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What are the most essential plugins to use as a beginner on WordPress?
One of the most commonly asked questions in my Facebook group and from my students is “What are the must-have plugins to get started with?”.
And with the WordPress plugin repository having over 50,000 active plugins, I can see where this could be a mystery for beginners.
What are plugins?
Plugins for WordPress are bits of code that you can upload to your website to help with functionality, performance and esthetics. Although it can be easy to get wrapped in a time warp and download every plugin known to man, it’s important to note a few things.
Not all plugins are created equal. Make sure that you are using a plugin from a reputable source that has some reviews and a good amount of users. Also, try to make sure that the plugins you use are compatible with your version of WordPress. (It will say so if it is on the download page).
How to add plugins to WordPress
Adding new plugins is super simple. To add a new one:
- Go to Plugins in the sidebar of your WordPress editor
- Click on the Add New button at the top
- Find the plugin that you are looking for
- Click on the Install button
- Click on Activate
After you activate, the plugin may end up in a couple of places afterward. Sometimes it is shown directly in the sidebar, or occasionally it can be found in the Settings or Appearance.
A lot of plugins come as plug-an-play, meaning you don’t need to configure anything to get them going. Others will require some tweaking to make them work how you want on your website.
Which plugins do you actually need on your website?
Like I said before, it’s easy to get clicky and excited and download a bunch of plugins. But it’s important to understand that too many plugins can make your site run slow which is terrible for SEO and your bounce rate (how fast a user leaves your site).
RELATED: How to Look Like a Professional Blogger in 2019 (Even As a Newbie)
Social Sharing Plugins
One of the most important plugins you should have on your site is one for social sharing. This is not the same as the icons to find you on social media. These plugins allow your readers to easily share your content with their audience.
As a blogger, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across an incredible blog post that I think my audience would love and there’s no way to share it. Ugghhh… So, this is critical to getting more eyes on your content and growing your audience.
Shareaholic
Shareaholic is my essential plugin for social sharing. Some claim that it can slow down your site, and yes, it is pre-designed to run ads that aren’t pretty. BUT, if you remove all those optional features in the settings, you can quickly add branded social sharing icons to every post and/or page.
It even has an option to have the floating or sticky share buttons to make the process that much simpler.
Website Performance
Ensuring that your website performs well is important for both user experience, bounce rate and search engine optimization.
The following plugins will help to keep your website in top-notch order.
Akismet Anti-Spam or AntiSpamBee
If you are accepting comments on your blog, you’ll want to protect your site from spam comments. Two plugins that will help catch most of the spam comments are Akismet Anti-Spam and AntiSpamBee. (You only need one of them)
Akismet was one of the most widely used plugins for getting rid of spam comments but it recently turned to a paid plugin. A really great free option that I’ve had good results with is AntiSpam Bee.
If you have one of these plugins installed, the majority of your spam comments will get rerouted directly to your spam folder for review. Make sure to check this every so often as I have found the occasional good one stuck in there.
Fast Velocity Minify
Fast Velocity Minify is a plugin that minimizes and compresses the size of CSS and Javascript. These are parts of the coding that make your website work and look the way it does.
Often times, these pieces of script can slow down your site and so compressing them is a really good thing to do.
WordFence Security
WordFence Security is a plugin that will restrict hackers from your site. It provides a shield to malware and can make sure that your site stays safe.
Updraft Plus
If your site host does not do regular backups of your site, it’s a good idea to install a plugin that will automatically do this for you.
Trust me – there’s nothing worse than your site crashing and having no way to retrieve all your hard work.
The Updraft Plugin can be configured to automatically back up your website and load the backups to a cloud service like Google Drive.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
One of the most common reasons for slow site speed is because of graphics and images being oversized.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer is a great plugin for helping to reduce the image size without reducing the quality of the images. There are varied settings that can reduce image sizes up to 90%.
They have both a free and paid version. The free version will allow for up to 100 images per month and you can buy additional credits if you need them.
Insert Headers and Footers
Although this plugin doesn’t directly help with performance, it definitely helps your site to be a bit more admin-user friendly.
There are a lot of occasions where you might need to insert code into the header or footer of a blog, and if you’re not tech-savvy, this can seem daunting. (Claiming your website on Pinterest, setting up an ad network, connecting Google Analytics)
The Insert Headers and Footers plugin creates a dedicated space for header and footer code so that all you need to do is copy and paste! VOILA!
Legal
One thing that all bloggers need to be aware of is legal responsibilities. If you aren’t sure about all the legal requirements for bloggers, check out this free legal course for bloggers.
GDPR Cookie Consent
Outside of having the proper legal pages like your Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and Disclosure, you also need to have something that informs your readers that you are collecting their information in the form of cookies.
The GDPR Cookie Consent plugin is great for doing this. It can be modified to your branding and you can place the popup in several locations.
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Content and SEO
There are also a few plugins that can help with creating content and helping you understand SEO (search engine optimization).
RankMath SEO
I found RankMath several months ago and switch over from the highly popular Yoast SEO.
RankMath is directly integrated with WordPress and offers suggestions to increasing your on-page SEO depending on your keywords. What I really like about it is that it gives you a breakdown and tips for basic SEO, title readability and how readable your content is.
It also links to your search console and gives some tips for increasing your SEO sitewide. It’s easy to use and it’s FREE!
WordPress Editorial Calendar
If you have a hard time keeping track of all your drafts or like to preplan your content, the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin is a great tool.
It has a drag and drop interface where you can easily move around all your ideas in one place and you can also quickly create new drafts.
Easy Table of Contents
Easy Table of Contents is a great little plugin that adds a table of contents to every post.
It allows readers to skim the contents quickly and jump to the section that they are interested in (especially if it’s a longer post).
I also like to use it to review at the end before publishing to see if my content flows well or if I need to make any changes.
There has also been some suggestion that this might help with SEO as it’s another method for search engines to quickly scan your content for keywords.
Tasty Pins
Of all the plugins mentioned here, Tasty Pins is the only one that is not free but it’s worth the $29 per year, IMO. Not only does it allow you to easily share your pin images within your post, but you can hide an unlimited number of pins as well.
Because it is integrated with WordPress, it allows you to disable pinning of unwanted images, add appropriate alt text for screenreaders, and create a title and description that defaults if someone chooses an image without one.
Making Money
There are a lot of different plugins that can help you to make money with your blog.
Ad Inserter
Ad Inserter is one of my best finds for helping me make money on my blog. The free version allows you to insert 16 pieces of content (graphics, ads, forms etc) in every place imaginable on your website.
The best part is that if you update the content, it updates in all places at the same time so it’s easy to replace ads for specific marketing promotions for things like flash sales.
Great post.