Do you remember the Apple campaign called “There’s an App for That” from 2009? Well, the same principle now applies to WordPress.
No matter what kind of functionality you want, there is a plugin available that will meet your needs and then some. As of this writing, WordPress has a huge 55,785 plugins available.
With so many plugins to choose from, how can you be sure which ones will be useful to you?
This is a problem because Web designers and digital marketers frequently come across websites with dozens of plugins that don’t work together, are no longer supported by WordPress, or are so customised that even thinking about touching them could cause the Earth to collapse.
If you are a WordPress site developer or maintainer, how do you evaluate which plugins are worth using? Here are some of our favorite things.
1. Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is the most popular firewall and security scanning plugin available for WordPress, with more than 2 million active installations.
It’s a highly customizable tool that protects your site by:
- Blocking brute force logins.
- Banning IPs.
- Running routine scans and alerts.
Wordfence is a plugin with both free and paid features. The basic functions are available for free, but you must pay for the premium features. But you’ll get more with the premium offering, including:
- Two-factor authentication.
- Real-time malware signature updates.
- Country blocking.
Wordfence is a great tool to help protect your website, but it’s still just a tool. It’s important to remember that no matter how many security measures you have in place, there is always a chance that your site could be hacked. This text saying that using a website monitoring services is not a replacement for manual monitoring of your site.
Some users have reported that they have had issues with PHP exception permissions and with memory limits on their hosting accounts interfering with the service.
2. Really Simple SSL
SSL technology creates an encrypted link between a browser and web server. This ensures that all data traveling between the two remains secure and private.
Google is warning webmasters that if their site is not secure before October 2018, they could see a significant increase in their bounce rates.
Basically, this plugin will handle all of the SSL configuration for your website.
If you are installing an SSL certificate, be careful not to misconfigure it, as this can lead to warnings appearing in web browsers used by your site’s visitors. The plugin automatically changes your site settings to run over https without warnings.
An SSL certificate must be installed on your server/hosting package before using the Really Simple SSL plugin.
Setting up is incredibly easy. To use this feature, simply activate the plugin and enable SSL with one click.
3. BackWPUp
A lot can go wrong when you’re maintaining a website:
- Your site may get hacked.
- You could install a plugin or theme that breaks everything.
- Your database can become corrupted.
When multiple people are working on a website, it is essential to have a disaster recovery plan. The importance of backing up your website cannot be overstated, and BackWPUp is the best plugin to do it.
Although this service has a paid version, the original version is free. This service can be used to schedule daily, monthly, or yearly backups to Amazon S3, Dropbox, FTP, and more.
Backing up your themes, database, and files can all be done from your dashboard.
Beware that you may encounter some frustrating problems if you cannot edit your PHP settings through your hosting service or server.
4. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that has been around since 2008. It is a popular plugin for optimizing websites for search engines.
The platform is very sturdy and can be used by people who don’t know how to code to make changes on their website such as taking out categories and tags without having to go into the complicated backend.
Yoast offers step-by-step guides on topics like writing page titles and meta descriptions, as well as other content like page readability. Some of the most popular features with users are the ability to bulk edit and preview snippets of search results from Google.
Some users find that Yoast conflicts with other plugins. If you’re having issues, All-in-One SEO is a reliable alternative, even though it’s not as strong.
Yoast can not replace actual SEO knowledge. A bug in the Yoast plugin caused some sites to lose their ranking earlier this year. History could repeat itself!
5. Gravity Forms
Contact forms are important for generating leads and conversions online. No matter what you use them for, you need to ensure they:
- Attract attention.
- Are not too busy.
- Actually accomplish what they are meant to.
Gravity Forms helps you do just that.
This plugin allows you to build powerful online forms that are easy to use. As you create a form, there are many ways to customize it to fit your needs, such as choosing from over 30 different fields and using the “Conditional Logic” feature.
The plugin has different integrations with other platforms depending on which version you have. The versions are Basic, Pro, or Elite.
The only options available are paid ones, which puts some people off. Would your clients be willing to reimburse you for the $59 yearly fee for the plugin? If so, then it would be definitely worth it.
6. Simple 301 Redirects
Redirects are an important part of SEO. Redirects are useful when you’re changing the URL structures of pages and posts.
This plugin allows you to easily redirect old URLs to new ones. You can also upload redirects in bulk by using a CSV file from a third party.
Oh, and this plugin is free.
The Simple 301 Redirects plugin only supports redirects within one domain. External cross-domain redirects are not supported. If you want to do more complex redirects, it is best to do them directly in the .htaccess file.
7. ManageWP
ManageWP is a plugin that is very helpful for agencies. It is second only to Atarim. Instead of having to remember multiple passwords or creating a complicated spreadsheet to keep track of them all, ManageWP lets you manage all your website passwords in one place.
After you add websites to ManageWP, you will be able to see them all from a single dashboard. You can get a quick overview of what’s going on, and seamlessly log in with a single click. ManageWP lets you add unlimited websites for free.
This tool is great for agencies that need to manage multiple websites. ManageWp is a great time-saving tool that comes with a bunch of cool features to make website management easier.
8. Rank Math
Your clients rely on you to create and improve their websites. Rank Math streamlines the process of optimizing your clients’ websites, so you can get the job done in a fraction of the time.
This tool will automatically optimize your website’s performance by verifying the site’s settings and recommending the ideal settings.
