WordPress contains about thousands of plugins, both paid and free, and the site owner hesitates to choose the most appropriate plugin for him, whether he knows that he needs to perform a specific task on his site and is looking for the most appropriate plugin to accomplish that task, or he does not know that there is an plugin that works on that task.
But it is not only important to choose the add-on that does the job, but rather you must ensure the reliability of that add-on and ensure that it performs the required features optimally. Therefore, in this article, I will share with you the most important WordPress plugins that website owners need to perform many basic functions or supplementary functions
Now let’s start talking about each of these additions
Yoast SEO -1
It is one of the most famous and most common add-ons for performing basic SEO tasks, through which you can create SEO-compatible content that makes the site acceptable to search engines. Among its most important characteristics are:
- It gives you a tool to create a map of your site and update it automatically to improve crawling by search engine spiders.
- Through it, you can measure the quality of your site’s pages in terms of improving the visitor’s experience in reading the article. It gives you some instructions that help you formulate your article in an easy-to-read manner (such as writing short sentences and short paragraphs).
- Through it, you can measure the most important SEO factors on the page in terms of title and description
- F, link, image…etc.
. The add-on link can be found here .
You can also use the Rank Math add-on , as it is an excellent alternative and provides many useful features in preparing the site for search results through the free version.
W3 Total Cache -2
The w3 total cashe add-on is considered one of the important additions that helps you improve the speed and performance of your site, which enhances the user experience and improves the appearance of your site in search results, as it works on and among its most important characteristics are:
- Speed up your site: You can serve compressed and cached files to site visitors, which reduces loading time on the server and improves overall site speed.
- Save Bandwidth: Saves you bandwidth and reduces HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and feeds.
. The add-on link can be found here .
JetPack -3
It is a free add-on developed by Automatic and has received more than 5 million installations. It helps you improve the site’s performance in general, and its most important features are:
- Improve site security
- Improving user interaction with the site
- Keep your site running
- Adding social sharing buttons, contact forms, CDN services, email subscription forms, and many other services integrated into the plugin, which helps you improve the overall performance of your WordPress site.
The add-on link can be found here .
4- Contact Form 7
This, in turn, is an excellent addition that enables you to communicate with your visitors easily by creating a Contact Us page. Everyone knows that it is the best page on any website because it forms a direct link between you and the visitors, where you specify the email address to which you want the messages to reach, and then you start communicating with them. And listen to their complaints and suggestions. Using a contact form that the user fills out, then you receive his message on your email. The add-on link can be found here .
You can also use the WP Forms add- on to do the same and other tasks in creating forms by providing many features in the form design.
Redirection -5
It is very possible that you, as a website owner, change the link to your page, but the problem arises when the visitor wants to access the page from the old link. Then a 404 error page will appear, and this is the role of this add-on, and one of its most important features is:
- Simple: You can easily control 301 redirects, track 404 errors on your site, and ensure that the user experience on your website is excellent.
- Page Audits: With redirects, you can also see which posts and pages aren’t loading properly so you can fix them right away, preventing frustration for site visitors.
. The add-on link can be found here .
MonsterInsights -6
The MonsterInsights add-on enables you to track all your efforts and work on your site. There is no doubt that tracking data across your site is important, as it motivates you to give more or forces you to make a better effort to improve your site. This add-on allows you to easily display basic statistics such as sessions and bounce rate with Google Analytics. You can also track internal and external links, downloads, and many other features provided by this add-on, such as:
- Dashboard Reports: You see statistics in real time via an easy-to-read report located in the control panel of your website.
- Comprehensive tracking: Your statistics are never skewed thanks to the global tracking system in place; In other words, if your visitors switch from mobile to desktop, you’ll still be able to get accurate data counts.
- Robust Pro Features: The premium version lets you track ecommerce statistics, traffic sources, and advertising efforts, and you’ll have access to the MonsterInsights Forms addon, which lets you see form conversion rates so you can make improvements and grow your business online.
. The add-on link can be found here .
OptinMonster -7
It must be remembered that this add-on is paid, and it works to convert visitors into subscribers and customers. One of its most important features is that it is integrated with all famous marketing tools such as MailChimp. It also supports A/B tests and works with a drag and drop system, in addition to many other features such as :
- Exit-Intent technology: which turns site visitors who were destined to abandon your site into email subscribers instead.
- Geo-location targeting: You get more leads by customizing campaigns based on the visitor’s location.
- MonsterLinks Technology: It allows you to convert any link or image into an Optin form and increase conversions by 785%.
. The add-on link can be found here .
Sucuri -8
This add-on specializes in protecting your site from any form of hacking, as you receive an email through which you track all the activities taking place on your site, and it also performs a comprehensive cleaning of the site to ensure that there is no virus or hacking vulnerability; In addition to other features:
- Speed: The Sucuri plugin is lightweight so it does not slow down your site’s resources and does not take a long time to load.
- Extreme monitoring: sucuri enables you to check for DDoS attacks, malware threats, brute force attacks, and even XSS attacks so you can rest assured about your site data.
The add-on link can be found here .
WP Rocket -9
This add-on works to speed up the loading time of your site, and this means that everything you need to speed up the site is available in one package. The importance of this add-on lies in the fact that the speed of the site is the most important factor for its success, attracting new visitors and maintaining its original visitors, because the slowness of the site leads to alienation of visitors. In addition to other characteristics:
- Caching your dynamically generated website pages.
- Improved user-end browser caching.
- Enable lazy loading for faster loading times.
- Integrate your caching solution with a content delivery network (CDN)
The add-on link can be found here .
