WordPress plugins are small apps that enhance the features and functionality of any WordPress website. With plugins, we can make our website easy to use, rich in features, and more flexible.
Plugins can also save time and effort by automating tasks or processes. For example, you could use a plugin to schedule and publish social media posts or create backups of the websites regularly.
WordPress Plugins can be free or paid; you can find them by searching the WordPress plugin directory or purchasing them from a third-party website.
Why We Need WordPress Plugins
WordPress plugins are useful because they can handle many factors in the website without complex coding knowledge.
For example, a plugin like Contact Form can be used if we want to add a contact form. Or, if you want to improve the website’s search engine optimization (SEO), you could use a plugin like RankMath or Yoast SEO for better visibility on search engines.
25 Must-Have WordPress Plugins in 2023
There are over 55000+ plugins in the WordPress directory, and the number is regularly increasing. In this article, we will discuss the top 15 plugins that will help you in your WordPress journey and keep your website running without any issues.
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1. Rank Math SEO
Rank Math plugin is one of the best SEO plugins and helps optimize the WordPress website for Search Engines. It is a great replacement for Yoast SEO. It offers many great features in the free account, which are as follows:
- Keyword Optimization: It helps you identify the best keywords to target in the content and provides stats that help you optimize it.
- On-Page SEO: The plugin offers tools for optimizing the website’s titles, descriptions, and other on-page elements to improve search engine rankings.
- Sitemap: RankMath generates a sitemap for the website, which helps search engines understand and index your content more effectively.
- Analytics: The plugin provides tools that allow you to track a website’s performance and see how content is performing in search results.
- Redirect Manager: Rank Math plugin includes a redirect manager with which we can create and manage redirects on your website. This can be useful if you have changed the URL of a page or post or if you want to redirect traffic from an old URL to a new one.
- Rich Snippets: You can create rich snippets for the website, which are additional information displayed in search results. This can help your content stand out and improve the CTR.
- Local SEO: RankMath includes options for optimizing the WordPress website for local search results, including the ability to add your business’s location, phone number, and other details.
- Image SEO: The plugin provides options to optimize website images for search engines, like adding alt text, etc.
- SEO Analysis: Rank Math provides an SEO analysis tool that helps in identifying and fixing common SEO issues.
- SEO for Custom Post Types: Optimize custom post types on your websites, such as portfolio items or products.
- Automatic Internal Linking: The plugin includes a feature that suggests internal links within the content to help improve the website’s navigation.
- Advanced SEO Settings: Customize advanced SEO settings for the website, including the ability to set custom canonical URLs and no-index tags for specific pages or posts.
- Breadcrumb Navigation: Add breadcrumb navigation to the site, which can help improve the user experience and make it easier for visitors to find their way around their site.
- Automatic XML sitemap: Rank Math automatically generates an XML sitemap and helps search engines understand and index the content.
- SEO for Categories: The plugin allows you to optimize the website’s categories.
- Content AI: This feature provides helpful stats for written content. It analyzes the content and tells you what needs to be added or removed from the post for better search engine ranking, such as total words, external links, images, etc.
- It has several more features like AMP, 404 monitoring, etc.
2. Google Site Kit
Google Site Kit is one of the best plugins to connect your website to various Google services, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google AdSense.
Connecting your website to these services allows you to access valuable insights and tools that can help understand the website’s performance. Some of the things you can do with Google Site Kit:
- View the website’s traffic and performance data in Google Analytics.
- See how the website performs on Google Search and get tips for improving your rankings.
- Monitor the website’s search traffic and keywords using Google Search Console.
- Connect the website to Google AdSense to show ads on your site and earn money.
- Get insights into how a website performs on mobile devices and see which pages are most popular.
3. Sucuri Security
It is an essential WordPress security plugin that helps protect your website from various types of threats, such as malware, cyber-attacks, and spam. Listing some features that Sucuri offers:
- Malware Scanning: Sucuri can scan the website for malware and other malicious code and alert you if it finds any harmful code.
