When it comes to choosing plugins for your WordPress website there are so many options that it can be difficult to know what you need. It’s a good idea to start with the essentials, but what are the essentials? In this article I list the six plugins that I consider the most essential and give a short overview of each one. I’ve included a bonus list of plugins that will improve your website with extra features. Let’s take a look.
Akismet
Akismet checks comments and compares them to a database to determine if comments are spam. Spam is blocked and marked so you can view the spam to make your own decisions. The worst spam is automatically discarded.
Key Features:
- Automatically filters spam
- You can view comments
- URL’s are displayed
- The worst spam is discarded
Jetpack
Jetpack is a suit of plugins from Automattic that adds lots of features to WordPress, greatly improving and enhancing your website. It adds so many features that it feels like cheating.
Key Features:
- Grow traffic
- Analytics
- Security
- Optimizes images
- Custom CSS
- Contact forms
- Galleries
- Related posts
- Polls
Yoast WordPress SEO
WordPress SEO by Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It improves your SEO on every level. It will even analyze your page and give you suggestions on improving your content for better SEO performance.
Key Features:
- XML sitemaps
- Meta and link elements
- Breadcrumbs
- RSS optimization
- Edit .htaccess and robots.txt files
- Multisite
- Import/export
- Addons
UpdraftPlus
It’s important to get a recent backup of your website. UpdraftPlus simplifies backup and restoration, making it easy to automatically backup your website to a cloud service or on your server. You can choose which components to backup and set a schedule for each component separately.
Key Features:
- Cloud
- Select components to backup
- Set separate schedules for components
- Control backups remotely
- Split archives
- Quick restore
- Automatic backups
- Addons
Wordfence Security
It’s important to keep your website secure and Wordfence Security does the job nicely. It uses a Web Application Firewall to keep your site from being hacked. It will also alert you if there is a problem. A Live Traffic view lets you see real-time activity and hack attempts on your website.
Key Features:
- Web Application Firewall
- Threat Defense Feed automatically updates
- Blocks common threats
- Choose to block or throttle users
- Login security
- Security scanning
- Monitoring
- Multisite
Google Analytics
Google Analytics from MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It makes it easy to track your analytics from within your WordPress dashboard.
Key Features:
- Integrates with Google Analytics API
- Uses asynchronous Google Analytics tracking code
- Visitor metric dashboards
- Outbound link and downloads tracking
- Tracks search result pages and 404 pages
- Demographics and interest reports
Bonus
Other plugins that I recommend include:
- WooCommerce
- Contact Form 7
- Floating Social Bar
- WP Smush
- Social Warfare
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Optin Monster
- W3 Total Cache
- Yet Another Related Post
- Envira Gallery
- Adminyo
- Disqus
Final Thoughts
Well that’s a quick look at six of the most essential plugins for WordPress. The major topics are covered: SEO, backups, security, analytics, etc. The bonus list includes several plugins that will help improve productivity, social sharing, speed up your website, and more.
Did I leave out your favorite?
Randy Brown
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Seem that someone neglected to put links to these fine plug-ins.
Hi Sean. Thanks for checking out the post. The links are in there. Just click “More Information” below each plugin description 🙂
Great post. I agree on the Essentials, and then I start to doubt something like Jetpack because of bloat. Is it really as bad as I hear?
I’d like to see some more info regarding load time. For example, the “Yet another related posts” takes up a bunch more resources than “Related Posts” by Zemata.
WP-Smush (not Pro) is the least resource intensive than the WP-Smush Pro or Imagify.
Is Google Analytics by MonsterInsights worth the extra load time if you have your account connected?
Wordfence is a hog, unless you turn off live tracking. But then is it still awesome?
I know it’s a pet peeve of mine, probably because I’ve been spending all summer trying to speed up sites and removing the bloat without losing too many options has been quite the challenge!
Perhaps we need a better way to test load time on the sites.
Hi Kolleen. Thanks! Plugins do add to the load time, so it makes sense to test and only use what you need and be careful about the plugins you choose. I don’t recommend using too many together.
For Jetpack I don’t recommend activating everything – only what you really need, and as you pointed out, test load time and compare with other options. It does add to load time but it’s not too bad if you’re careful with which features you activate.
I like WP-Smush. It does seem to work well.
I haven’t compared Google Analytics with Monster Insights, but I think Google is worth the load time. Google works hard to streamline the web, so I’m sure they’re code is as clean as it gets.
As far as Wordfence, I know what you mean. The same goes for about every security plugin that I’ve seen. Unfortunately it’s still better to have them then not.
I agree with you 100% – it’s a fine balance between having the features you need and having a fast-loading website. Maybe one day we can have more features without having to sacrifice speed.
Great feedback Randy. Thanks for sharing!!