What are the 25 Top WordPress Plugins?
WordPress is one of the most powerful blogging platforms and content management systems available. It’s by far the most popular and with the right WordPress plugins, you can make your website/blog function properly.
Comparing different WordPress plugins and what they can do for you, will help you choose the right ones for your needs. We are comparing the top 25 plugins to others in the same category, if available, to show you which ones are the best choices. Most of these plugins won’t cost you a dime and as long as you have hosting with WordPress, you can use these plugins to create a better website/blog.
Here’s a look at the 25 top WordPress Plugins:
WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress SEO by Yoast is known as one of the top SEO plugins for WordPress. This plugin was created by Joost de Valk, a highly respected WordPress developer, and is considered by many to be the top SEO solution available for a WordPress website.
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular choices for quickly and easily adding custom forms to your WordPress website. It is highly flexible, has many different helpful features and is very easy to use, even for a beginner.
All in One SEO Pack
While WordPress SEO by Yoast is more popular, the All In One SEO Pack is considered easier to use for someone just starting out. While it does not include keyword analysis information such as Yoast, it has all of the options needed to easily optimize your site for search engines.
WP-PageNavi
This highly popular plugin is easy to setup, and makes your site more attractive and easier to navigate by replacing the “Newer / Older Posts” links with page numbers. While it may require editing theme files, the documentation is thorough and easy to follow.
Jetpack by WordPress.com
With the incredible amount of features included in Jetpack, it is no surprise that it’s one of the top WP plugins. Jetpack is loaded with features that make WP easier to maintain, and also add useful functionality such as carousels, social sharing, contact forms and much more.
WordPress Importer
WordPress Importer makes it possible to import all types of content into WordPress using a CSV file. This can save countless hours while moving or managing a large WP installation. This takes all of the guesswork out of dealing with the MySQL database, making it a favorite among WP developers.
Google XML Sitemaps
This easy to use plugin automatically generates an XML sitemap of your entire WordPress website in addition to custom URL’s if needed. The format is compatible with Google, Bing, Ask.com and other search engines, and even notifies them whenever you post new content.
Read More About Google XML Sitemaps
Akismet
Akismet is a very powerful plugin designed to block trackback, pingback and blog comment spam. It has been around since 2005 and now blocks over 50 million spam comments every day. They have a free option for personal use and also offer 3 premium plans for commercial sites.
Better WP Security
Better WP Security is loaded with powerful features to keep your WordPress site protected from hackers, virus attacks, old software and script vulnerabilities. This easy to use, highly powerful plugin is like having a security professional guarding your site 24/7 – free of charge!
NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is by far the most popular image gallery plugin for WordPress. It is loaded with cutting edge features like lightboxes, thumbnail management and watermarks, and offers multiple ways to display your images, such as a slideshow, image browser, thumbnail gallery and more.
WooCommerce – excelling eCommerce
In addition to being one of the top WordPress plugins, WooCommerce has quickly become one of the top ecommerce solutions thanks to its power, flexibility and ease of use. While it has many features built in, additional plugins make it easy to add more functionality to your online store.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
This plugin helps keep visitors on your site by showing links to related posts below your content using a versatile and advanced algorithm. YAARP even makes it possible to earn money by featuring relevant sponsored content in with your related posts.
Google Analyticator
This is quite possible the easiest way to add Google Analytics to your WordPress site since it uses JavaScript, thus eliminating the need to edit theme files. In addition to the easy to use admin dashboard, It also includes powerful widgets to display site information on the front end.
Wordfence Security
Wordfence is a very powerful security plugin offering a firewall, real-time traffic and virus scanning, two-factor authentication or cellphone sign-in, and much more. The free version is extremely powerful, but a premium version is available for those requiring even more protection.
Captcha
Captcha is a great option for people who don’t like the hard to read, jumbled word captchas used by many other plugins. It uses simple math equations that can be easily solved by humans, but not spam bots, making it one of the most usable captcha options available.
TinyMCE Advanced
TinyMCE Advanced simply adds more options to the default WP editor, making it easier to develop beautiful content without needing to know HTML or CSS. Best of all, you get to pick and choose which options you want to add or remove, keeping clutter at a minimum.
Advanced Custom Fields
This highly powerful plugin makes it easy to add many different types of custom fields to posts, pages and custom post types. This can save loads of time when building highly customized WordPress websites that require the input and display of many different types of content.
