People started loving WordPress because of its efficiency as an intuitive content management system. The platform has come up as a one stop solution for managing different content requirements ranging from managing the same to offering it an attractive appeal.

All this has become possible with the use of plugins that are there with WP themes. WP plugins are one of the important features of this CMS that has helped this platform get preference over similar software.

WordPress is not just a blog publishing application but an state-of-art platform that focuses on the aesthetics, feature and appearance of a website. It offers all that is required to make a website functional and user-friendly at the same time. The plugins offered in this system takes its benefit to another level. The plugins offered with this content management system lets one add any of the functionality that is required. Different websites have ceratin needs and thus the one that suits ideally to a site can be installed.

While installing the plugin, you must wish to know which plugins are essential and which are not. The list of important plugins differs for a personal blog to that of a corporate blog. In this write-up, there is a list of important plugins that make any of the WordPress site functional. These plugins offer effective features to the site developed over WordPress theme. These plugins not only offer an aesthetic appearance to the website but also boost up the security feature.

The Reasons to Choose WordPress

In past few years WP has gathered the status of being a complete CMS, packed with a set of wonderful features. WordPress has been developed to make your blogging experience pleasant. The platform is fast and can be customized as per users’ requirements. Following are some of the reasons why you should choose WordPress.

• Easy-to-use platform: When you use WP, there is no requirement of being a coding expert or a person having deep knowledge of a WordPress powdered website. The interfaces designed over the platform are user-friendly that make it convenient for user to browse through website developed over this platform.
• Huge plugin directory: WordPress comes packed with a wide range of plugin directory. For every unique feature, there is a plugin available over this CMS. Plugins can be used to add , spam protection, social networking feature, forum, complex galleries etc.
• Easily affordable and available: WP themes are available for free or if you wish to hire a company for web development requirements, reasonable services are available at a number of companies. Developers are there who can help you get design on board developed ideally to match your expectations at most reasonable rates.
• Open source software: Being an open source software, WordPress is available for free to download and use. With this CMS it is easy to create functional websites. The tool can be used in creation of communities over it, therefore, if you want to develop your own site the help is always there. You can also hire we developers for the same requirement.
• Great themes: Theme enhances the look of a website. There are a number of good themes available for free. One can also choose premium (paid) themes to give the site the appearance you wish. The themes can be customized as per the preference or fully functional customized themes can be created.

How WordPress Plugin Extends its Functionality

WordPress plugins are composed of PHP script that helps to extend the functionality of this platform. Each plugin has some unique feature that offers something original to the user. Some popular plugins are cloud tag, categories, email for updates and search.

How to Install Plugins

There are two different different methods of installing plugins. The work can be done as automatic plugin installation and manual plugin installation. Here is a step-by-step description on how to install plugins with these two distinctive methods.

1) Automatic plugin installation:

Here is your guide for automatic plugin installation.

• Go to plugin and select “add new”.
• Type the name of WP plugin under the search tag.
• After you find the required plugin, click on the details to gather the information and click install now.
• You will be asked to confirm your command over a pop-up window.
• If you are installing a plugin for the very first time, you need to provide FTP login information.
• After providing the information, click “proceed” to continue the installation.
• If the installation is successful, you will get the installation results as successful or if there is any problem, you will get the notification for the same.
• If the installation is successful, click “active plugin”.

Some WP plugins may require further steps to customize them. This information is available there under “details” as “readme” file after a plugin is installed. You can visit “troubleshooting section” if there is any problem with installation.

2) Manual plugin installation:

There are some WordPress plugins that are ideal to be installed as manual plugin. This idea works the best when your server is not permitting an automatic installation or the plugin is not available in the official WP plugin directory. Here are the instruction for installation.

• Download the required WP plugin.
• In case you have downloaded it as a zip archive, extract the folder to the desktop.
• To follow the instructions correctly, read the “readme” file throughly.
• With the FTP program, you can easily upload the plugin folder to the “WP- content/plugins” folder in the WordPress directory online.
• Go to the plugins screen and find the installed plugin in the list.
• Click on the “activate plugin” to turn it on.

