This blog post was going to be a post specifically for my wife with suggestions on what WordPress plugins to use for her sites, but the more I thought about it, these plugins should be used on most/if not all WordPress sites (or similar plugins that provide the same features).
Below is a list of suggested WordPress plugins that you should use for your web site (for a small-to-medium sized standard WordPress blog, not including a forum or store). Reminder that this is just my opinion and if you prefer different plugins feel free to leave a comment telling us which ones and why.
The first plugin I suggest is the Akismet plugin. Akismet helps protect your WordPress web site from spam, this is possibly the most useful WordPress plugin ever.
The second plugin I suggest is the Jetpack plugin. The Jetpack plugin has free features and also paid features but I’ll only be mentioning the free features here.
The Jetpack plugin provides you:
- basic traffic web site stats (views by days, weeks and months)
- security as it protects your site from malicious attacks
- downtime monitoring
- image performance
- options to share your site on social media
- ability to add related blog posts
- site verification for third-party webmaster tools
- security to block suspicious-looking sign in activity
- option to let you log into your site with your WordPress.com login
- option to set up contact forms easily with this plugin
The third plugin I suggest is the All in One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert. The All in One SEO Pack plugin also has free features and paid features, but I’ll only be mentioning the free features here.
The All in One SEO Pack plugin provides you with 8 free features, which are:
- General Settings – includes options to: change your home page settings; let you rewrite the title in different formats; SEO for post types; webmaster verification; Google settings (Google Plus, Sitelinks, and Analytics); noindex settings; add custom code in your headers; and keyword settings.
- XML Sitemaps – lets you create and manage XML sitemaps which you can then submit to search engines so they can index your web site
- Social Meta – lets you add social meta data to your blog posts and pages
- Robots.txt – lets you edit your robots.txt file
- File Editor, lets you edit your robots.txt file and your .htaccess file
- Importer & Exporter – lets you import and export your “All in One SEO Pack” plugin settings
- Bad Bot Blocker – stops bots from negatively affecting your web site
- Performance – provides you server information
The fourth plugin I suggest is the Revision Control plugin by Dion Hulse. This handy plugin lets you limit the amount of revisions that are saved in your database which will save you disk space and help the speed of your web site.
The fifth plugin I suggest is the Limit Login Attempts plugin by Johan Eenfeldt. This plugin limits the number of login attempts through normal login and through using auth cookies.
The sixth plugin I suggest is the WP-Optimize plugin by David Anderson, Ruhani Rabin, Team Updraft. This plugin helps to clean your WordPress database so that it runs at maximum efficiency.
That concludes my list of WordPress plugins that I suggest you use for your web site. If you use a plugin that wasn’t listed here, feel free to leave a comment telling us which ones you use and why.
Leave a Reply