“What plugins should I use with WordPress?” is a question I hear often.
Plugins add functionality to your WordPress website. They can add fun things or functional things.
A lot of plugins have a free and a paid version. The free version is great to get started. If you want more features, you can upgrade to the paid version.
I’ve been building WordPress websites since 2017. I’ve tested a lot of plugins. Some fun, some functional and some site-crashing disasters.
When I ask around about which plugins are essential, though, the same 4 keep popping up. They all have free versions and they’re on all my websites.
Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress by MonsterInsights
This plugin takes your Google Analytics identifier and pulls all sorts of great information for you right onto your WordPress dashboard.
With very little effort, this plugin tracks:
- The number of visitors to your site
- How many pages were viewed
- The length of time visitors spent on your site
- How many people left without looking at anything
All valuable information when you’re trying to figure out how people are interacting with your site.
UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore
Backups. The small business website safety net. DO NOT ignore this one.
Every time you make a change to your website that works the way it should, backup your site. UpdraftPlus makes it easy so there’s no excuse.
There have only been a handful of times when something went so horribly wrong that I needed to restore a backup but… It’s happened enough times that I am a fanatical backer-upper now. And UpdraftPlus is my plugin of choice.
Wordfence Security
I’m a little late to the party on WordPress security. WordPress has been secure all by itself for a very long time. I installed it after it kept coming up on other lists of “must have” plugins.
The free version of Wordfence will track:
- Admin logins to your site
- Plugin updates
- Failed logins
- Changes to your website
It also tells you about blocked IP addresses, blocked countries and recently blocked attacks. All good things to know!
Their emails also provide great information on the latest attacks that, although might not directly affect your site, are good to know about anyways.
Yoast SEO
Yoast is the go-to plugin for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is all about getting users to your site from Google, Safari, Bing and others.
Yoast gives you more places to add information to make your website content more attractive to search engines like Google. It also gives you hints on how to make your posts and pages better.
You can add Key Phrases – the things you think people will search for to find your website and Meta-descriptions to give search engines more to look at.
Yoast even “scores” each page and post to let you know how many SEO boxes you’ve ticked!
Recent Additions
W3 Total Cache
I was looking to improve the loading speeds on my websites and 3 people recommended this plugin.
Web caching is a way to use a stored version of a web page instead of reloading it every time. I don’t pretend to know all the techie details. I did, however, increase my score on GTMetrix after adding this plugin.
GDPR Cookie Consent
Doing business all over the world – as you do on the Internet – you have to be mindful of international rules.
One of these rules is letting your website visitors know that you might be storing information about their visit. And gain their consent for storing that information.
This plugin gives you an easy way to let people know that you use “cookies”. They can then opt to let you have whatever information you collect (outlined clearly in your Privacy Policy, of course)… or not.
You may not need this in your part of the world but, if you do, this is a great plugin.
Considering
I’m now looking at an Accessibility plugin. I’m in the early stages of research so haven’t chosen one yet. But with the new accessibility rules that came into effect on January 1, 2021 I’m thinking it might be a good thing.
Want to know more about these new accessibility rules? Check out this blog post!
Yes, I do use other plugins. But they’re specific-use ones and I only install them when I need them. As great as plugins are, they can slow down your website.
How about you? Are there any WordPress plugins you can’t do without? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!
