WordPress is an open source content management system that provides great flexibility in dealing with plugins, so you will find more than 65 thousand different WordPress plugins available for free or paid use on WordPress.
You can find hundreds of different plugins in one category, so you may find it difficult to choose the most appropriate WordPress plugin for your website, especially for beginners.
Therefore, the main goal of today’s article is to prepare a list of the best WordPress plugins so that it will be a main reference for you when creating a new website that you can rely on to install all the major plugins for your site.
The list of the best WordPress plugins in today’s article was prepared by examining and testing a large group of different WordPress plugins in all categories, for example, protection, speed, search engine optimization, and much more, in addition to our previous experience in preparing WordPress sites, and that list will be presented in an organized manner with Explaining the importance and features of each addition separately, so continue reading with us.
What are WordPress plugins?
WordPress plugins are ready-made software files that are downloaded and installed on your website in order to provide a specific feature or feature directly on your site.
Certainly, the WordPress content management system comes with a set of basic features, but website owners need some other basic additions, for example, protecting and securing the website, increasing its speed, improving the site’s performance in search engines, and other things, along with some special features such as preparing special lists and tables, alert notifications, and much more.
These features can easily be added by directly entering the WordPress plugin store and searching for the desired feature, and you will find hundreds of plugins that provide it to you in different forms and directly.
Therefore, it can be said that WordPress plugins will save you a lot of effort and time in providing additional features on your website in various specializations, and will also provide you with programming experience in dealing with programming languages, as the WordPress plugin mostly consists of three programming languages: CSS, PHP, and JS.
But the biggest problem arises in choosing the best and most appropriate addition to your website from among the many available options, and this is what we will discuss in the next paragraph, so continue reading with us.
List of the best WordPress plugins
As we mentioned in the introduction, there are thousands of plugins available in various categories on WordPress, so in the following list we will present to you the best WordPress plugins in all the basic categories, explaining an introductory overview of each plugin separately, along with an explanation of all the features and a direct link to the plugin on the WordPress plugin store.
1- Add JetPack
The JetPack plugin is one of the most important completely free WordPress plugins. It was programmed by the Automattic team, which oversees the programming and development of the WordPress platform, and is used by more than 5 million users around the world.
You may find the JetPack plugin pre-installed on the WordPress system and only needs to be activated. What distinguishes it is that it is multi-use, as it provides a wide range of basic features of WordPress in one plugin, and the most important of these features are the following:
- The JetPack add-on is completely free.
- View and analyze all website statistics in terms of the number of visitors to the website in general, the source of visits, and the number of visits to each page separately.
- Automatically protect your WordPress website from comments and spam emails.
- It provides AMP templates for WordPress sites which makes the site look better on mobile phones while improving search engines as well.
- The ability to display and control related articles and pages on your website.
- The ability to allow visitors to your website to comment under articles or pages by registering with a WordPress account, Facebook account, or Twitter account.
- Providing the feature of sending notifications to site visitors by registering by email.
The JetPack plugin provides many other features, so it is considered one of the essential WordPress plugins for your website.
Link to add Jetpack to WordPress
2- Add WordFence
The WordFence add-on is one of the most important WordPress add-ons in securing and protecting websites. It is used by more than 4 million users around the world and is an official add-on from WordFence, a leading company in the field of protection in general.
The WordFence plugin provides an easy main control panel that you can rely on to control all security matters on your website, in addition to an advanced firewall to stop all hacking attempts and provides many other security features, the most important of which are the following:
- Monitor the traffic of visitors on your website and automatically block movements that could threaten the security of your website.
- Detect and repair damaged files on your website periodically.
- The ability to completely block a specific country or IP device from accessing your website, with the ability to customize the blocking message that appears to visitors according to the custom category.
- Scan your site periodically for threats, security vulnerabilities, and compromised files, and delete or remediate those files immediately.
Link to add WordFence to WordPress
3- Add Updraftplus
Adding WordFence is not enough to fully secure your site, but you also need to store a backup copy of your site so that you can refer to it if a security or technical problem occurs that you cannot completely solve.
