There are over 55,000 free plugins available from the WordPress Plugins directory, and countless premium tools too. For a person new to the content management system, it can be tricky to determine which to install. In this blog post, we talk about the five essentials to get any WordPress website up and running.
1. Yoast SEO
The go-to plugin for millions of websites around the world, Yoast is all about helping you rank high on search engines. This state-of-the-art tool helps ensure that your website is up to scratch and ranks highly for the terms you care about.
Yoast is straightforward to use, and a feature I particularly love is the easy-to-understand traffic light icons you see in the backend of a website, highlighting the pages that need work. Remember though this is not the be all and end all for SEO, as Yoast can often have issues understanding the full context of a web page. Use it as a guide rather than religiously thinking all red traffic lighted pages aren’t up to scratch.
2. Updraft
A web developer’s dream tool for when things go wrong while creating a website. Updraft manages the backups of the site and can automate cloud backups too. It’s just what you need when a plugin update causes a production website to crash – I’ve been there!
3. Akismet
Before getting into web design, I knew about spam but didn’t truly appreciate its extent. With my first website I made, I was stunned to see the next day three people had commented on some of my pages. Sure, they were talking about promoting their own content or had unrelated things to say. and this is where Akismet kicks in. It’s a great spam filter for all the pesky bots on the web. It’s better to keep your website clean of that!
4. Contact Form 7
The feature-rich but simple-to-use contact form generator. It allows visitors to submit forms, sign up to newsletters and a whole load more. There are plenty of extensions that expand this tool too.
5. Classic Editor
Call me stuck in the past, but I like simple technology with menus and icons. In the backend of a WordPress website, it can be tricky to get used to all its features and functionality. The new Gutenburg editor doesn’t help this, but the Classic Editor plugin comes to the rescue. It offers a clear interface for creating pages and blog posts.
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