Plugins do more than just provide visuals or effects—they can also help with search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities, security, and other functions like selling tickets to events. Here are some essential plugins you’ll need to have as you build your WordPress website:
- Security plugin: Install a reputable, highly rated security plugin immediately after installing WordPress to protect your site from hackers, malware, ransomware, and so on. Many offer free versions, but we recommend you opt for a paid plan with extra support and security tools, as WordPress sites are highly susceptible to hackers. Elementor has an excellent article to help you learn more and choose a WordPress security plugin.
- Anti-spam plugin: Security plugins are great at protecting your site from intrusion, but most aren’t great at blocking spam from your online forms, blog comments, and so on. CleanTalk is an excellent and affordable anti-spam plugin to further protect your website and prevent bots from filling out and submitting forms on your website.
- Backup plugin: Some hosting companies include free automatic backups of your site, so this is something to consider when choosing a hosting provider. If not, or even just to build redundancy, add a backup plugin to your site and schedule backups regularly. If your site doesn’t get new content frequently, backing up weekly could be enough, whereas if you’re updating your site often, you might want to back it up daily.
- WordPress page builder: Building pages and executing the design of your site on WordPress is not intuitive, even though WordPress comes with a section-based page builder. For most small businesses, installing a WordPress website builder like Elementor is necessary for design purposes. It will save you an incredible amount of time, especially if you’re a WordPress beginner.
- Caching and image compression plugins: Glitchy, slow-loading websites can send someone away from your site within seconds. Caching stores a version of your website so that when a site visitor returns, their browser doesn’t have to reload all the elements. Image compression automatically reduces the file sizes of your images, as large images can significantly slow down page load time. Your theme may come with caching and image compression features, but if not, add a plugin to ensure your site loads quickly to provide a good user experience (UX).
- Yoast SEO: The free Yoast SEO plugin is recommended for several reasons. It serves as a guide to optimization as you add pages or publish blog articles on your site, helping you rank higher. It also generates an XML sitemap that you can submit to Google for indexing, allowing you to connect your Google and Bing analytics accounts for more performance data.
- Forms: If you need to use forms on your website, such as contact forms, lead generation forms, sign-ups, etc., you’ll need a forms plugin, such as Gravity Forms. When researching form builders, take advantage of demo versions to ensure you can easily build forms with the fields you need and that it is reputable and secure for transmitting data.
- WooCommerce: There are other ecommerce plugins, but WooCommerce is a highly rated and recommended free ecommerce plugin. You can connect PayPal and other payment processing software (like Square) or your banking institution to sell online. Keep in mind that special functionality (selling digital goods, calculating shipping, memberships, subscriptions, event tickets, etc.) will require purchasing paid WooCommerce add-on plugins.
As you can see, these are basic functions needed for any website. However, you may also want plugins for things like a website chat (bot or live), pricing tables, custom graphics like sliders and image galleries, ecommerce, calculators, and polls and surveys. To get a sense of other plugins you might need, read our list of WordPress tips and tricks.