WordPress is much more than a blogging tool. Since its 2003 launch, this flexible, easy-to-set-up web publishing platform has served as the foundation for anywhere between 500 million to nearly a billion websites, a staggering total. Its popularity has spawned an incredibly rich plug-in ecosystem that helps webmasters improve their sites in numerous ways. From search engine optimization (SEO), to article enhancement, to comments management, you’ll find an amazing number of ways to trick out your WordPress installation’s base functionality, whether you’re hosting your own website or using a managed WordPress hosting service.
There are nearly 60,000 WordPress plug-ins available. The upside? You’ll never run out of plug-ins to peruse. The downside? You don’t even know where to start. As with the Android and iOS app stores, the WordPress plug-in catalog houses countless goodies mixed with even more duds. Our goal is to highlight those that will most benefit your website. These top WordPress plug-ins will help your site perform like a champ. And they do it without costing you a cent because these plug-ins are all free (although some offer premium tiers with additional functionality). Every plug-in featured here has been updated within the past two months as of this writing. An out-of-date plug-in may work with your recently updated WordPress installation, but it’s not guaranteed to do so.
One more thing. Plug-ins can be installed only on self-hosted WordPress sites or sites using managed WordPress hosting services; if WordPress.com is your host, this article isn’t for you. But if you are self-hosting a website, check out our list of excellent plug-ins below.
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Developed by Automattic
Akismet checks comments and trackbacks against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam. If any comments and trackbacks are deemed bogus, they’re automatically shuffled over to your WordPress installation’s spam folder. Clicking Akismet Stats (located in your Dashboard) shows a breakdown of your spam, missed spam, ham (Akismet’s term for real comments), and false positives (legit comments and trackbacks mistaken for spam).
Developed by Takayuki Miyoshi
Sometimes a site simply needs a solid contact form. You can add one to your WordPress-powered blog with this useful, customizable plug-in. Contact Form 7 supports Akismet and CAPTCHA spam filtering, too, so that you don’t have to deal with the bots and other shenanigans that plague the online space.
Elementor Website Builder
Developed by Elementor.com
Elementor offers numerous tools to make your WordPress site as robust and attractive as possible. Add video and image galleries. Integrate services, such as Google Maps and SoundCloud. Display your social media icons. Insert custom HTML code to further expand your site’s functionality.
Developed by Automattic
Jetpack is an official WordPress.com plug-in that gives your self-hosted WordPress blog a truckload of extra features. The plug-in serves up visitor stats, social media sharing options, and After The Deadline (a grammar and spell checker). Featuring design, marketing, performance, and security tools, Jetpack gets you started with a little bit of everything.
Developed by LiteSpeed Technologies
No one has time for a slow website to load. We have places to go and things to do, after all. LiteSpeed Cache helps your WordPress-powered site pick up the pace. This plug-in includes optimization features designed for site acceleration, including server-level cache for easy integration with existing tools.
Developed by Tim Whitlock
It’s pretty hard to build a website if you can’t even read what’s on your screen. Loco Translate helps you edit WordPress translation files right in your browser. It integrates with existing automatic translation APIs from DeepL, Google, Microsoft, and other notable companies. Using Loco Translate, you can update and customize language files, and save them to a protected directory.
Developed by John Godley
Redirection is a plugin that lets you redirect links, track 404 (“page not found”) errors, and fix other link-based issues. The plug-in is incredibly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website or making changes to your site’s WordPress directory.
Developed by The Simple:Press Team
Want to add a forum to your WordPress setup? Simple:Press lets you do just that. Don’t underestimate its capabilities; with Simple:Press, you can customize the forum with skins, create sub-forums, grant user rankings based on post numbers, and more.
Developed by The Events Calendar
You don’t want to miss important events, no matter if they’re offline or online. With the Events Calendar plug-in, you can create and view events, coordinate with venues and fellow organizers, and publish your schedule for visitors to browse.
Developed by UpdraftPlus.com
Because you put so much effort into building a website, the last thing you want to do is lose it. UpdraftPlus, lets you back up your WordPress site and files into cloud services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. Rest easy knowing you can restore your site whenever you want.
Developed by Automattic
If you want to make money with your website, e-commerce is the way to go. With WooCommerce, WordPress’s official open-source e-commerce tool, you can create storefronts that make your products truly irresistible. Get paid!
Developed by Wordfence
The internet can be a dangerous place. Wordfence Security protects your WordPress site and keeps your visitors safe from malicious attacks. A strong firewall filters out known suspicious IP addresses, deeply integrated encryption thwarts data leaks, and multifactor authentication adds that last extra safeguard for your WordPress login. You owe it to your users to keep your site safe and sound.
Developed by WPForms
WPForms lets you add a variety of useful and stylish forms so users have even more ways to interact with your WordPress site. This plug-in handles contact, feedback, payment, and subscription forms. The drag-and-drop builder tools are tuned for beginners who want to quickly get started without much fuss.
Developed by Team Yoast
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the single most important thing for getting your website in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Millions of WordPress sites trust Yoast SEO to offer all the insight they need to keep their SEO game on point. This tool analyzes your content for keywords, monitors your ranking, and helps you clean up your URLs. Premium users can even preview how their site appears on social media.
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