LiveChat -10
This addition enables you to communicate directly and more comfortably with your customers and visitors to your site to listen to their complaints and suggestions, which contributes to building deeper relationships with them and thus the success of the site. We present to you its features in detail as follows:
- Great Add-on: Provides a beautifully designed live chat support app to add a chat box to your WordPress site.
- Work from anywhere: LiveChat is mobile responsive so you and your agents can chat with customers on laptops and tablets; It’s a great tool for remote teams.
- Polls: Enables you to identify where you need to improve by adding evaluation polls before and after a chat session.
- Integrations: LiveChat integrates with many other tools including email marketing services and other marketing software.
- Speed: It has a very fast loading time and provides an excellent user experience.
. The add-on link can be found here .
Icegram -11
This add-on allows you to build mailing lists in a smooth and simple way by showing a pop-up window in different places that motivates the user to take a specific action. Among its most important features are:
- Supports A/B tests
- Geographic targeting
- It provides reliable statistics and effective data that includes all targeting options, such as retargeting technology
The add-on link can be found here .
Woocommerce -12
One of the most popular plugins on the WordPress website, as it is dedicated to e-commerce and through it you can create an online store and start selling what you want on your website comfortably and safely, and it has many features, including:
- WordPress Integration: This plugin gives you complete control over the design and functionality of your online store.
- Flexibility: Sell anything you want complete with different shapes, sizes, and product configurations, and the extension offers a wide range of shipping options such as free shipping or paid shipping.
- Payment Options: Accept major credit cards, BACs, and cash on delivery, so people can make purchases the way they want.
- It’s all yours: You own it all, so you don’t have to worry about a third-party platform filling up your store’s data.
- Increase Sales: Use WooCommerce live sales notifications to increase your online income.
The add-on link can be found here .
Akismet -13
Many editors complain about some annoying comments that may disappoint them on the site, but this addition is the perfect solution to get rid of that problem, as it enables you to block comments and distinguish the good from the bad in them, and we leave you with a breakdown of the features as follows:
- It automatically checks all comments and filters out comments that look like spam.
- Each comment has a status history, so you can easily see which comments have been captured or scrubbed by Akismet and which ones are spam or spam.
- URLs appear in comment text to reveal hidden or misleading links.
- Moderators can see the number of approved comments for each user.
- With a ignore feature that completely blocks the worst spam, saving you disk space and speeding up your site.
The add-on link can be found here .
Wordfence Security -14
It is similar to the Sucuri add-on, which we said was a tool for protecting the site, as Wordfence also specializes in fighting hacking, with a slight superiority to Sucuri, but the matter is the same with regard to protection, as they both play an effective role in fighting viruses and hacking; And many other features such as:
- Scan for malware and block requests that contain malicious code or content.
- Provides a firewall with all its settings and features that block everything that is harmful to the site
- Repair files that have changed by replacing them with the original version, and deleting files that do not belong to Wordfence.
. The link to add Wordfence can be found here .
Smush -15
Sometimes, as a writer, you have to add large images due to the quality, which may cause heaviness in your site, but do not worry, this addition will help you greatly in getting rid of your problem, by compressing and reducing the capacity of the images, and the nice thing about it is that it compresses the images without losing their quality, which Makes this a great addition. In addition to several other features:
- Automated Optimization: This plugin automatically resizes, optimizes and compresses all your images.
- No loss of quality: It does all this without sacrificing image quality, so your website runs at optimal speeds and ranks highly in search results.
- Uses their servers: Smush servers minimize additional stress and resource usage.
. The add-on link can be found here .
Pretty Links -16
This add-on allows you to shorten links and track them by seeing the number of clicks on each shortened link you created.
- Makes links look great: The better your links and website are, the more your URLs will be shared.
- Affiliate Marketing Organization: Great for those involved in affiliate marketing to track clicks from emails and social media.
- Tracking: This extension tracks every hit on the URL you create and gives you a full report on the hit source, browser, operating system, and host.
You will find the add-on link here .
Tips before installing WordPress plugins
After choosing your desired add-ons, it is time to install them. Installing the add-on is not difficult at all, but you must deal with these add-ons with caution. Here are some tips to avoid running into problems for your site:
- Do not install a WordPress plugin for your site unless you really need it.
- Never install more than one WordPress plugin to perform the same function, as installing more than one plugin for the same function may cause problems for your site.
- It is preferable to take a backup copy of your site files before starting to install a new plugin, so if any problem occurs, you can return to the old version.
How to install a WordPress plugin
After selecting the appropriate plugin that you decide to use on your site, you can install the plugin through simple steps in the WordPress control panel.
In the toolbar you will select (Add-ons) and then choose (Add New)
Then, you can install the add-on by searching in the built-in store for WordPress add-ons, then the add-on you want to install will appear, then click (Install Now) , then (Activate).
Or you can install it manually, by downloading the add-on to your computer, then click on the (Upload Add-on) button , then select (Browse) to upload the add-on from the computer, then after uploading the add-on you will click on the (Install Now) button.
Thus, the plugin is installed on your WordPress site, and you can control all the properties and settings of the plugin.
Conclusion
In general, sooner or later you will need to enhance your WordPress site with many plugins, to obtain other features, such as: obtaining subscribers to the mailing list, adding social sharing buttons, compressing images to improve the speed of the website, or optimizing your content for search results. . And so on.
WordPress plugins will help you facilitate this process, but the most important decision remains to make the right plugin, and not to overload plugins that you do not need now.
We hope that this article will be useful to you in deciding which additions are most appropriate for you in the beginning. If you have an idea about doing a specific task on your site, ask us in the comments and we will answer you with the most appropriate addition for you to do that task.
