In this article, Web Designing Company in Pakistan will guide about some essential word press plugins just installed WordPress on your hosting. After configuring your site for the first time, you should now think about investing your extensions or plugins.
WordPress plugins are software that you may need to add functionality to your website. This may be :
- A contact form;
- A newsletter;
- An n extension to help with natural referencing;
- etc .;
Can you make your website work without extensions? Of course! However, except if you are technically savvy and know a little bit about coding your needs, a WordPress plugin will save you time and make your life a little easier.
Discover the seven essential plugins when creating your website with WordPress.
Note: Some of the links (marked with *) to specific resources are affiliate links. This means that if you decide to acquire one of them, a small commission will be paid to me (at no additional cost to you)…
Secure your website, a must
Security is one of the most crucial points, especially if you have a WordPress site. Its popularity, unfortunately, makes it an ideal target. You will find many extensions to secure your website, but the most popular and title is Wordfence security.
Wordfence allows you to protect your site against spam and other suspicious attempts. Its free version already offers you many features, such as a full security audit or a firewall.
The other undeniable advantage is that it informs you almost in real-time about potential threats without forgetting the updates to be made. You will find all this information on the relatively easy to read dashboard directly on your site.
Give your site a boost with a Cache extension
A cache extension is a real necessity these days. Why? Indeed, Google favors (for a long time) a site that loads quickly.
Indeed, if you arrived on a site that takes a specific time to load, wouldn’t you want to click on the cross or press the “backspace” key? Yes! It is, therefore, in this sense that you owe it to yourself to install it. It’s good for your SEO and your visitor.
The free extension I offer is called WP Super Cache, and it is available on the WordPress directory. Moreover, this extension is administered by the creators of WordPress themselves, a guarantee of quality. It will only take you a few minutes of configuration to set it up.
Avoid seeing your data fly away thanks to the backup
It is always useful to have a backup of your database and a copy of your website. Why? Entirely only in the event of hacking, improper handling, or anything else that could break your site.
With a backup under your arm, you don’t have to worry anymore. Indeed, you have to find your backup to get your site back online in a few minutes.
Note that your hosting provider may also offer you this feature. Remember to check it out. However, sometimes two backups are better than one.
Free alternative: BackWPup
Paid extensions: All the extensions above have their premium version. To go further: If you want to configure Updraftplus, here is a detailed tutorial on the site around the tutorial.
Be contacted by your visitors
You can’t do without a good contact form for your pro website. It is the ideal tool for retrieving essentials other than a name or an email address. This will allow you to set up customer quotes, a reservation request, or specify a demand for faster processing.
Another good news, I was able to test this WordPress plugin with the future Gutenberg text editor, and everything went very well.
There are many add-ons or complementary extensions to extend its possibilities. Among others:
- Add-on to accept payments with Stripe or Paypal
- Customize your form with your logo and colors using templates
- A search field
- And many other free and paid features
Adjust your strategy and find out who is visiting your site
How do you know what your visitors want to read? How do you strategically choose what to write and where to put your efforts? Well, entirely only by setting up detailed monitoring of your website with Google Analytics Dashboard for WP.
You have (usually) opened and read your site to Google Analytics for precisely this monitoring. Still, you have to open another tab, log into your account, and go through your dashing a little off-putting at first glance.
Make your site visible to the whole world (or almost)
If you’ve never heard of SEO or natural referencing, you are missing out on one of the most important things about your site.
Why?
This allows you to provide visibility to your business and be found by your visitors.
Of course, I am not telling you that by installing this extension, you will necessarily be first or in place 0 on the Google search engine.
It will allow you, after a few minutes of personalized configuration via a demo, to start your SEO serenely. After this first configuration, Yoast will help you, thanks to indicators, to better reference your page, article according to the keyword you have chosen.
Free alternatives: Cookie Consent
Bonus: Forget “Page 404” errors and improve your visitors’ experience
You probably won’t use this extension when creating your website. However, I still place it among the must-haves, as this feature is practical and useful for your website.
Any deletion of pages, URL addresses inevitably lead to the installation of this most useful extension. What happens if you deleted a page or change the URL address? What happens if someone clicks on this link and lands on your site?
At best, you’ve created a custom 404 page that allows you to redirect your visitors wherever you want. At worst, your visitors leave immediately. Not to mention that it can send a negative signal to Google.
Finally, the last tip for using the Redirection plugin will also allow you to create custom categories. This is what I did for this site using this extension.
Conclusion
Will you need any other extensions? It’s very likely! I strongly advise you to make an inventory of your functionality needs and to install only the necessary extensions. Too many extensions can potentially slow down your site.