6 Must Have WordPress Plugins

So, you’ve just started using WordPress or after using wordpress.com for a while you’ve just decided to self-host your WordPress website. Your dream of turning your WordPress website into something to be proud of might be mere inches away from you. Now, you might be wondering what is this secret recipe that you are missing to turn your page into the perfect website that ranks greatly on Google SEO?

Well, you are probably thinking that writing well and regularly are some of the secrets of having a website that scores well on SEO. And indeed, those things do help a lot, but you are still forgetting about one small thing that can greatly improve your chances of ranking higher on SEO and giving a good impression to your visitors. I’m talking about WordPress plugins!

Whether you like the idea of using plugins in your website or not one thing is for sure, WordPress plugins are here to stay. If you don’t start using them its likely that your website will end up eating dust from competitors who were smart enough to take advantage of this feature that adds a uniqueness to their WordPress websites. Having said that, below I will be showing some of my favorite WordPress plugins, which I believe are essential in case you are serious about making your WordPress website look professional, classy and of course, makes it easier to manage it.

What Is A WordPress Plugin?

To sum it up, WordPress plugins are scripts written in PHP that can greatly extend the functionality of your WordPress website. From small things such as improving the visual of your website to turning it into fully-fledged e-commerce, these plugins have great capabilities if used correctly.

WordPress plugins can be a powerful ally in your quest to turn your brand into what you envisioned it to be.

Is It Hard To Install Those So-called WordPress Plugins?

If your plugin is available in the official WordPress Database, all you have to do to add a new one is to go to your wp-admin Dashboard then click on Plugins. Then a submenu will pop up  under it, which will have the following options:

Installed Plugins – This one will show you a list of all the plugins you currently have installed on your WordPress website and allows you to manage them.

Add New – The option that we will be clicking on. This is the one that will let you install existing plugins from the official WordPress database or upload plugins to your WordPress website from zip files located on your PC.

Plugin Editor – Allows you to code your own plugins from zero or edit existing ones. Unless you have some knowledge of writing PHP code I don’t recommend you to tamper with this one. If you don’t know what you are doing you can break plugins or worse make your website stop working entirely.

Below I will be listing some plugins that I think that is a must-have to anyone being serious about turning their website into something that leaves a good impression to visitors or helps them in their quest of generating passive income with the internet.

# 1 WooCommerce

If you haven’t heard about this one you have been probably living on another planet for the past decade. Woocommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows you to turn your website into a fully-fledged e-commerce store. If you ever dreamed of having your own online store for a certain niche or maybe even start building a store that could rival Jeff Bezos’s Amazon someday this is the plugin for you. And the best of all is that not only Woocommerce is free of charge to use on self-hosted WordPress pages, but its also open source.

So, if you know a bit of coding you can try adapting the code for your other needs. Used by famous brands such as All Blacks, Singer Australia and many more.

#2 RankMath SEO

If you are looking for a cheaper but powerful alternative to the expensive Yoast SEO, then Rank Math SEO is your guy! Like Yoast SEO, Rank Math SEO is a plugin aimed at helping you increase the SEO of your website.

With features like Deep Content Analysis Tests,  Internal Linking Suggestions, Advanced SEO Analysis of your website, LSI Keyword Tool Integrated and so on. You can bet on it that in no time your content will be appearing on search engines as long as you keep writing quality content to your website.

#3 Really Simple SSL

A simple, but powerful plugins if you care about bringing safety to your website and visitors. With a very intuitive and easy to use interface Really Simple SSL, will put your WordPress website under HTTPS(which stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) encryption without any hassle.

#4 Classic Editor

If you are a hardcore fan of the old WordPress text editor that got deprecated after the WordPress team released a new one to cater to newcomers, then this plugin is for you.

As the name of it makes it obvious, Classic Editor brings back the old beloved editor and disables the Gutenberg editor.  So, if you didn’t like the Gutenberg Editor no more worries about having to adapt to it.

#5 wpDiscuz

Bored of the same old comment section that’s been in WordPress for the last 10 years with no style and lack of features to track commenters or spammers? Then wpDiscuz is for you! With a wide range of features, including  Live update of new comments,  Multi-level (nested) comment threads, new UI, Long comment text breaking function and many more.

wpDiscuz does a great job at revitalizing the comment section by giving you better tools to track your fans, troublemakers and by greatly improving the vanilla WordPress commenting section.

#6 Yoast SEO

If money is not a problem for you then Yoast SEO is for you! Considered by many as the best content optimization plugin ever for WordPress. Similarly to Rank Math SEO, Yoast SEO is a plugin that helps you optimize your website and posts to rank higher on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and so on.

Unfortunately, many of its best features are only available in the paid version which can be quite expensive for someone who is just starting out his adventure of bringing its brand to the digital world.