Last updated on October 21st, 2023
What are WordPress plugins? When I started my blog, I had no idea what is it and what a plugin does.
I do believe I will never be the only one that does not know. Thus, let me share with you what I have learned so far about the plugins and what are the must-have plugins for your blog.
What Is A Plugin?
A plugin is a piece of software or code that can be an add-on to a WordPress website. This is to add extend functionally or new features.
For example contact form. If you want your visitors to email you without having to display your email on your blog, what you can do is add a contact form plugin, and create a contact form for them to message you.
There are a lot of plugins for you to select, you just have to make sure it is compatible with your WordPress version.
Where Can I Find The Plugin?
This is where you can locate the plugin.
Now you know where to find the plugins, click “Add New” and let’s get started.
Akismet Anti-Spam
Akismet is a very useful plugin for your blog. It checks your comments and contact form submissions against its global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious content.
You can review the comment spam it catches on your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. It comes with a FREE and Paid version available.
Yoast SEO
With Yoast SEO, it will take care of all your WordPress SEO. Yoast SEO is the original WordPress SEO plugin since 2008.
Once you install it, it will guide you on how to make your blog more optimised for search engines and get more views.
Google Analytics for WordPress
Enables Google Analytics by WebKinder on all your pages.
There are a lot of Google Analytics plugins you can choose to use for your blog. What made this plugin different from the rest is it will not track your own visits.
Contact Form 7
The Contact Form 7 plugin enables you to customize a contact form on your website. This is to allow your visitors to contact you via this contact form. It is simple but flexible.
Social Sharing Button – Social Pug
I recently changed my social sharing plugin to Social Pug as I realized that the former social sharing plugin was slowing my site speed.
Social Pug is lightweight and super easy to install. The free version of the plugin comes with five social media platforms, mainly Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus helps you to back up your entire WordPress install, including your database, plugins, themes, uploads, and many more in a simple and effective way.
It is important that you back up your WordPress installation before any optimization. If anything goes wrong, you can still use your backup to restore it back. Do remember to back up your WordPress on a regular basis too!
Smush
Smush is an award-winning image optimizer. It helps you to resize, optimize, lazy load, and compress all of your images.
WP Fastest Cache
The first time I tested my blog at GTMetrix and it failed badly. My Page-speed score is F(39%).
First I change my WordPress theme to GeneratePress theme. It is a lightweight WordPress theme built with a focus on speed and usability.
Then I started to resize my images as GTMetrix advises, changing some of the plugins I used.
Download three new plugins they suggested: UpdraftPlus, Smush, and WP Fastest Cache (see how to set up these three plugins in your WordPress: WordPress Optimization Guide).
Now my Page-speed score is A(97%).
TinyMCE Advanced
This TinyMCE Advanced plugin is not a must but I included it here as I felt that some of you might find it useful. What it does is it enables you to add, remove and arrange the buttons that are shown on the Visual Editor toolbar.
Here is how my visual editor was before I installed TinyMCE Advance. Unable to change the font, size, etc.
After I installed TinyMCE Advance, I had more choices.
Bonus: Grammarly
Grammarly is not a WordPress plugin but is as important to me as all the above plugins.
Quote from Wikipedia:
Grammarly is a cloud-based English-language writing enhancement platform developed by Grammarly, Inc.
Grammarly is added as an extension on Chrome. It helps me with my spelling and grammar whenever I write. It is a handy tool to have! Oh, did I mention it’s FREE? 🙂
That is all for today. Do check out my other posts too!