Some hosting companies provide you with a backup feature, but if it is not available or available on a paid basis, you can rely on the Updraftplus add-on , as it is one of the best WordPress add-ons in the field of backup.
The Updraftplus add-on provides you with a group of important insurance features, the most important of which are the following:
- The Updraftplus plugin provides a simple control interface within the main WordPress control panel, which helps you take a backup of your site and restore it with one click without any technical experience.
- The ability to automatically take a backup copy of your site at customized intervals, starting from one hour to 30 days, with the ability to also take a manual backup at the time you want.
- The ability to store offline backup files on your computer.
- It provides cloud storage options such as Google Drive, Amazon S3, Dropbox, and many others, so you can restore your site from an external control panel if you cannot access your website’s control panel.
- You can rely on the Updraftplus add-on to clone your WordPress site files from one hosting company to another company with all the website files and databases.
Link to Updraftplus plugin on WordPress
4- Add Akismet
The Akismet plugin is one of the main WordPress plugins that is installed in most versions of WordPress automatically and only needs to be activated. It was programmed by the Automattic team, like the JetPack plugin as well, and is used by more than 5 million different websites around the world.
The Akismet plugin is used to filter spam messages and comments through the API service, and thus it can access all messages and comments in the WordPress system, and it provides you with the following features:
- Akismet helps your website’s comments and messages be queued and deleted only after review by a site moderator or after a specified period of time.
- The ability to sort comments and messages by site moderators and thus you can review the roles and performance of moderators on your website.
- The Akismet plugin is publicly networked on over 5 million sites, so if a comment or message is blocked on one site, it is automatically deleted on all other sites, thus helping to increase the accuracy of comment and site message sorting tools.
- Akismet provides the ability to detect and control links posted within comments and the ability to prevent custom links from being added.
Link to the Akismet plugin on WordPress
5- Add Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO plugin is one of the most important WordPress plugins that improves your website’s performance in search engines and is also used by more than 5 million users.
The Yoast SEO add-on contains a set of powerful tools that help examine and test the content of the website, including articles and pages, provide search engine compatibility advice, and provide a wide range of features as follows:
- The ability to specify a main and sub-keyword in the article or page to organize and direct the traffic of search spiders on your website.
- Examine the contents of articles or pages of your website and determine the strengths, weaknesses, and tips for developing the article for search engines.
- The ability to specify the title and description of the article to improve and organize the appearance of your website on search engine pages.
- The Yoast SEO plugin helps you control the features of archiving your website in search engines, for example, archiving internal links, tags, etc.
- Study the readability of your website articles and pages and provide tips that help improve readability for visitors.
- The ability to create XML maps on your website from within the WordPress control panel itself and control them completely as well.
Link to Yoast SEO plugin on WordPress
6- Add WPForms
All websites need a contact form in order for visitors to your website to easily reach you, and one of the best professional WordPress plugins that you can rely on to prepare contact forms is the WPForms plugin , which has more than 5 million active users.
The WPForms add-on helps you create contact schedules in a flexible and customized manner, with the ability to prepare custom templates or tables and include them on your website pages. The WPForms add-on provides many different features, the most important of which are the following:
- The user interface of the WPForms plugin is simple, helping you create a contact form by dragging and dropping and then editing, so you do not need any technical experience at all, as well as allocating custom fields to suit the requirements of your website.
- The WPForms plugin contains a set of ready-made templates that you can use and modify directly.
- The ability to secure the contact form from robot and hack files by adding an additional authentication step based on hCaptcha or reCAPTCHA authentication.
- The ability to include connection tables on all pages of your website using simple HTML codes or short table code.
- The ability to link from email to follow contact forms and send notifications to your email.
Link to Yoast SEO plugin on WordPress
7- Add AddToAny
Social media is one of the most important criteria that helps speed up the spread of your website and also improve your site’s overall performance with respect to search engines.
There are many WordPress plugins dedicated to sharing on social media platforms, but one of the most important of these plugins is the AddToAny plugin, as it provides many features, the most important of which are the following:
- It supports publishing your website content on more than 80 different social media platforms, for example, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many others.
- The ability to customize sharing buttons on social media sites to suit your website interface.