- Firewall: The plugin includes a firewall that can block malicious traffic and protect your website from common attacks.
- File Integrity Monitoring: Sucuri can monitor your website’s files for changes and alert you if it detects any suspicious activity.
- Security Hardening: The plugin offers tools for strengthening the website’s security, such as disabling certain WordPress features that hackers can exploit.
- Security Notifications: It can send notifications if it detects issues or potential threats on the website.
- DDoS Protection: Protect against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which can overwhelm your website with traffic and make it unavailable.
- Blacklist Monitoring: The plugin can monitor your website’s reputation and alert you if it appears on any blacklists or is flagged as suspicious by search engines or other security services.
- Security Logs: Sucuri keeps a log of all security-related activity, which can be useful for identifying and troubleshooting issues.
- Security Training: The plugin offers training and resources to help improve security and stay up-to-date on the latest threats.
- Advanced Security Options: Sucuri includes advanced security options for more experienced users, including the ability to customize the firewall and set up custom security rules.
4. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is designed to improve the performance of your website by creating a static version of the website and serving it to the users. This can reduce the load time of the pages and improve the user experience. Some of the features that WP Total Cache offers include:
- Page caching: The plugin creates a static version of the website’s pages and serves them to visitors, which can reduce the load time.
- Object caching: WP Total Cache can cache common objects, such as database queries and API calls, to improve performance.
- Database Cache: Offers database cache option as well.
- Minify/Combine: The plugin can minify and combine HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to reduce the size of the pages and increase the loading speed.
- Gzip Compression: With this feature, you can compress a website’s files using Gzip, which can further reduce the size of the pages and improve the loading time.
- CDN Integration: The plugin allows you to integrate your website with a content delivery network (CDN) like Cloudflare.
- Mobile Support: WP Total Cache includes features to optimize your website’s performance on mobile devices.
- Transient Cache: The plugin includes a transient cache, which can cache certain WordPress data, such as plugin and theme settings.
- Caching for Logged-In Users: WP Total Cache can cache pages and objects for logged-in users.
- Debug Mode: WP Total Cache includes a debug mode that allows you to troubleshoot any issues with the plugin and see how it affects the website’s performance.
- Lazy Loading: The plugin includes a feature for lazy loading of the images.
- Import and Export Settings: The plugin allows you to import and export all plugin settings, which can be useful if you want to use the same settings on multiple websites.
5. WPS Hide Login
You can now change the URL of the website login page and login form. By default, the login page URL for a WordPress website is “example.com/wp-login.php.”
WPS Hide Login allows you to change this URL to something else, making it more difficult for hackers and other unauthorized users to find the address. With this, you can do the following activities:
- Custom Login URL: You can choose a custom URL for the login page to hide it from other users.
- Custom Redirects: WP Hide Login allows you to set custom redirects for various login-related actions, such as logging in or out.
- Security: By changing the URL of the login page, you can help improve the security of your website.
- Compatibility: The plugin is compatible with a wide range of WordPress themes and plugins and is actively supported by the developer.
6. Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 allows you to add contact forms to the website. Contact forms allow visitors to send you messages or inquiries through your website and can be a useful way to communicate with the audience. Some of the features that Contact Form 7 offers are:
- Customizable Forms: The plugin allows you to create custom contact forms with various fields, including text fields, email fields, and dropdown menus. You can also customize the appearance of the forms using HTML and CSS.
- Spam Protection: It includes features to protect forms from spam, such as CAPTCHA and Akismet integration.
- Shortcodes: The plugin uses shortcodes to insert forms into the website’s pages and posts.
- Multiple Forms: Contact Form 7 allows you to create and use multiple forms on different pages or posts.
- Email Notifications: The plugin can send email notifications when someone submits a form, allowing you to stay in touch with the audience easily.
- AJAX-Powered Forms: It supports AJAX, allowing your forms to submit data and update the page without a full page refresh.
