There are several WordPress plugins available for website development, so much so that it’s challenging to distinguish between the ones that can make all the difference and the ones that are simply overhyped.
While a lot of them provide useful solutions, only certain WordPress plugins are perfect for every website and those are the ones we’ll be discussing in this piece.
This article introduces you to the top 7 plugins ideal for WordPress development while explaining what helps them stand out from the others. We’ll also offer data justifying why these WordPress plugins are important.
Let’s get started!
1. WP Reset
WP Reset is your best choice when those hard times of coding come up, and when you just need to start over. The plugin’s main feature is that it can reset all your entries, databases, photos, videos, comments, tables, and pretty much everything that has ever been changed on your website. But it will not change your Site title, WordPress, and site address, its language, and current users won’t be affected by the power of WP Reset as those are considered vital pieces of information for one website. After the plugin performs the things it’s meant to do, you will be automatically logged out and logged in once again to your fresh and clean WordPress admin dashboard.
2. WP 301 Redirects
WP 301 Redirects helps you manage and create 301, 302, and 307 redirects for WordPress site to improve SEO & visitor experience. WP 301 Redirects is super simple to use and it’s the perfect choice for new sites or repairing links after you have restructured your old content, or when you have temporary pages on your website has that expire and you need to prevent sending visitors to a 404 error page, in which case WP 301 Redirects will help you create a redirection instead. You can also use the 404 error log to identify problematic links.
3. UnderConstructionPage
If you are creating a new website for your business or you need to perform maintenance on an existing website, you might want to inform your visitors and customers that this is only a temporary thing and let them know when the website will be accessible. UnderConstructionPage is one of the best solutions to deal with these types of situations and the plugin offers you a visual way of displaying all the information about the current situation and progress. All of this can be done in a matter of minutes.
4. Yoast SEO
One of the most well-known SEO tools, Yoast SEO is leveraged by almost every website developer and that’s one of reasons why it tops our must-have list.
It can not only help you boost the SEO strategy, but also evaluate the article’s readability. Nearly 79% of readers simply skim through your blogs, which is why it’s important to ensure your content is easily accessible. This way, you also get to improve your lead conversion rates.
As long as the SEO of your website is concerned, there are several tactics to drive more traffic. However, nothing can compare to the traffic offered by various search engines.
Every day, Google manages more than 9bn searches.
This is why it won’t be an overstatement to mention that organic search traffic has the potential to make or break your website and in most cases, you cannot purchase your way up the rankings ladder.
To add to this point, just about 5% of the total traffic pushes users towards paid search results. So it only makes the sense to work on the website’s keyword strategy.
5. UpdraftPlus
On average, nearly 30,00 sites are compromised on a daily basis.
Now if you consider the reality that nearly 30% of websites are powered by WordPress, you will understand why it is the most targeted platform. Additionally, certain sections of the WordPress site can stop functioning even because of minute errors.
For instance, if you leverage just 10 or fewer WordPress plugins for your website and half of it receives updates on a monthly basis, then you clearly run the perils of facing common compatibility issues. But just one latest backup can eliminate all your headaches – be it compatibility errors or cyber-attacks.
Here, our second WordPress plugin can come to your aid!
While there are several backup plugins in the WordPress landscape, only some of them have power similar to UpdraftPlus. It can be embedded with various cloud solutions to protect your website.
6. WP Rocket
Another powerful WordPress plugin, WP Rocket can assist you in accelerating the website’s load time. It speeds up your site by building individual cached copies of every web page so that the server doesn’t have to do much work.
You may already know that the load time of a website is crucial and various caching solutions help you improve the overall speed compared to other optimization practices.
For instance, W3 Total Cache can help lower the load time by nearly 43%.
However, WP Rocket performs even better – it can lower the load time of a page by nearly 63%. While it isn’t free, this plugin is worth buying as it can offer you better end results.
7. Elementor
With more than 50,00,000 active installations, Elemntor is the coolest plugin you can have for your WordPress website. It’s basically a page builder that offers you the potential to curate original designs that are, to some extent, independent from the present theme.
There’s no need for you to be a website development expert in order to create incredible effects like animations, background overlays, and more. All of this can be done using Elementor’s drag-and-drop feature. It can be integrated with not just Gutenberg editor, but also with other plugins offered by WordPress.
For those who wish to develop visually-appealing landing pages for the website, Elementor is the best option.
It’s also the perfect option for people who wish to create custom designs as a part of their site but are running short of money to employ an individual web developer for the same.
8. Otter
A really lightweight plugin, Otter can be used to incorporate additional functionalities to the Gutenberg editor. It also has a library that features multiple blocks and Gutenberg templates.
Although Gutenberg is a good replacement for the classic WordPress editor, it still has a long way to go in terms of offering advanced functionalities.
However, you could get Otter installed to use extra Gutenberg blocks for the development of interactive web pages.
The Bottom Line
Irrespective of the kind of site you have, it is always worth installing a certain number of plugins. If you aren’t sure which WordPress plugins you should be going for, why not start with the ones mentioned in this article!