To keep your site protected and running smoothly…
The basics
Here is a list of plugins that are really needed for you WordPress installation to keep things running smoothly and out of trouble. I have personally used each one of the plugins listed below and they are my standard go-to’s.
- Jetpack – Jet pack offers so much stuff, you’d be crazy not to take advantage of the features available at your disposal. Free items such site analytics, social media integration, site security, Up/down time notifications, carousel & slideshow features, sidebar customization, super helpful widgets and much, much more. This is the plugin that I usually install first.
- Akismet – Spam catcher/filter. I cannot imagine how badly my websites would be totally overrun with horrific spamming comments, links to shady sites or otherwise without this installed.
- UpdraftPlus – a very highly ranked back up program for good reason! It has all sorts of options for daily or weekly automated backups and all the other typical necessities including quick restore options. It even lets you choose where to back up the files to- Dropbox, FTP, Amazon S3 or a ton of other places.
- Yoast SEO – This is a pretty extensive plugin that dives deep into SEO, Keywords, meta and link info. This thing also does some pretty through page analysis and provides some helpful suggestions on how to fix what’s lacking in the SEO for your individual pages. 4.8 stars with 8000+ review doesn’t lie.
- W3 Total Cache – Use this to help speed up the retrieval of your website to get it below the sacred 3-4sec it takes for a visitor to decide whether to stay or leave your site. Tons of options and advanced tweaks are available for those needing to play, but don’t worry- it works pretty great right out of the “box”.
Bonus plugins
While not the essentials (they still kinda are for me), these plugins are fantastic for just making your life easier in general.
- Broken Link Checker – a godsend. This little baby will send you a notification any time an external link or image goes MIA on your site. Of course you can tell it how often you want it to notify you about said links and you can set the frequency
- Beaver Builder – super helpful page builder for making custom page and post layouts with WordPress. It’s drag and drop for simplicity, but it still allows for complex re-arrangements when screen sizes shrink and margins change. On top of that, it is based on short codes so it doesn’t jack with your content even if you decide to stop using it for some reason. Slick!
Let me know what you use for your essential plugins below!
Cheers!
-Matthew Vazquez