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7. Akismet
The Akismet plugin is developed to protect WordPress websites from spam comments. It works by analyzing incoming comments and identifying patterns that are common to spam. If it detects a spam comment, it will mark it as spam and prevent it from being published on your website. Some of the Akismet features are:
- Spam Detection: The plugin uses advanced algorithms and machine learning to detect spam comments.
- Comment Moderation: If Akismet detects a comment as spam, it will place it in a moderation queue. You can then review it and decide whether to approve it or not.
- Comment History: Akismet keeps a history of all comments on your website, including those marked as spam.
- API Key: The plugin requires an API key to function, which you can obtain for free by creating an Akismet account.
8. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus creates backups of the website and restores them if needed. Backups are important because they allow you to recover a website if something goes wrong, such as if your website is hacked or if you accidentally delete important files. Some of the features that UpdraftPlus includes:
- Automatic Backup: The plugin can automatically create backups of the website on a schedule you set, such as daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Backup Storage: UpdraftPlus allows you to store backups in various locations, including on the web server, cloud storage platforms like Google Drive or Dropbox, or remote FTP servers.
- Restore Backups: The plugin includes a restore feature that allows you to easily restore your website from a backup if something goes wrong.
- File Exclusion: It allows you to exclude certain files or folders from the backups, which can be useful if you have large files that don’t need to be backed up.
9. MailMunch
A beautiful plugin to create and manage email opt-in forms and marketing campaigns. Email opt-in forms collect email addresses from visitors, which can be used later to send newsletters, promotional emails, etc. Some important features of the MailMunch plugin are:
- Email Opt-In Forms: The plugin allows you to create custom email opt-in forms that you can place on your website. You can customize the look of the forms using various template options.
- Email Marketing Campaigns: MailMunch includes features for creating and managing email marketing campaigns. You can send emails to the list and track the results of campaigns.
- Integrations: MailMunch integrates with various email marketing platforms, such as MailChimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact.
- Landing Pages: Create landing pages designed to get users’ email addresses and other information.
- Split Testing: MailMunch allows you to split-test your email opt-in forms and landing pages to see which versions perform the best.
- Mobile-Responsive Forms: MailMunch’s forms are designed to be mobile-responsive, which means they will automatically adjust their layout to fit the screen size.
- Exit-Intent Technology: The plugin includes exit-intent technology, which allows users to display email opt-in forms to visitors when they are about to leave the website.
- Customizable Trigger Events: You can customize the trigger events that cause email forms to be displayed, such as when a visitor scrolls to a certain point on the page or clicks a specific link.
- Custom Fields: You can add custom fields to your email forms to collect additional information from users, such as their names or location.
- Google Analytics Integration: MailMunch integrates with Google Analytics, allowing you to track the performance of forms and landing pages.
10. Monarch (Premium)
Free Alternative: Sassy Social Share and AccessPress Social Share
Monarch is developed by Elegant Themes. It allows you to add social media sharing buttons to your website. With these buttons, visitors can share the website’s content on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or Email as well. Monarch is awesome for the following reasons:
- Customizable Buttons: You can customize the look of the sharing buttons, including the size, shape, and color.
- Multiple Locations: You will see several locations where you can display sharing buttons, such as at the top or bottom of the posts and pages, in the sidebar or in the floating sidebar.
- Automatic Placement: Automatically place social media sharing buttons using predefined rules.
- Social Media Networks: It has buttons for many popular social media networks, including FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
- Stats Tracking: The plugin also tracks the number of user content shares.
11. WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize helps in improving the performance and speed of the website. It optimizes the website’s database. Top features that WP-Optimize offers:
- Database Optimization: Optimize the website database by removing unnecessary data and improving its structure. This can help improve the performance of the website.
- Automatic Optimization: WP-Optimize can automatically optimize databases at a scheduled time, such as daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Scheduled Cleanup: The plugin can automatically clean up the database on a schedule, removing unnecessary data and keeping it organized.
12. WP Smushit
With WP Smushit, you can optimize the images of the website. Optimizing images can reduce the pages’ size and improve the posts’ loading time. Some of the features that WP Smush offers include:
- Image Optimization: The plugin can optimize the images by reducing the file size without losing quality.
