugin automatically compresses large sized images without compromising their quality, therefore, giving your site a smooth feel and your users a great experience.
In short, even though you’ll be needing more and different plugins depending on your online needs, this list presents any budding blogger or anyone who’s doing a course on blogging a great foundation to build their blogging career on.
Ryan Wetherby