Essential WordPress Plugins:
The list of essential WordPress plugins consists of those plugins which every site needs to have installed to be a serious in the website space. WordPress started off as blogging software, but as the community exploded, so did the developers in their pursuit to create plugins that can be mixed and matched for every website. Below are a list of the 5 essential WordPress plugins every website should have installed.
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is one of those must include plugins. A large portion of the forms you see on WordPress sites are the configureable forms built in the Contact Form 7 editor. A power tip is connect the Contact Form 7 with the Amazon SES plugin for really efficient form and email delivery of data.
WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast
If you have page rank and visibility on Google in mind, this plugin is essential for letting you focus in on keywords for every post that you write. This plugin has a handy editor for tracking how well you are adhering to SEO standards in your post.
Google Analytics Plugin
The ability to track the traffic coming into your site is essential for determining what you are adding to your site is working and what is not. Instead of having to paste the code snippet Google Analytics provides into every page, enabling the Google Analytics Plugin does all the heavy lifting for you. This plugin is essential for any serious web master.
W3 Total Cache Plugin
We consider this a plugin for advanced users. The results it provides are invaluable. Benchmarks on the plugins website shows at 10 times improvement load time after installing the plugin. The caching works by saving off frequently used files to fast access web tools like Amazon S3 to significantly increase page load efficiency.
iThemes Security Plugin
With all of the popularity of WordPress has come onslaught of hacking instances. iThemes Security Plugin works safeguard your site through an array of different ways including 2 factor authentication, password expiration, site scanning, and the list goes on. This is a must have for highly trafficked sites.
Are there any plugins we didn’t include and in which you consider your top picks? Let us know in the comments.