- Auto Process: It can automatically optimize the images when uploaded, or we can optimize them later in bulk.
- Lossless Optimization: This plugin provides lossless compression by preserving the appearance of the images.
- Integrations: The plugin integrates with popular image CDN services such as Cloudinary and Kraken.io.
- Lazy Load Images: WP Smush includes a lazy load feature that allows the loading of images only as they are needed.
- API Integration: WP Smush integrates with the WordPress REST API, which allows you to compress images through external applications.
13. TablePress
TablePress plugin allows you to create and manage tables. These tables display data, such as lists, schedules, or prices, in an organized way. Some important features of TablePress are:
- Customizable Tables: Create custom tables with various columns and rows, and customize the design using various options.
- Table Data: You can manually enter data into your tables or import a spreadsheet or CSV file.
- Filters: TablePress includes options to filter and sort the data, which can be useful for finding specific information.
- Shortcodes: It uses shortcodes to display tables into posts or pages
- Table Search: It includes a search feature that allows you to search data for specific keywords or phrases.
- Table Pagination: You can split tables into multiple pages, which can be useful if there is a large amount of data to display.
- Responsive Design: The plugin includes features that allow tables to adjust their layout automatically to fit the screen resolution.
- Import and Export: We can import and export tables as Excel or CSV files to work on them in a spreadsheet program.
14. Really Simple SSL
Really Simple SSL helps configure websites to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. SSL and TLS are security protocols that help protect the data transmitted between your website and user browsers. Some important features of Really Simple SSL are:
- SSL Detection: The plugin detects if a website has an SSL certificate installed and automatically enables SSL and TLS protocols on your website.
- Mixed Content Fixer: This feature helps fix mixed content issues, which can occur when the website includes both secure (HTTPS) and non-secure (HTTP) content.
- Automatic Redirects: The plugin can automatically redirect visitors from non-secure (HTTP) pages to secure (HTTPS) pages, which helps ensure that all traffic to the website is encrypted.
- HSTS Header: Really Simple SSL includes an HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) header, which helps prevent man-in-the-middle attacks by telling web browsers to only communicate with websites using secure connections.
- Multisite Support: The plugin is compatible with WordPress multisite installations. It enables SSL and TLS protocols for all the sites in the network.
15. Ad Inserter
With Ad Inserter, you can easily insert ads on the website. This plugin is used to display ads from advertising networks, such as Google AdSense, or to insert custom content, such as banners or promotional material. Ad Inserter offers the following features:
- Multiple Ad Blocks: The plugin allows you to create multiple ad blocks and customize their placement on the website.
- Automatic Insertion: Ad Inserter can automatically insert ad blocks into the website based on our predefined criteria, such as after a certain number of paragraphs or at the end of a post.
- Custom Insertion: You can also manually insert ads using shortcodes as well.
- Ad Scheduling: Ad Inserter includes tools for scheduling ads to be displayed at certain times or periods.
- Ad Blocking Support: The plugin helps prevent ad blockers from blocking your ads, which can help improve revenue.
- Advanced Targeting: With advanced targeting options, you can display specific ad blocks to certain visitors, such as those from specific countries or using specific devices.
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16. FS Poster (Freemium)
FS Poster allows you to automatically post content from your WordPress site to your Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.
Once activated, you must connect the plugin to your social media accounts by providing login credentials. Once the plugin is connected, you can configure the settings to determine how and when your content will be shared.
Some features of WordPress FS Poster include:
- Ability to schedule posts in advance
- Customize the text and formatting of the posts
- Exclude certain types of content from being shared
- Share images, videos, and other media along with your content.
Conclusion
If you are beginning your WordPress journey, this list will help you. My explanations of must-have WordPress plugins have been helpful! There are thousands of WordPress plugins, each with its specific purpose and features. Choose them as per your requirements.
Please feel free to ask your queries in the comment section.
