WordPress has been one of the most powerful changes to the online landscape since inception. It offers people the chance to create easy to manage and update websites using only a few clicks.
With extremely professional themes and designs out there for less than £50, people are starting whole web design businesses just using WordPress.
However, what makes it so powerful for people is the plug-ins. Out there are thousands of downloads which can revolutionize your website and give you incredible features and additions you need to pay a designer thousands to have on your own site.
Check all of these plug-ins below to find the best way to give your website all the power and help that it needs;
Yoast Yoast offers you a simple SEO management tool. It allows you to optimize and analyse your web content, and generate XML sitemaps which the search engines absolutely love when it comes to ranking your site. This gives you all the protection and assistance that your site needs so you know if you have designed the site properly, and generated the content in the right manner. Well worth having on your side if you want to do some basic on-site SEO.
W3 Total Cache This is the only plug-in of its kind out there on the market. it offers a WordPress Performance Optimization plan which effectively makes your website faster, stronger and better than it was before. It works with just about any web host and will automatically burrow in and do all of the most important aspects your website needs to run at its very best. A must have.
Google XML Sitemaps A sitemap is a great way to give the search engines a helping hand. It lets them settle in easily to the system and create fully fledged and easy to manage codes that allow the search engines to index your website efficiently and in the right order. A must for any SEO do-gooder out there, as it gives you the access you are going to need to the “good side” of the search engines.
WP-Optimize This effectively cleans up the database and the background info of your WordPress site. If you constantly make changes or try things you aren’t quite sure of this can be a good way to get things running properly again. It even works without phpMyAdmin, which is a life saver as that place can be a mine-field for those without extensive WP experience. This is a great mod, and one of the few like it out there.
WP Clean Up Like Optimize above, it hunts down things you don’t want interfering with your site and its progress. It removes things like revisions and drafts from the system, helping clear up valuable system space and giving your project the protection and pace it needs. A slow website will not get visitors and this plug-in can help get rid of all the “gunk” within your database and make your site run faster than it has before.
WP Smush It This simply plug-in offers a brilliant way to optimize the images on your website. It can convert images to the right file type for easy loading and sharing, optimizes compressing of all images across the website so they look the best they can while taking up less data, and it removes all indexed images which are un-used. This is a powerful tool that can give you a much quicker way to making your website quicker to load and more enjoyable to use. A must have.
Gravity Forms Gravity Forms are easy to customize and include contact forms for your website. Whether you want to sell products, set up enquiry lines, or just want a cool section added to your website, this is a necessity. This is simple to set up and looks good with just about any theme, well worth your time and your effort.
Head Cleaner This great little tool is working all in the name of making your website quicker than it was before. It cleans up tags and removes unneeded extras from your header and your footer. This will help your website load faster as it will be able to load your style sheets and the like much quicker than it used to. Well worth installing – it only takes a few seconds.
Hotfix Hotfix is an unofficial WP “patch” that fixes common errors and problems that others are sick of waiting for WP to sort themselves. This means you can get a nice little solution to some of those silly problems that occur for no reason at all, taking the stress from yourself and letting you concentrate on building a good website!
Jetpack Powering up your website with the strength of the WordPress cloud, you can find out amazing stats and info about how your website is performing. It also allows you to set up several other features like social networking and comment systems, contact forms included and easily embedding media files from websites like YouTube with just a few clicks. More than worth having alongside your other plug-ins as it can make your site much more powerful overall.
Link Library This will help keep track of all the links on your website, allowing you to easily see where things are going from one end to the other. You can even search through the list to see what you are up against and what you need to improve upon on our site. Nice and simple but extremely effective and can give your site the edge it needs.
NextGEN Gallery A simple photo gallery plug-in that gives your site a much needed photographic boost. Easy to use and implement slideshows etc. you can create quick and easy gallery pages for your own websites or your clients using this awesome tool.
WordPress Importer This lets you bring in settings and features with ease. If you are using a WP theme it may come with a document which can be used with the Importer, which will then set up the website for you and leave you with a simple to manage website that is already set up for you. an extremely useful plug-in for optimizing a theme or downloaded design.
WP Google Analytics Lets you easily track the analytics and design of your site, allowing you to find out useful data like how fast your site is, how many links are coming to your site, as well as a custom check on each page to find out everything from how many visited to how long they stayed for. this type of data can be invaluable to the overall mastering and running of your website.
WP Total Hacks WP Total Hacks gives you access to basically anything you can think of within the WP site or the control panel itself. From the favicon to the logo at the top of the login page, you can completely alter this to make the login page of your WP site look like something far more professional and unique. An excellent way to continue to build your sites brand and improve its image for the future.