7 Essential Plugins for your #WordPress website | 2017

19th September 2017

There are literally hundreds and thousands of WordPress plugins out there. Here, is a list of my favourite WordPress plugins.

Note, this is my opinion, you can disagree, or if you think I'm missing something please do let me know!

Let's Go!

Best SEO Plugin for WordPress

One of the many reasons why WordPress is so popular, is because it's one of the easiest template systems to do SEO on. You'd be crazy not to get an SEO plugin. So what do you get? It has to be WordPress SEO by Yoast. It's the most popular Wordpress SEO plugin, and it's made by Joost de Valk, who is probably the world authority on SEO in WordPress.
Best Google Analytics Plugin

Google Analytics is an amazing free resource, where you can tell all sorts of information about your the traffic coming to your site. You need to sign up with Google Analytics, and then put a piece of code from Google Analytics on to your website, so that the visitors on your site can be tracked. You need to make sure this code goes on every single page. So, how do you do that?

Get Google Analytics for WordPress by Monster Insights, formerly by Joost de Valk. This allows you to easily put this code on every page on your WordPress website. (Remember that you have to sign up to Google Analytics first, and get the code from there).
Best WordPress Contact Form Plugin

My favourite Contact Form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7. It's totally versatile, and super popular.
Best WordPress Backup Plugin

You should back up your WordPress site. You need to back up both the files AND the database. I recommend BackWPup Free - WordPress Backup Plugin. Here's a tutorial on how to use the BackWPup plugin.

Watch the video on how to use BackWPup to backup your WordPress website or read the tutorial here.
Best Anti-Brute Force Attack Plugin

WordPress is probably the most popular CMS system in the world. Unfortunately, it's popularity makes it extremely attractive to hackers. The default in WordPress is that login attempts aren't limited, which means that your site is vunerable to brute-force attacks. This is when a hacker can run a programme that can keep trying to login to your WordPress account, until it gets the right username-password combination. Get Limit Login Attempts Reloaded by wpchefgadget, a super simple plugin, which allows you to limit the login attempts. So, if the password is put in (for example) three times in a row incorrectly, no login attempts will be accepted for a certain amount of time that you specify.
Best Plugin for E-Commerce

There are loads of options out there for WordPress plugins. My favourite is WooCommerce. It's pretty easy to use. Download the WooCommerce Plugin, for free. This Plugin comes with a load of features for an e-commerce shop.
Best Social Sharing Buttons

If you have a blog, or something worth sharing - then make it easy for people to share the link of each page to their Social Media profiles. Go for Simple Share Buttons Adder, which enables you to add social media share buttons to all the main social networks.