- The ability to include sharing buttons on social networking sites permanently next to the articles and pages of your website, or customize the location of the buttons in the introduction, middle, or conclusion of the article.
- The ability to show the number of followers of your website pages on social media platforms in designated boxes.
AddToAny plugin link on WordPress
8- Add WP Mail SMTP
By default, WordPress uses the PHP services function in all WordPress email services, which is one of the common WordPress flaws that affect sending and receiving messages and notifications, for example delaying sending of email activation message, etc.
The WP Mail SMTP plugin solves most email problems, so it is one of the most important basic WordPress plugins, which has more than 3 million users. The WP Mail SMTP plugin provides you with many features, the most important of which are the following:
- Relying on SMTP services instead of PHP services for all email services on the website.
- Compatibility and connectivity with most external email services, for example, ZOHO or Mailcheap, and many others.
- The ability to fully customize and control e-mail messages to suit your website interface.
- The ability to track emails sent from your website.
- It covers all security vulnerabilities in email services and also helps to sort spam messages automatically.
Link to WP Mail SMTP plugin on WordPress
9- Add Smush
Images are one of the essential elements on all pages of your website, and it can be said that more than 50% of the size of a web page is only images. This means that improving your website’s images is reflected in improving your site’s performance in general, as well as improving your site’s performance in search engines.
One of the free WordPress plugins for improving and dealing with website images is the Smush plugin, which provides you with many features, the most important of which are the following:
- Compress all website images, whether previously uploaded images or images that will be uploaded in the future, completely automatically, without affecting the quality of the images.
- The ability to specify a maximum size for images or a specific size. All site images are modified to this limit and images that will be uploaded in the future are automatically converted to the required size.
- The ability to rely on an external CDN server to handle your website images.
- The Smush plugin is compatible with all modern WordPress interface design tools, for example Elementor.
- It supports many different image formats, for example JPEG, PNG, and Webp.
- The Smush add-on provides the Lazy Load feature , which loads website pages without images, and then the images are loaded while the visitor is browsing your website, thus greatly increasing the speed of loading website pages.
Link to the Smuch plugin on WordPress
10- Add WPCode
Website owners always need to add code to their website in order to activate a service or solve a specific problem on the site, but sometimes it turns into a bigger problem when the code is added incorrectly or one of the site files is modified incorrectly, especially for beginners.
Therefore, you need to add WPCode (formerly known as Insert Headers and Footers), as it is one of the best WordPress plugins in this specialty and helps you facilitate and organize adding code to your website and provides you with many features, the most important of which are the following:
- Adding code to your website in more than one different language, for example PHP , JavaScript , CSS, and HTML, from a special control panel directly on WordPress without modifying the site files itself.
- The ability to add special programming codes to specific parts of your website, for example, the header, footer, etc.
- The WPCode plugin examines the code, identifies problems if any, and suggests the appropriate solution before adding it to your website.
Link to add WPCode to WordPress
11- Add WP Rocket
The WP Rocket plugin is one of the most important paid WordPress plugins that helps improve the performance of your website and which more than a million active users rely on for their websites.
The WP Rocket add-on is a multi-use add-on that increases site speed, compresses page size, image processing, and many other features. The most important of these features are the following:
- Control your website’s cache settings and provide appropriate recommendations to increase the speed of your website’s use by visitors.
- The WP Rocket add-on compresses all your website files, especially CSS and Javascript files, removes junk files, etc., and thus significantly increases the site’s loading speed.
- The ability to activate the Lazy Load feature, which also helps increase the loading speed of your website pages.
- Possibility of connecting to external CDNs.
- It supports integration with many other platforms, for example Cloudflare, Sucuri, and many others.
12- Add WP Notification Bar
The notification bar is one of the most important ways to increase the conversion rate on your website and also increase sales by attracting visitors to the available offers and discounts.
There are many plugins in the field of pop-up notifications, but one of the most important professional WordPress plugins for notifications is the WP Notification Bar plugin, as it provides you with the following features:
- The WP Notification Bar plugin provides you with the ability to display a notification bar in designated places on your website, for example in the header or at the top of articles, etc., with the ability to fully control and customize the notification bar.
