When it comes to installing WordPress plugins, minimalism wins! There are 55,175 plugins in the WordPress repo, and numerous others available online. To help you sort through the mess and choose only the plugins you need, we rounded up the top 12 WordPress plugins that we consider ‘must haves’ for most website installations.
which WordPress plugins should we really
be using on the one hand plugins are
designed to make our workflows and
processes easier on the other hand
plugins do slow down our sites which is
why we should be more careful when
considering which plugins we should use
for our websites if we were to
generalize and try to assess the types
of plugins that we must commonly use on
websites we could have a valid list of
the most useful and practical plugins to
use in this video we’ll be giving you
that list a list put together by
professionals working with us and
community members a list of the highest
recommended free fundamental plugins you
will need for creating almost all types
and genres of websites obviously using
Elementor reduces the number of plugins
making some plugins like those for
pop-ups and forms redundant
we’ll be going through our list in
alphabetical order and we’ll get things
started with our dashboard open now
first on the list is activity log this
extra light plug-in generates a log of
every activity occurring on your
WordPress website you can imagine it
working like a black box on an airplane
recording events and alerting you when a
post is deleted a plug-in this activated
or if someone is attempting to log in or
hack your site this particular plugin
was developed by our teams not only to
keep track of content but the themes and
elements as well as tags and taxonomies
media and WooCommerce you can export
your logs in CSV and have predefined
alerts sent immediately to your email
this plug-in is also general data
protection regulation or gdpr compliant
as are some others on this list moving
on to our next plugin a kismet made by
automatic the company behind WordPress
comm this is a spam filtering service
that filters spam from comments
Trackbacks and content form messages the
filter works by combining information
gathered on all participating sites and
using it to identify and block potential
spam and nobody likes spam as you know
we’ve spoken about the value of long
term SEO in the past and if you’re
planning or have already begun using
long term SEO as a content strategy we
absolutely recommend using the broken
link checker plugin it continuously
monitors your pages for broken links and
sends you an email as soon as it finds
one you should know that there’s a bit
of a debate surrounding this plugin the
opposition argues that this plug-in is
very heavy and uses up a lot of CPU but
if you’re worried about this plug-in
affecting your website’s performance you
can activate it periodically rather than
have it running constantly another
solution is to use the online version of
broken link checker every once in a
while as elements or users whenever we
need to duplicate a post we usually save
it as a template in Elementor and then
insert it elsewhere an alternative way
to do this is by using the
next plug-in on our list duplicate post
plug-in it can also be used to duplicate
custom fields titles etc for new and
future posts after the letter D comes e
and we all know what that stands for yes
we are including elements R and if
you’ve been following our blog you know
that we don’t make a habit of blowing
our own horn the reason that the element
or page builder made our list of top
free plug-ins for WordPress is because a
it’s free B it’s been getting top
ratings and recommendations from all our
users who contributed to this list and C
it’s designed to help speed up load time
and improve site communication by
removing the need to install additional
plugins for things like pop-ups and
forms and it just so happens that this
week the elements or plug-in clocked
three million active installs a major
landmark which we’ve been celebrating
together with our users and we won’t
elaborate any further because we feel
that elemental speaks for itself if
you’re a wordpress user and have somehow
not heard of elements or yet please feel
free to try it and form your own opinion
we’d love to know what you think and if
like many elements or users you decide
that you want to move on professionally
to a whole new level of features and
options and get elements or pro well we
could hardly blame you and the
ever-growing community of pro users
worldwide would be only too happy to
welcome you onboard
there are numerous ways to add analytics
and embedded code snippets to your site
and it would be best to manually add
these snippets directly into your code
however there is an alternative
especially for those who don’t feel
confident enough to tinker around with
code the alternative is to embed Google
tag manager snippets using the Google
tag manager for WordPress plug-in that
you may recall from a previous master
class about funnels and something that
we highly recommend for similar tasks
now how many times we had to reorganize
posts and pages as well as customized
elements well our guess is that the
intuitive custom post order plug-in was
designed by someone else who had to
reorganize their content one time too
many because this is a tool that you can
use to visually switch the order of your
posts and pages very easily if you’ve
been managing sites long enough you’ll
know how often posts are renamed deleted
or recreated and how annoying it can
become redirection is a plug-in that was
designed to ensure that a proper 301
redirection is created to the modified
page URL so all that link juice leads to
the right place speaking of site speed a
subject that many of us are concerned
about and for good reason image
optimization is another way to
accelerate your site a good free way of
achieving this is by trying the smoosh
image compression and optimization
plugin it includes a truckload of useful
features including lazy loading bulk
action automation and all the while
preserving the high quality of your
images users were also impressed by
another plug-in with many similar
features the compressed JPEG and PNG
plug-in by tiny PNG like all the plugins
we’re suggesting you’ll want to try
these out and decide for yourself what
is right for you
security is essential for everyone
involved including the visitors no
matter how small a website is and
wordfence proves to be a great tool for
beefing up your security with fair
simple procedures for tasks such as
changing your login URL and running
malware scans and much much more we all
want our visitors to feel safe on our
site and we all want our data and
content protected and maximum protection
is exactly what this plug-in provides
this plug-in has also sparked a heated
debate online as to whether or not this
app affects the site speed now a
challenging facet of website design and
management is caching something we use
to help speed up our load time and keep
impatient visitors from bouncing we know
that this list is dedicated to free
plugins but both we and our users find
that when it comes to caching to really
speed up your site’s load time WP rocket
is invaluable this plug-in is well worth
the investment you may have heard of us
mentioned WP rocket in previous master
classes because they are responsible for
a slew of great tools for caching and
compressing images last but not least is
the Yoast SEO plugin a plug-in that
truly needs no introduction especially
on our channel since we’ve discussed it
a couple of times to include our last
SEO master class even so there’s a
chance that this isn’t the first time
you’ve heard of Yoast and if you’re
still not sure why you’ve heard before
you should definitely try it for
yourself by the way the all-in-one SEO
pack by Michael Talbot is another good
option for the same job obviously we’ll
be adding links to all of these plugins
and more in the show notes below and as
promised we’ll be explaining the
criteria we use to decide what plugins
made this list and how to choose the
right plug-ins for your sites in the
monday masterclass magazine article that
we published together with this video
we’ve gone through the basic plugins
recommended for almost every imaginable
website you will need to create of
course there are many more plugins for
more specific uses and advanced web
sites such as booking plugins and
membership plugins but choosing plugins
in these categories should be on a
case-by-case basis
we hope that this has been helpful and
inspiring as always we’d appreciate any
comments and insight that you may have
and we want to hear any criticism and
obviously any helpful tips that could
help other users after all our goal is
to be the best at helping others excel
in their craft
speaking of which make sure that you
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looking forward to seeing you all next
week
thanks for watching
