When creating your WordPress website you will need the support of essential Plugins that will make your site more dynamic with more features and capabilities.
Plugins are pieces of scripts or tools that once added they are immediately applicable on your WordPress site.
Knowing which Plugins to use will save you time, will make your site more efficient and effective, and most importantly to use the right ones, and not any Plugins that can have an adverse effect such as capturing too much database space, making your site slower, or create errors.
In addition, as you already may know, Plugins have their free and premium version. A free version is one where you can use the Plugin for free up to a certain level, whereas with premium you can use the advanced version of the Plugin with all its features and capabilities with a small fee, e.g. lifetime, monthly payment, etc.
Therefore, from our expertise and experience we are recommending a list of superb Plugins (kindly note that we are not going to cover them in detail in this article) that you can even use their free version and still have great results:
A. Yoast SEO
This is the greatest Plugin for SEO purposes. It is used for optimizing content across your website’s pages and articles. Yoast SEO provides a detailed checklist for the webmaster thus clearly showing which SEO points were successfully met and which not.
B. Yoast Duplicate Post
This is another exceptional tool that you can use for duplicating posts and pages. For example, if you were to create a new page or article with some slightly content changes, or would like to keep a similar structure without having to start from scratch, then this Plugin is the perfect one.
C. GDPR Cookie Consent
The GDPR Cookie Consent is a great plugin for your website’s cookies policy. It is a pop up that appears once the users visit your website, notifying them that you are applying cookies on your site and you need their consent by them clicking on the “Accept” button.
D. UpdraftPlus – Backup / Restore
This is another superb Plugin that enables you, as the webmaster, to safely backup your website at any point in time, and in the scenario that something goes wrong you can always restore your database from the current backups that you already have in store.
E. WP-Optimize
The WP-Optimize Plugin helps your website on optimization, such as optimizing your databases, compressing your images that are too big in size, as well as performing cache. These factors support your website with performance and increase loading speed.
F. Advanced Database Cleaner
This tool is similar to the WP-Optimize where you can clean your database and make you website load faster. The combination of these two Plugins, WP-Optimize and Advanced Database Cleaner brings a better and superb outcome for your website’s optimization level.
G. Header Footer Code Manager
This is a fantastic Plugin for non developer webmasters and users. This tool enables you to add scripts of code to your website’s header and footer without interfering with your website’s code. For example, if you wish to install your Google Analytics code, your Google Ads Conversion Action, and anything other similar code scripts you can imagine, you can always do so with this Plugin.
H. WPFront Scroll Top
To make your users’ experience easier, this Plugin helps them scroll to the top of pages or articles if they have already scrolled to far lower levels of a page or article. With a click on the scroll top icon your users’ view goes straight to the top.
I. Simple Custom CSS and JS
This specific Plugin assists website masters and owners to add customs CSS and JavaScript should they wish to interfere with their website’s design layout, code wise.
J. Coming Soon Page, Maintenance Mode & Landing Pages by SeedProd
Usually prior to launching a new website, or during times where maintenance takes place, we wish to inform our users who visit our website with a fully loaded coming soon or maintenance page. With the use of this Plugin, you can create lovely, and to the point, coming soon or maintenance mode pages.
K. Easy Social Icons
In the scenario where you are finding difficulties, mainly for your website’s footer, in creating social media icons with direct links to the relevant social media pages, with the help of this Plugin you can do your setup without any issues.
L. Easy Google Fonts
In the condition where you are missing some fonts that are not presented within your chosen WordPress theme, either free or premium, you can always use this Plugin to add your favorite font.
M. Contact Form 7
This is a lovely Plugin for creating various types of forms in collecting users’ data from your website. You can customize the forms as per your needs and requirements.
U. Flamingo
The Flamingo tool goes along with the above Plugin, the Contact Form 7. It acts mainly as the CRM of Contact Form 7. When a user submits his or her details on Contact Form 7, as the webmaster you are not only getting an email notification, but you have all your users data nicely in place.
Important Note: The below Plugins are for those who aim to create an online store (selling tangible or intangible products directly online) via the WooCommerce Plugin that has a set of lovely extensions. We will also answer the questions of “what Plugins do I need for WordPress when it comes to ecommerce”.
O. WooCommerce
This is the number one online store Plugin in WordPress. If you wish to create a super advanced, user-friendly and awesome ecommerce store then this Plugin has all it takes to take you to the next level of online sales.
P. WooCommerce Stipe Gateway
This extension is very important, as it acts as an integration tool between your online store and your payment gateway. Your payment gateway defines the method or tool that enables you to be able to receive payments online from your users which are the prospect buyers of your products or services. Stripe is one of the top payment providers out there.
Q. WooCommerce Products Per Page
This superb tool helps you create a mechanism within your website that users can choose how many products they wish to view per page e.g. 25, 50, 100, etc.
R. WooCommerce Weight Based Shipping
This is an advanced tool which is mainly used by online store owners who wish to include an additional price on their products’ selling price due to shipping costs from the supplier of the products. For example, if you are selling a product for 50 but to ship it to the end buyer, the shipping cost is 20, then the final selling price to the end user would be 50 + 20 = 70.
S. WOOF – WooCommerce Products Filter
This Plugin is essential for online stores that have thousands of products, as it makes it extremely difficult for the users to search precisely what they are looking for. With this great tool, all products are filtered and presented in such a format that makes it super easy for the users to tick or select the products, categories of products, colors, and any other element they wish, for reaching their product of choice.
T. WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration
This analytics Plugin is a masterpiece and goes in hand with WooCommerce. It assists you, the webmaster, to view in real time or as historical data, all your users’ key actions prior to purchasing your products or services online, e.g. Add to Cart, Checkout, etc.
U. Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce
This is one of the extensions that do the magic with WooCommerce. It is superbly useful for you and your users in keeping track of the location and time of a purchased product until delivery. Generally, this Plugin works solely with the shipping and delivery of tangible products. It takes into consideration all worldwide couriers, such as DHL, FedEx, and all the rest.
You now can answer the question of “what plugins do I need for WordPress”.
Moreover, you can always visit one of our sites where we help with the execution of your Online Marketing needs.
For more information you can always communicate with us.