- The ability to promote ads or offers through a pop-up window that appears to visitors to your website.
- The ability to interactively display a custom counter either in the notification bar or as a pop-up window to your website visitors.
- The WP Notification Bar plugin provides the ability to display your website’s social media pages in a pop-up form to your site visitors in order to increase the number of followers.
Link to add WP Notification Bar on WordPress
13- Add Redirection
Redirection is one of the most important and oldest free WordPress plugins that more than a million users rely on to solve common web problems that appear on WordPress sites.
This is because web problems negatively affect the user experience and increase the bounce rate significantly and thus also affect search engines, especially problems with 404 pages, because it is difficult for you to track all 404 pages on your website, so adding Redirection helps solve most of these problems and provides the following features:
- Redirection plugin is completely free.
- A simple control panel helps you control all redirects from 404 error pages in an organized manner.
- It helps you track most of the 4XX family web issues on your website and help resolve those issues.
- The Redirection plugin helps you organize cookie-related redirections, especially in online stores.
Link to add Redirection to WordPress
14- Add Really Simple SSL
The SSL certificate is one of the most important security certificates that gives visitors confidence in your website, and most website owners face many problems while linking the SSL certificate to the WordPress website.
Most SSL certificate problems on WordPress can be solved with the Really Simple SSL plugin, which is used by more than 5 million users because it provides the following features:
- The Really Simple SSL plugin is completely free.
- A simple control panel that helps you easily link and activate the SSL certificate with your website.
- It scans and solves all common SSL certificate problems directly, for example, the Mixed Content Error problem, the Generic SSL Protocol Error problem, and many other problems.
Link to Really Simple SSL plugin on WordPress
15- Add Monsterinsights
All website owners need to track and analyze their website visitors, and this certainly helps them develop and improve the website’s performance and support future plans.
One of the most important WordPress plugins for tracking and analyzing site visitors is the MonsterInsights plugin , which is used by more than 3 million users because it provides many features, the most important of which are the following:
- An organized control panel that helps you link and access all Google Analytics reports through your site’s WordPress panel.
- The MonsterInsights plugin provides the ability to track all your website statistics in real time.
- It helps you prepare reports on all your site articles, including visits, comments, and more.
- It also helps you analyze your website visitors in terms of source, country, interests, etc.
- The ability to link with Search Console and track the performance of your website on the Google search engine.
Link to the MonsterInsights plugin on WordPress
How to install a WordPress plugin?
WordPress plugins are easy to install on the WordPress system and do not require much technical experience, unlike installing plugins on private programming sites.
You can install WordPress plugins on your website in two ways that differ according to the method of obtaining the required plugin.
Installation directly from the WordPress website
The common way to install new WordPress plugins on your website is to rely directly on the WordPress website store, where you enter the main WordPress control panel, and from there choose Add-ons from the side menu and then choose Add New from the drop-down menu, as shown in the following image:
After that, a list of all WordPress plugins will appear. You type the name of the required plugin or a keyword related to the plugin’s function in the search box and search. You will find a large group of plugins that appear related to the search, as shown in the following image:
You then choose the appropriate add-on for your website and click on the Install Now button next to it. You will find that the button has changed to Installation in progress and it will now download and install the add-on on your website, and it may take from a minute to a maximum of 5 minutes.
After completing the installation of the add-on on your website, you will find the button converted to activation, so you click on it as shown in the following image:
In this way, a new plugin was installed and activated on your WordPress site directly from within the main control panel.
Install the private or paid add-on
Some service companies provide their add-ons with direct download links on their official website, and the same applies when purchasing a paid add-on from one of the add-on sites, for example, the Codecanyon store.
Therefore, the other way to install WordPress plugins is to rely on the manual installation steps. First, you download the required plugin in the form of a single ZIP file. After that, you enter the main WordPress panel and enter the plugins list by choosing Add-ons from the side menu, and then Add new as we explained in the previous paragraph.
