For the average WordPress site, plugins are an essential part of getting custom functionality without having to pay for custom development. There are more than 50,000 WordPress plugins available online, which can seem a bit intimidating. Thankfully, a robust online ecosystem includes customer reviews that can make it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. In reality, there are only a few dozen great WordPress plugins you need to know about at any point in time.
Here are our picks for some of the most useful plugins for WordPress websites right now, in a few different categories:
Search Engine Optimization
Yoast SEO is the perennial favorite here, and there haven’t been any newcomers that would displace it from the top spot. From prompting you to always create those SEO-friendly page titles and meta descriptions, to helping you choose keywords via Google’s Search Console, to giving you the proper way to make redirects, Yoast SEO has millions of WordPress users for a reason.
Caching
There are a few good options here, but our pick is WP Rocket, a plugin that is fully-featured but not overly complicated. It includes some of the basics like gzip compression, but also some more advanced features most websites can benefit from, such as lazy loading of images, code minification, and integration with a CDN (such as the Cloudflare account you get free by being a CanSpace customer).
Web Forms
WP Forms has everything you need to create most forms for your site, without burdening you with too many options and settings that can just get in the way. Use the convenient drag-and-drop editor to place form fields where you want them, and you can be done in just a few minutes.
Social Media Integration
Easy Social Share Buttons is one among a few good plugins for getting social media buttons throughout your site to encourage visitor engagement.
E-commerce
WooCommerce stands head and shoulders above the competition, with 42% of all website ecommerce on the Internet running on this platform. A robust ecosystem of extensions and plugins for WooCommerce makes it easy to customize the tool for your needs, whether you’re selling physical or digital products.
Have a WordPress plugin that has noticeably improved the functionality of your site? We want to hear about it! Reach out to us to let us know.
