The Top 17 WordPress Plugins for Your Website
There are a tremendous number of WordPress plugins available that can provide just about any imaginable function and service for your website. At UKHost4U, we not only provide comprehensive web hosting but also make it our business to stay atop the latest plugins for WordPress and other online utilities. Whether you are looking to boost security, make your site easier to navigate, or get a sense of who is using your site, there’s a plugin to help with it. You just have to know which ones to choose.
Here are some of our favourite plugins right now:
Security Plugins
Wordfence
Security should always be a major concern when you have a website––not only for your information but that of your users too. Wordfence is one of the finest security plugins for WordPress available and features Firewall protection, login security, traffic monitoring, and malware scans. This is truly a must-have tool for website administrators and hosts; even if you’re using another service for web hosting, you should be able to monitor your site’s security.
Akismet
Even though it is typically found as a default plugin with WordPress, Akismet is so effective and powerful that it deserves recognition. This is one of the best tools available for handling incoming comments and filtering out spam to ensure your comment section remains relevant and usable. It’s an incredibly powerful tool for moderators on blogs and similar pages, allowing you to create a welcoming environment for your users.
SEO and Marketing Plugins
MonsterInsights
The information provided by Google Analytics is some of the most powerful data available for anyone with a website. MonsterInsights is our favourite WordPress plugin for connecting to and utilizing that information. Whether you have a commercial website, a blog, or any other type of page, using Google Analytics will let you see how people are finding your page and help you to bring more traffic to you.
Yoast SEO
Even though WordPress already provides you with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, using the Yoast SEO plugin can greatly improve your results. It can help you with meta tags, using information from Google, and makes it easy to create 301 redirects to help boost traffic and results with your page. It doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started with SEO content or you have years of experience, Yoast SEO can help.
Google XML Sitemaps
Although Yoast SEO might give you just about all you need for optimizing SEO and maximizing traffic to your page, we also love the simplicity of Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin lets you quickly and easily create an XML sitemap for your webpage for indexing. Use of this plugin makes it easy for search engine bots to view your website and get relevant data to boost your position in search engine results, plus it notifies search engines when you publish new content.
Design Plugins
Elementor Page Builder
If you’re looking to create your own webpage, then there are few tools available better for the job than Elementor Page Builder. It’s incredibly popular, easy to use, and the results are perfect for just about any website you need. The Pro version is even more powerful and includes additional themes and widgets for amazing results.
CSS Hero
While WordPress makes it easy to create a website, especially with plugins like Elementor, there are also great tools you can use for further customization. CSS Hero lets you make adjustments to every imaginable element of your site’s appearance without ever having to write lines of code. You can use CSS Hero to change or add new colour palettes, alter the overall appearance of the theme you’re using, and much more.
WooCommerce
This is one of the most powerful and impressive e-commerce solutions available for WordPress. It is open-source and completely customizable, with hundreds of extensions available. That can make it a bit intimidating at first, but it is well worth it for the level of sophistication it enables in creating your online marketplace.
User Registration
Although WordPress has default user registration tools, they are quite sparse and lacklustre. This plugin gives you far superior registration for new users to your site, with many options that you can customize to make a registration form with all the information you need. It’s simple to use and creates a lovely, user-friendly result.
RafflePress
If you’re interested in running giveaways and raffles on your website, then RafflePress is a plugin that you simply must try. It is easy to use with templates that let you quickly set up a giveaway on your webpage. There are a number of settings you can change and adjust, and it has utilities for increasing social media engagement through your giveaways, creating a great user experience and boosting your site traffic.
Gravity Forms
There are quite a few plugins available for making contact forms and similar pages, though this is our favourite at the moment. It makes it easy to create fairly complex contact forms, letting you get everything you need onto the page. We really appreciate just how simple it is to use and how quickly it lets you make the forms you need.
WP Smush
This is a simple and incredibly effective image compression tool for use with WordPress. Uncompressed images are large and slow down sites when someone is viewing your content, particularly if you use a great deal of imagery on your page. With WP Smush, you can quickly compress and optimize the pictures on your site for quicker viewing without reducing image quality, and it works with a wide range of image file types.
Site Administration Plugins
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup
Although there are quite a few backup tools out there that work with WordPress, UpdraftPlus is our favourite plugin at the moment for backing up your site. It is very easy to use, has plenty of tools and options that let you customize it to provide exactly what you need, and is very highly rated among WordPress users. Plus, it provides you with plenty of options for where the backup will be hosted, so it should work for pretty much everyone.
WP-Rocket
This is one of our two favourite options for caching your WordPress page, and it really makes it simple for you to boost the performance of your site. It can handle most caching processes automatically, though you can also make a lot of adjustments and changes to it if you want to customize its functionality for your needs. WP-Rocket is quite beginner-friendly, while also giving you the tools to work with it if you have more experience with caching.
WP Super Cache
Our other favourite caching plugin. WP Super Cache is a fantastic solution for increasing the speed of your webpage and making it easier to use and access for your customers and clients. Unlike WP-Rocket, WP Super Cache is free to use, which makes it a great choice if you’re just getting started with your website or want to see how caching can help you out. There’s no risk in having a go with it and seeing the results yourself.
WP-Optimize
Sometimes, the things clogging up your site and slowing it down are problems you don’t even realize are there. WP-Optimize cleans up your WordPress database to optimize your site and to get it running as smoothly as possible. It’s easy to use with great tools you can customize, or use it as provided for quick optimization.
Redirection
This is a great tool, especially if you’ve had your website for a while. Redirection will help you manage 301 redirects and potential 404 errors––particularly helpful if you’re migrating to a new website or making other changes to directories. This is a website administrator’s best friend for keeping links updated and accurate.
Did we miss your favourite, or do you have web hosting questions? Contact us at UKHost4U and let us know all about it.
