WordPress has thousands and thousands of wonderful plugins to choose from. However, not all plugins are created equal. There are many plugins that have bugs or a lack of security. But, amongst all these plugins are few gems that can greatly improve your sites functionality. Here are 10 FREE WordPress plugins that have proven to be incredibly useful and helpful to almost every WordPress site.
This incredibly easy to use (and free) plugin is a must have for website optimization. Its page analysis looks at every part of your page to ensure optimization of not only your content, but titles, images, meta description and more. You will never forget any key elements to help in your sites optimization again with SEO Yoast.
While SEO Yoast is here to help optimize your content, W3 Total Cache knows the importance of speed and delivery for search engine rankings. This plugin will ensure that that your WordPress site runs at a great speed so that your users have an enjoyable and easy experience. By reducing download times and increasing your server’s performance, you will not have to worry about your sites performance and speed.
Pretty Link Lite helps shorten your links using your own domain name instead of using link shortener sites such as bit.ly. Not only does Pretty Link Lite make your links “pretty,” but it also tracks your URL. This plugin will provide statistics and information of where your link hits are coming from. This free plugin is perfect for anyone who wants to share shortened links on social media, or clean up the links on their site.
Sucuri is a must have plugin if you want to keep your website secure and safe. Since WordPress is very popular, it is also very vulnerable to malicious attacks, viruses, and spam. Sucuri scans your site for malware, stops websites hacks and attacks, and much more.
Although not in the plugin category, a VPN, or virtual private network, is also a must have when it comes to keeping your WordPress site secure. A VPN can help hide your IP address and ensure that your website information and activities stay safe and secure. There are many options out there for VPNs. You will want to find the best VPN for your needs and security level needs.
Social Share Button provides visually appealing social share buttons you can add into your post. You simply choose your layout, which social media buttons you would like to add, and then easily insert into them into your post and site. This plugin makes it incredibly easy for your viewers to share your post across the web.
This easy to use plugin makes it incredibly easy to visualize, manage, plan and schedule your posts. You have the ability to drag blogs and post into a calendar, and set the time they will be posted. The calendar will also display the author of the post. The Editorial Calendar is simple to use, and makes it incredibly easy to manage your site.
Have multiple team members working on your WordPress site? This is the perfect plugin to help manage your contributors. You have the ability to set restrictions and limit what parts of the site your contributors can see or change. WP Project Manager also allows your team members to communicate with each other, assign tasks, and go over projects all within your WordPress site.
Sick and tired of sharing each new post manually on your social media accounts? Social Networks Auto Poster is a great alternative that will help save you tremendous amounts of time. With this plugin you are able to share post automatically, as well as make specifications for each social media platform. Instead of mass sharing a post that does not look readable on each platform, you can ensure that each post will share in the formatting of your choice for each platform.
Just like you would never exit out of an important document without saving, you should also consistently be backing up your WordPress site. It is easy to forget about backing up your site when you have plenty of other tasks on your to-do list. But, the consequences of not backing up your site can be huge. BackUpWordPress is one of the best free options which will ensure your site is backed up on a regular basis.
These days it seems as if the majority of web browsing happens on mobile devices instead of laptops. This makes it extremely important to have a WordPress site that can be easily navigated and viewed through a mobile device. This is where WPtouch comes in. This plugin helps create a mobile version of your WordPress site. Users will be able to view your site easily regardless of their electronic device of choice.
If you would like to learn more about why and how to use WordPress, check out more of VistaBlogger’s helpful articles such as Word Press, an amazing content management system to develop awesome sites.
