As WordPress continues to evolve as the most popular Content Manage platform on the internet boasting 17% of all websites on the net being built using WordPress, what are the 5 essential WordPress plug-ins to use to get the most out of your WordPress website?
5 essential WordPress plug-ins
As WordPress continues to evolve as the most popular Content Manage platform on the internet boasting 17% of all websites on the net being built using WordPress, what are the best plug-ins to use to get the most out of your WordPress website?
So what’s a Plug-in?
Simply put, it’s an extendible piece of functionality that can be installed and used along with your website. Plug-ins extend WordPress’ capabilities to offer anything from SPAM filtering to a feature-rich e-commerce store.
So what are our favourites?
Well, we use dozens, however here are our favourites that we install in to every website of every size and use.
Advanced Custom Fields
Advanced Custom Fields is in our opinion a game-changer. This plug-in allows you set up custom fields that can be assigned to each editable piece on a page. This makes life significantly simpler for WordPress novices to edit their website. Added to this, we set up custom fields for general information that isn’t specific to a page, such as the website’s social media links, email address and phone number meaning that the whole website is truly fully editable.
Yeost
There are many plug-ins that handle Search Engine Optimisation, however in our opinion this one is easily the best. The plug-in allows you to create a Google XML Sitemap meaning that changes you make are pushed in to Google’s index as opposed to being picked up at will by Google. Yeost also has a fabulous feature that assesses each web page and gives you a check list of activities to optimise your page along with a preview of what your Google Search Results listing will look like.
WordPress Backup to DropBox
This plug-in slots in to WordPress and takes scheduled back-ups of your entire website and publishes them to a DropBox folder. This ensures that you always have an up-to-date copy of your website, so in the event of any problems, a copy of your website can always be restored, meaning you’re never at risk of losing your website.
Akismet
WordPress has a built in commenting feature for blog posts, and blog posts often receive positive comments. The downside though is there is often a lot of fake comments posted on WordPress blog articles. Akismet is a network spam filter that checks your Blog comments against the Akismet web service and if considered SPAM automatically filters them out.
This plug-in is essential for popular and new blogs alike.
Better WP Security
WordPress being the most popular Content Management platform in the world has its advantages when it comes to support, features and extensions such as plug-ins, but it also makes WordPress websites a target for hackers.
This plug-in implements a number of best-practice security techniques to remove clues to potential hackers as well applying advanced security permissions to safe guard your WordPress Installation. This technique is called Hardening and for more details on Hardening a WordPress installation visit: http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
Want to find out more about WordPress, why not attend one of our FREE WordPress Workshops? For more details including how to book visit: http://www.fl1group.com/wordpress-workshop.asp or call 01727 739812