The plugin also has a great SEO analytics module that pulls data from Google Search Console and displays it right in your admin dashboard.
This feature makes it super easy to handle sites developed for clients & keep track of the SEO progress within a single platform. Rank Math has a Client Management feature that allows you to manage sites developed for clients and track the SEO progress within one platform. The Rank Math dashboard lets you see how well different websites are doing withRank Math’s help.
This is possible with a Rank Math PRO account. A centralized dashboard allows you to see all of the websites you are connected to, as well as their stats and SEO performance.
Rank Math’s Agency plan is the most comprehensive solution for large agencies, allowing them to support 500 websites and track 50,000 keywords.
9. ShortPixel
ShortPixel is a great image optimization plugin for WordPress websites. It automatically resizes images to fit webpages and optimizes them to improve website speeds. The WordPress plugin lets you edit images directly from the WordPress Dashboard.
If you own an agency, ShortPixel is a great choice for you as it allows you to optimize images that have already been installed on your clients’ websites quickly and easily. Image optimization times are reduced to a few seconds at most, increasing speeds and reducing bandwidth usage drastically.
10. Members
The Members plugin is a popular WordPress plugin for agencies because it is easy to use and has a lot of features. The plugin gives you more control over user roles, rather than limiting you to the six default roles.
You can easily restrict content for specific users by customizing each role and its capabilities with Members. This tool is very easy to use and has a very basic user interface.
Members allow you to access features that were traditionally available only to developers who knew how to code. Since agencies typically work with multiple users, Members is an excellent way to manage permissions for team members who work in the backend.
you can prevent content writers from accessing administrative plugins, while only allowing developers to access specific plugins that they need to work with.
11. Advanced Custom Fields
Advanced Custom Fields is a plugin for WordPress that gives developers and site owners full control of the editing screens. It allows you to add new fields throughout WP.
Agencies can save a lot of time by using this tool instead of the native custom field interface in WordPress. Advanced Custom Fields allows you to create new fields within seconds for greater functionality.
You can always change your settings to see how your information appears. Advanced Custom Fields comes with over 30 pre-built field types that you can use to quickly create new fields for your clients.
12. Autoptimize
Autoptimize is an extremely useful tool for agency owners as it makes website optimization much simpler. At its core, Autoptimize speeds up your website by aggregating, minifying, and caching styles and scripts.
Using our software, you can improve the performance of your client’s websites by lazy-loading images, asynchronously loading non-aggregated JavaScript, and using the AVID or WebP image formats.
The Autoptimize plugin is a great option for developers because it has a robust API that makes it easy to customize the plugin for the specific needs of your clients’ websites.
It automatically combines scripts and styles and reduces the size of HTML code, all of which improves website performance dramatically. Autoptimize can save you a lot of time when optimizing sites for your clients.
13. Sucuri, Wordfence or Malcare
As the head of the agency, security is your top priority to ensure that your client’s websites stay online.
Sucuri is a great WordPress security plugin that can help you protect your and your client’s websites. Your clients may come to you asking for help making their website more secure. Sucuri is a great option for this.
The agency plan allows for easy management of over a thousand domains from a single dashboard. They also offer removal of malware that is specifically tailored to the needs of the customer, as well as regularly monitoring websites to identify and stop threats as they happen.
The three options have similar features and prices, but whichever one you choose, you’ll have great WordPress security.
If a website gets hacked, Sucuri, Wordfence, and Malcare have experts ready to help solve the problem.
14. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a great plugin that will help you improve conversion results for your clients. This plugin is great for marketing agencies that want to help their clients grow their email lists, reduce cart abandonment, and increase revenue.
With OptinMonster, you can create forms that are interactive and designed to increase conversions. It also offers innovative page-level A/B testing that makes data analysis easier for your clients.
If you’re running an agency, OptinMonster has some great custom branding solutions that’ll allow you to add your own branding to the plugin, as well as create sub-accounts and manage permissions for each user.
15. Elementor, Beaver Builder, Bricks or Oxygen Builder
If you want to build websites quickly and easily, page builders are the best option available. If you’re running an agency, you should get some page builders to help you with your marketing efforts.
Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It is the number one website builder that you can use to build websites for your clients. It is quick and easy to use, and it has a lot of features that you can use to help make your website look great.
The interface is very user-friendly, and Elementor has a lot of features including pre-built templates, widgets, themes, and other options.
If you want a website builder that is versatile and has simple drag and drop functionality, Elementor is a good option. It also has a lot of options. Elementor is a versatile tool that can be enhanced with a variety of additional add-ons.
If you plan for clients to be able to edit the website directly, Elementor is probably a good option for you.
Beaver Builder is an alternate solution for building websites that is just as good as Elementor. Although it is more expensive, it is still super simple to use compared to Elementor. There are fewer pre-made templates, but that does not make it any less user-friendly.
Bricks builder is becoming popular because it delivers great results, even though it is technically a theme and not a plugin.
Unlike other page builder plugins, Bricks is made using Vue, a new Javascript library that allows the browser to do most of the heavy lifting instead of the server. This results in amazing page speed. Bricks does not require any optimization plugins and still manages to get a score of 94/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights.
Though it is still in development, Bricks may be a good option for developers who primarily build websites for an agency. It looks strikingly similar to Elementor.
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