List of Plugins

1. SEO

• WordPress SEO (Yoast)
• All in one SEO
• Yet another related posts plugin
• Google analytics for wordpress

These SEO plugins can be called powerhouse for blogs. These search engine optimization plugins help to optimize content on site blog, on-page SEO and social SEO of the blog. Google analytic for WordPress, on the other hand, helps one to track a blog easily. It also helps to remain up to date with current features in Google analytics. Yet another related posts plugin or YARPP helps in displaying posts, pages, custom post types related to a current entry.

2. Image optimization

• WP-Smushit
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• CW Image Optimizer

These image optimization plugins helps to optimize images as you upload pictures over your blog. These plugins can automatically upgrade an image that was uploaded earlier. With these plugins, it also gets easy to convert images automatically to the file format. It also helps to produce images that are smaller in size. These plugins, especially EWWW image optimizer, use lossless optimization technique that helps to maintain the quality of the image even after it is optimized.

3. Spam filters

• Akismet
• Stop spam comments
• WordPress Zero-Spam
• WP-Spamshield

All these spam filter plugins check comments and filters them if they appear as spam. With these spam filters, there is no requirement of typing unnecessary captcha again and again. These plugins automatically filters the comment and helps user to enjoy a spam free website. There is no setup required to activate these plugins. All you need to do is to install and enjoy the benefits with a click. These plugins work in the background to make the WordPress spam disappear.

4. Caching plugin

• WP Super Cache
• W3 Total Cache

These plugins help to generate static HTML files from dynamic WordPress blogs. Once HTML files are generated, the web browser serves the file only instead of processing heavier WP PHP script. These plugins are designed to improve user experience and the speed of the page. Such plugins are recommended and trusted by a number of web hosts including Go Daddy, DreamHost and many others. Caching plugin increases server’s performance.

5. Security plugin

• BulletProof Security
• Better WP Security
• All In One WP Security & Firewall

Security plugin helps to boost a websites’s safety against hacking. WordPress sites can prove to be an easy target to attack because of plugin vulnerability. Plugins such as BulletProof security, better WP security and all in one WP security and firewall effectively help the WordPress site to get security from hackers. Plugins are easy to use and to install and offer complete protection to your WP site. With security plugins, there is no requirement to learn htaccess rules to apply firewall security to your website.

6. Social plugins

• Sociable
• ShareThis

Social plugins such as sociable and ShareThis improves users’ interaction. They help to increase social activity over a platform such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and twitter. These platforms offer a medium to users over which sharing is just a click away. These two plugins are the most fast growing sharing space over WP. With these plugins sharing of information has become a much easier task to do. With this plugin, it gets easy to comment with a great degree of customization.

7. Contact form

• Contact Form 7
• WP Contact Form

These contact form plugins are available for free and enables the website owner to communicate on the site. For some people, these are the best for content management system. As soon as you download and activate the plugin, you can see an item in the menu known as “contact” in the admin interface. It also helps to mail content easily with simple markup. This form supports a Ajax powered submitting, Akismet spam filtering, CAPTCHA and so on.

8. Backup

• BackupBuddy
• BackupWordpress
• WordPress Backup to Dropbox

Backup plugins help to restore widgets, themes, plugins, site, and other important files that have been deleted. With the help of these plugins, one can store individual files in the WP dashboard. As soon as you download WordPress backup to Dropbox, your blog is backed up automatically on a regular basis.

9. Captcha plugin

• Captcha
• Really Simple Captcha

These plugins are powdered to secure your website from spam. The “captcha” plugin can be used for login, password recovery and registration. Having all these features, keypic additionally provides security to the form when you enjoy your shopping from an online store. Really simple captcha, on the other hand, has the same feature. However, it cannot work alone and requires support from other plugins to work.

Conclusion

Using all these plugins can help a website owner to add extended features to the website. Being a free to use platform, WP requires additional security that is easy to provide to a website with these plugins. There are numerous kinds of plugins available from security to spam filter. Thus, install one to make your website fully protected.

If you need more, then you can read our article about how to safeguard your WordPress website with the Best Security Plugins.