Contact Form
This plugin may not be as popular as Contact Form 7, and does not have as many features. However, it is quicker and easier to setup, making it a great option for people who need a basic contact form added to their WordPress website.
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
While this plugin is not as popular as WP Analyticator, it is actually rated higher on WordPress.org. It is a very stable and secure plugin that displays lots of different statistics in an easy to navigate admin interface.
WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache drastically speeds up any WordPress website by serving up static HTML versions of your pages and posts, rather than processing the server intensive php scripts on every load. This keeps your site loading quickly and ensures your server isn’t overloaded.
Read More About WP Super Cache
InfiniteWP Client
If you run multiple WordPress sites, this plugin is a must-have. InfiniteWP allows you to manage UNLIMITED WP sites from one central dashboard. One click updates, backup & restore, bulk install & manage plugins & themes on multiple sites and much more.
bbPress
bbPress is the easiest way to set up a discussion forum on a WordPress site. bbPress puts a lot of emphasis on keeping the software secure and lightweight. That means a fast loading forum that doesn’t get hacked frequently and isn’t overloaded with unnecessary features.
NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
This plugin automatically publishes your blogposts to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Blogger, Tumblr, Delicious, Plurk, Diigo, StumbleUpon, Scoop.it and more making it much easier to cross promote your site on social media networks.
Read More About NextScripts Social Networks Auto-Poster
WP-Statistics
Track visitor and visit statistics for a whole year in an easy to use admin interface featuring statistics reports and graphs. Also tracks WP specific stats such as total posts, pages, comments, users and even spam comments blocked if used in conjunction with Akismet.
Read More About WP-Statistics
Google Sitemap
This is an extremely easy to use plugin that allows you to add a sitemap file to Google Webmaster Tools, allowing you to gain all kind of valuable information about your site, such as search volume, keyword rankings, referral traffic and much more.
Read More About Google Sitemap
Whether you need better search engine optimization or you want to protect your blog from spam comments, there’s a plugin for your needs. WordPress has thousands of plugins available to help you get the most out of your site/blog. Here are some of the benefits of using the right plugins for your WordPress site.
Eight Benefits from Top WordPress Plugins
WordPress plugins bring many benefits, depending on which ones you choose.
Some automate sharing, while others provide security benefits.
Top benefits from WordPress plugins include:
Automation
Some of the best plugins will automate the process of sharing your blog posts with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other social networks and profiles. This can be very helpful if you plan to schedule blog posts or if you want to save a little bit of time, and can help drive lots of targeted traffic to your website.
Tracking and Analytics
With the right plugins, you can see who has been visiting your website, where they are coming from, how much time they spend on each page and a whole lot more. This can help with new blog post ideas and with the direction of your blog as well as your SEO strategy.
Better Security & Performance
Some of the best WordPress plugins won’t change the way your site looks or share blog posts. However, they are still very important. Some plugins will help to better secure your website and blog from hackers and viruses. Other plugins will help to speed up the load times of your website, which also provides SEO benefits.
Basic Functions
WordPress can do many things, but some of the basic functions need a little tweaking for specific projects. With the right WordPress plugins, you can change simple tasks, such as which pages show up in your main menu and what goes in your sidebar. These functions can be customized to fit your specific needs with some of the basic plugins.
No Coding Necessary
Maybe the most beneficial part of using WordPress and the top WordPress plugins is anybody can do it. You won’t need to do any coding with the help of the plugins. They are easy to install and they will do just what you need without any HTML coding or any other type of coding.
Massive SEO Benefits
Just a couple of SEO plugins can provide massive benefits. You can automatically generate your sitemap and make sure the right tags, descriptions and titles are displayed for the search engines. Some of these plugins will even give you an SEO score to help make sure each post or page fits perfectly with your overall strategy.
Share Related Posts
Have you ever found a blog post with related posts listed below and wondered how they do it? If you were to do this by hand, it would take quite a bit of time. However, with the use of the right plugins, you can create a list of related posts or display them with an image, without doing anything more than installing and setting up the plugin.
Cost of Upgrades
These free plugins allow you to quickly and easily add functionality to your WordPress website that could easily cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to implement on your own. In addition, the developers maintain the code and keep it secure, further reducing your costs.
All of these benefits and many more, come from the top 25 WordPress plugins. Of course, before you can use the best plugins, you need a domain, hosting and WordPress installed on our website.
At ITX Design, we provide WordPress free with every hosting account. It takes less than five minutes to get it installed on your domain name and our hosting packages start as low as $4.95 per month.
