Every WordPress owner faces a problem when they start to choose must-have WordPress plugins from more than fifty thousand available free plugins. If you have faced this problem too then don’t worry. You are not alone.
At some point, you may be thought that you can never overcome this problem like me. That’s why I have made up my mind to make a splendid WordPress plugin list. So that, no more confusion occurs.
In this blog, we will give you overall idea about-
- What type of must-have WordPress plugins do you need for your site?
- Must have WordPress plugins you need for your site along with their alternatives.
What type of must-have WordPress plugins do you need for your site?
WordPress always offers alternatives. But it’s harmful to your site to use different plugins that will offer you the same purpose. Too many plugins can make your site slow.
Don’t feel down. We are here to let you know what type of plugins you will need for your WordPress website. You should consider the following types of plugins:
- All in one featured plugin.
- Contact form plugin.
- SEO plugin.
- Web performance optimizer plugin.
- Google analytics plugin.
- Security plugin.
- Backup plugin.
- Page builder plugin.
- Image optimizer plugin.
What must-have WordPress plugins do you need for your site?
For any kind of site, you will need some most useful WordPress plugins. Besides, Without these basic plugins for WordPress, site maintenance will be impossible. But it is good enough to have alternative plugins on hand rather than having only one plugin.
So, we have decided that we will not limit your list. Moreover, we will provide you WordPress mandatory plugins list with alternatives so that you can choose the best WordPress plugins for your site.
Jetpack – WP security, backup, speed, and growth plugin
Jetpack is an all-in-one must-have free plugin for WordPress. It will increase your user experience as well as provide you automatic backup facility. In addition to that, it will provide you faster and safer user experience. With an activity log, you can also observe every change that will perform on your site and control them. This best WordPress plugin will block spam comments as well as alert you with email for any change. It will also provide you auto-update and backup facility.
WeForms – Contact form plugin
WeForms is a contact form plugin that is very much a mandatory WordPress plugin for any kind of site. Basically, without a contact form, your customers can’t contact you. You can also create unlimited forms with this mandatory WordPress plugin that is free to download and use. Moreover, with its drag and drop option, you can create any form. You can set the expiry time, entry restriction as well as manage form submission with it. Furthermore, you can get notification through slack for form submission. It supports mobile and tablet too.
Alternative Plugins
Yoast SEO – SEO plugin.
This is the most popular SEO plugin that will help you to rank high in the google search engine. This mandatory WordPress plugin will also provide you advanced XML sitemaps by that google can easily understand your site structure. Easy branding provides with title and meta description. Your customer can get a faster loading speed that will give an excellent user experience. Besides, you can see what your site looks like on mobile, tablets by google preview.
Alternative Plugins
MonsterInsights – Google Analytics plugin.
Great traffic is all that any website owner wants. You aren’t different in this case too. Luckily, monsterInsights is a mandatory google analytics WordPress plugin that will help you to increase your site’s traffic.
Besides, you can get full information about your audience like visitor’s age, gender, location, interest, using device, etc. You can also get information about their most search keyword, visited content. In addition to that, you can get to know your site ranking on google. This plugin will offer form, eCommerce report too. With all of these analytics, you can improve your traffic with your visitors desired content.
Alternative Plugins
WP Super Cache – Web performance optimization plugin.
Your website performance should be your first concern. But what can increase your website performance more than a faster loading speed?
WP Super Cache plugin does that work for you. This mandatory WordPress plugin decreases your site’s loading speed as well as download time. As a result, your visitor will have an unremarkable user-experience.
Alternative Plugins
WordFence – Security plugin.
Maintaining the security of your site is no joke. Besides, your site is the storehouse of all your important information. So, it is essential to use an effective security plugin that will make your site safe from all threats.
WordFence is an excellent mandatory WordPress plugin that will keep your site secure. Moreover, you can download this WordPress security plugin for free.
Alternative Plugins
UpdraftPlus – Backup plugin.
Every site needs a backup plugin to make its data secure from sudden loss. Your site also needs a backup plugin that can backup all data of the site.
UpdraftPlus is a critical mandatory WordPress plugin that makes data backup as well as restoration easy. Besides, you can backup your data through Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, email, and many more. With its premium version, you can also backup through Microsoft, SFTP, SCP, OneDrive, Google cloud storage, and many more. The most exciting part is you can do it with one click.
Alternative Plugins
Visual Composer – Page builder plugin.
Building pages becomes easier with the visual composer plugin now. Besides, you can make your website pages easily for free with 40+ premade elements and templates within few minutes.
Moreover, its premium version will provide you 500+ premade elements, templates, and addons for your site. With all these functionalities, it has become one of the best mandatory WordPress plugins.
Alternative Plugins
Smush – Image optimizer plugin.
Feeling disaster for the low loading speed of your site? Then a good image optimizer plugin can solve this problem of yours.
Smush is a mandatory WordPress image optimizer plugin. It can optimize your images. Moreover, your image quality will be the same. You can also optimize 50 images at a time with one click. Fantastic, isn’t it?
You can also eradicate lazy loads from your site with this plugin.
Alternative Plugins
How many plugins you should use for your WordPress site?
There is no exact number of plugins that you should use for your site. It mainly depends on the web hosting you are using.
Use 0 to 5 plugins for budget cloud hosting. For VPS hosting you can use 20 plugins. Little more or less from this number will not cause that harm to your site.
The main problem you will face if you use lots of plugins to your site is it will slow down your site. As more than 40% visitor leaves your site for slow loading speed, you should focus more on loading speed. Moreover, poor coding plugins can cause site crashing. So, only use the necessary plugins for a WordPress site of yours. Remove all unused plugins from your site.
Should I update my WordPress first or plugins?
You should always update your core first. After that, do update your plugins and themes. Make your WordPress and plugins up to date so that your site can be safe from security issues.
After updating, do check how your site is working. Check everything is okay or not. In WordPress, updating is very easy. Because WordPress is well known for its user-friendly facility.
Updating WordPress plugins are safe or not?
Keeping your plugins up-to-date is very important for your site. Because your site’s security depends much on this. Moreover, sometimes your site will not run as smoothly as before if you don’t update it.
Now, your question is was it safe? Of course, you should not set auto-update on all plugins. set it on those plugins that you trust. You should check your plugin updates on the staging site. So that you can omit it if it doesn’t look good.
WordPress plugins and themes update automatically or not?
In WordPress 5.5 version, you can set auto-updates for your plugins and themes. But this facility should be used correctly.
You must not set auto-updates for those plugins and themes that you can’t trust on. Set auto-updates only on those plugins and themes that you can blindly trust.
Conclusion
With more than fifty thousand WordPress plugins, the functionalities of WordPress sites have reached an unthinkable position. But for the best use of these plugins, you need to know which WordPress plugins are mandatory for your site.
Here, I provide nine types of plugins that are mandatory for your site. Choose any plugins you want that can offer you these facilities. Delight us with yours too if you have more plugins on your mind.
