WordPress is software created for anyone to create a professional-looking website without any previous development experience successfully. Even though it is easy to use and there are many ways to create a website with it, getting started can sometimes be overwhelming.
A plugin is a functional software that is installed on your WordPress page, enhancing the overall user experience. Aside from online tutorials and guides, many plugins are available to help you create and run your website.
There are over 50 thousand available plugins, and choosing the most useful ones when starting can be confusing. We have selected some of the most important plugins you can install to start with your website.
Table of Contents
1. WP Force SSL
WP Force SSL redirects insecure HTTP to secure HTTPS traffic and fixes SSL-related issues. This makes it one of the best and most useful plugins on the market.
The setup is done automatically by the plugin after the activation. This means that the whole website will move to HTTPS with your existing SSL certificate or a new one. WP Force SSL does not include any bloatware and comes with all the important features like a unified dashboard, content scanner, White Label mode, rebranding, Keyless activation, certificate installation, etc.
One of the best parts of this plugin is its SSL Monitoring functionality, which enables users to monitor and keep track of their SSL certificates and any related errors. Subscription plans start at $59/month with a 100% no-risk money-back guarantee in the first seven days.
There is a free version with limited functionality also available.
2. WP Reset
This plugin allows for an easy development lifecycle for non-developers. Site deployment, testing, and recovery are made possible by controlling, resetting, and restoring the environment in one click.
Features are very straightforward with no bloat. They include installing plugins with one click, one-click recovery, recover tool for troubleshooting, demo data cleaning tools, a nuclear reset button for “factory reset,” automatic snapshots, cloud storage, and centralized management in one dashboard.
Plans start at $49/lifetime with a 7-day money-back guarantee. Like with the previous one, a limited free version is also available.
3. UnderConstructionPage
UnderConstructionPage enables users to easily build coming soon, under construction, or landing pages with little to no effort. With more than 300-page templates included, choosing the perfect one will not be a problem for all niches.
Using the dashboard, you can change all aspects of the template, such as the name, logo, colors, text, etc. Prices start at $39/year with options for lifetime access for single users at $79 and $199 for agencies, with a 7-day money-back guarantee and a free version.
4. WP 301 Redirects
If you want to solve multiple problems at once, this is the plugin for you. WP 301 Redirects can handle redirections, 404 Errors, and Bad Outgoing Links. This includes solving issues with old content, old links, bad links, and URL typos.
This plugin offers key features to boost meaningful traffic, control redirects, scan and verify links, ignore bad traffic, built-in chards, and technical support. All plans include a lifetime license with a single payment, starting at $49, with both 7-day money-back and a free version.
5. WP Sticky
WP Sticky is an interesting plugin that enables an easy setup of sticky headers, menus, navigation, or widgets in seconds. Included element picker makes any element sticky without having to modify a single line of code.
This plugin has a visual interface that allows you to make as many sticky items as you need. All themes, page builders, and plugins are supported. Together with professional support, all of this makes this an extremely user-friendly and popular plugin, with over 100000 daily users.
Aside from the free version, paid plans start at $39 for a one-time payment and a 7-day money-back guarantee.
6. Simple Author Box
Simple Author Box helps users create great-looking and responsive author boxes anywhere on their site with author name, avatar, description, and much more in just a few clicks. Key features include guest authors for assigning posts to them, multiple authors for collaboration, post-type support, and full customization.
There are plenty of other features such as Gutenberg Block, link control, tech support, color schemes, widgets, typography control, appearance control, etc. Prices go from $39/year, with a 7-day money-back guarantee and a free version available.
7. Jetpack
Jetpack is great for WordPress security, performance, marketing, and design. With Jetpack, you can focus on your business while the plugin handles the rest.
Security feature includes real-time backups and restores, malware scans, brute force protection, uptime monitoring, and spam protection. Other features include migration managing, activity logs, blocking spam comments, WordPress.com login, auto-update, performance toolkit, image CDN, lazy image loading, video hosting, custom site search, site stats and analytics, auto-publish, easy-share, mobile app for managing features, and the list goes on.
You can get to know all of the features in detail by visiting the plugin website. The free plan includes core features, and paid plans start at $3.95/month for additional features.
8. Akismet Spam Protection
Akismet Spam Protection checks comments and contact forms against the global database for any spam preventing your site from publishing bad content.
Features include automatic checks of comments, status history on each comment, URLs shown in the comment body to reveal hidden or misleading links, a discard option, etc., with 5+ million active installations. This is one of the more popular plugins that come in handy. This plugin is free to use.
9. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
With this plugin, backups and restoration are simplified. With 3+ million active installations, it is the most popular scheduled backup plugin. All backups are made into the cloud and can be restored with a single click.
Users can choose to backup directly to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, UpdraftVault, etc., with the paid version backups available to Microsoft OneDrive, Azure, Google Cloud Storage, SFTP, SCP, etc. Other features include incremental backups, multisite and multinetwork compatibility, database encryption, support for WP-CLI, etc.
The full feature list and description can be found on the plugin website. Premium version pricing starts at $70/year, with optional bundles and add-ons available.
10. WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WP blog. The generated file will be served instead of processing the PHP scripts.
These files are then served to the users that are not logged in, who have not left a comment on your blog, and who have not viewed a password-protected post. The majority of page visitors are served this static HTML content.
Features include simple caching, page compression, cache rebuild, CDN support, garbage collection, etc. There is a possibility of a simple and more advanced caching setup with instructions available on the website above.
11. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is the number one WordPress SEO plugin with over 5 million active installations that helps websites rank higher in search engines. All core features are available with the free version, and the paid version unlocks more tools and features.
Features include canonical URLs, meta tags, advanced XML sitemaps, title and meta description templating, full control of site breadcrumbs, faster loading times, etc. Regarding the content side of SEO, Yoast SEO offers SEO analysis, readability analysis, full language support, Google preview, schema blocks, etc. Regular and premium support are both available also.
12. iThemes Security (Better WP Security)
Formerly known as Better WP Security, iThemes Security helps to identify and stop attacks on your website. The whole process of setting up this plugin is designed to take less than 10 minutes without any previous or in-depth knowledge of security.
Six available templates provide security presets for your site. Features include two-factor authentication, password requirements, reCAPTCHA, passwordless logins, trusted devices, user groups, privilege escalation, user ban, brute force protection, magic links, file change detection, site scanner, user logging, version management, SSL enforcement, database backups, geolocations, server IP identification, etc.
To keep things short, we will not detail all of the features. They are all available on the website. Pro version pricing starts at $34.99/month, with a 30-day free trial offered.
Conclusion
These plugins will make sure you have a world-class website with top-of-the-line features that will greatly increase visits to the site. They may look too much to handle at first, but with little initial effort in setting up these plugins, benefits will be much greater.
Consider them, and good luck with starting your new (or first) WordPress site.