Then you click on Upload Add as shown in the following image:
Now a new section will appear for you to manually install add-ons. You click on the Choose File button in order to locate the required add-on on your computer and then click on Install Now as shown in the following image:
It will now download the add-on to your website and then follow the installation steps automatically, including decompressing the add-on file and installing the add-on files. You wait until the phrase “The add-on has been installed successfully” appears until you are sure that there are no problems in the uploading or installation process, and then you press the Activate the add-on button. As shown in the following picture:
In this way, WordPress plugins have been successfully installed manually on your website, and you can delete or modify these plugins after uploading in a simple way, and this is what we will explain in the next paragraph, so continue reading with us.
Read also: How to install a WordPress plugin and activate it on your site correctly
How to delete and modify installed add-ons?
After uploading and activating the plugins on the WordPress website, you will be directed directly to the plugins page, which helps you modify or delete the plugins. You can also access it by choosing the Add-ons option from the WordPress side menu.
You search for the name of the add-on that you recently installed, for example the Woocommerce add-on. Below it, you will find a group of options that may differ from one add-on to another, but there are always two options, which are settings and disable. If you want to modify the add-on’s properties, you click on settings, as shown in the following image:
After that, you will be directed to the add-on settings page. There are some add-ons. You will not find the settings option available on the add-ons page, and you must access the add-on location designated for it on the WordPress control panel. In most cases, add-ons are located either in a separate tab or in the settings tab.
However, if you want to completely delete the add-on after installation on your website, you must first deactivate the add-on using the Disable button, and after that you will find that the add-ons page has been reloaded, and you will find that the previous options have been changed to two new options, Activate and Delete, as shown in Next picture:
After that, you click the Delete button to completely remove the plugin from WordPress. You can also reactivate the WordPress plugin by clicking the Activate button.
Tips before installing a WordPress plugin on your site
Of course, you may need other WordPress plugins other than the plugins presented in today’s article, so we will now provide you with a set of tips that may help you choose the best WordPress plugin from the options available to you, and they are as follows:
- Downloading from the official website : You will find WordPress plugins available on many sites on the Internet, whether free or paid, but do not download these plugins from those sites completely because you may find gaps in them that affect your website’s protection system. It is better to download from the official WordPress website directly. Such as the links in the section on the best WordPress plugins. However, if you want to get the paid version, you download the free version and then upgrade it to the paid version or purchase directly from famous specialized sites, for example, the Codecanyon store.
- Review the ratings and number of users of the add-on : The ratings and number of users are a simple criterion for judging the best WordPress add-on, as the greater the number of users and the higher the overall rating for the add-on indicates that most users do not face problems using that add-on and that it is widespread.
- Compatibility with WordPress versions : You must make sure that the required add-on is compatible with the version of WordPress for your website, and you will always find all versions of WordPress that are compatible with the add-on shown on its home page. The WordPress store will also show you whether it is available with your site’s version or not when you search for it. From within your site.
- Download the latest version of the add-on : Programming companies periodically update their WordPress add-ons in order to fill security gaps and solve common problems, so always be sure to download the latest available version of the add-on required to provide the best possible performance for your website.
- Conflict with other add-ons : You must do a quick search for add-ons that conflict with the add-on you want to install on your website and make sure that they do not completely conflict with your current website add-ons. If a problem occurs on your website immediately after installing the add-on or after a while, consider the solution. The first is always to stop new additions and test the solution to the problem.
- Choose a WordPress plugin carefully : Always check the extent of your need for new plugins before installing them on your website, so do not let the many available options and features motivate you to install many plugins. It is also preferable to use multiple plugins that have more than one use, in order to reduce the number of plugins. On your website, as the large number of WordPress plugins cause the website to slow down and drain server resources.
Conclusion
WordPress plugins are among the basic elements that website owners need when starting a new website to improve the performance of their website and provide additional features that help develop the site.
Due to the number of plugins and the many options for WordPress plugins available in all categories, website owners, especially beginners, may struggle to choose the best plugins suitable for their website.
Therefore, in today’s article, we presented to you a comprehensive guide to the most important WordPress plugins based on testing and examining hundreds of plugins in each specialty, mentioning an introductory overview, features, and the direct link to WordPress for each plugin separately.
If you have a specific question or inquiry regarding WordPress plugins, do not hesitate to comment below the article, and technical support will respond to you as soon as possible, God willing.
