If you’re building a WordPress website, WordPress Plugins can transform your website easily without relying on a developer to do the work for you. Though there are many to choose from, here are 11 you should use.
JetPack
Though many WordPress providers offer this plugin automatically, JetPack fulfills almost every need you may have with your website. JetPack allows you to build your website with built-in themes, helps you gather more organic traffic through social sharing, and additionally helps secure your website. If you’re hosting your own WordPress website, you’ll definitely need this plugin.
Yoast SEO
Yoast continues to be one of the most popular plugins for self-hosted websites. This plugin enables you to optimize your SEO, offers page analysis, allows for social integration, and even enables you to create sitemaps.
Google XML SItemaps
Though Yoast does enable you to create sitemaps, Google XML Sitemaps serves as a more optimized index for the search engines. This plugin makes it more simple for crawlers to search your website and has more sub sitemaps than Yoast.
Broken Link Checker
With Broken Link Checker, you can monitor every link on your website, and ensure none of them are broken. From links in your post pages, comments, blog, or even images, this plugin will notify you via email, and allow you to edit your links without going to the actual page itself directly from the plugin.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder serves as an easy to use drag and drop page builder for your website. Instead of having to use code, this website builder simplifies the process by providing content modules, different layouts, and photo/video backgrounds, in addition to responsive layouts.
WooCommerce
This plugin will help you monetize your website and start generating revenue through sales. Woo Commerce integrates easily to WordPress, and powers nearly 30% of all online stores. Unlike other platforms like Shopify and Big Cartel, you have complete control of your store.
Editorial Calendar
The Editorial Calendar plugin enables you to keep up with your content and be able to see just precisely when your posts are going out.
With this plugin, you can see your blog at a month’s glance, see when your content is scheduled to go out, and drag and drop posts to different days to reschedule them. If you’re blogging regularly, this is a must.
Code Snippets
PHP, a code that can be embedded into HTML, is essentially what powers your WordPress website. Considering this can get extensive and messy, Code Snippets will help you better manage certain snippets of code. Like plugins, snippets of code can be activated and deactivated, and this plugin will help you do just that.
Print, PDF, Email
The Print, PDF, Email plugin title says it all. Essentially, this plugin reads your site and allows you to download and preview your content as a PDF, and then, of course, print it. If you’re hands-on and like to edit your content by hand, this plugin can help.
Smush Image Compression & Optimization
Having a responsive website that loads quickly is important to continue generating more traffic, and having optimized images that still maintain quality but load quickly is important for this reason.
Smush Image Compression & Optimization includes helpful features like optimizing 50 images in one click, creating automation to optimize your content, size detection, all while preserving image quality.
WPForms
WPForms is an easy way to build contacts, collect payment information, create quizzes, surveys, and more from your website. Providing responsive and mobile friendly forms, this plugin is extremely customizable and eliminates the stress and bulk of creating great forms.