If you’re a web developer, blogger, writer or just a website enthusiast, chances are you’re using or have used WordPress. After all, it’s the world’s most popular, and easiest to use, content management system.
But just because WordPress is easy to use doesn’t mean it can’t be improved — that’s where WordPress plugins can prove invaluable. Plugins enhance the functionality of WordPress, allowing users to add specific functions to meet their needs. And there are thousands of them. In fact, there are so many plugins available, it can be difficult to determine which ones might benefit you. If the choice seems overwhelming, read on to discover 6 of the most popular, and most useful, WordPress plugins available for 2018.
Google Analytics for WordPress | By MonsterInsights
4 out of 5 Star Rating
Every web developer knows the value of Google’s analytical tools. Now Google Analytics for WordPress Dashboard by MonsterInsights lets you connect your Google Analytics account to your WordPress website with ease. With Google Analytics added to your site, you can see where your visitors are coming from and view the ways in which they interact with your site. The plugin makes it possible to view your website’s statistics directly in WordPress’ admin panel by adding the Google Analytics Dashboard. Download
Akismet | By Automattic
5 Star Rating
Akismet truly is a useful WordPress plugin. As any web designer worth his keyboard knows, spam comments can degrade the quality of a website and hurt its Google rankings to boot. But Akismet ends all this. It automatically checks comments submitted to your posts and pages as well as contact form information against its massive spam database. This prevents your website or blog from publishing content detrimental to your good standings with search engines and peer sites. But Akismet isn’t overbearing and you retain full control of your content. You can review any comment tagged as spam and choose whether or not it is appropriate to publish.
Contact Form 7 | By Takayuki Miyoshi
4.5 out of 5 Star Rating
Creating contact forms used to be difficult, but not anymore. Contact Form 7 lets users create and manage contact forms with ease. This useful plugin also allows newly created forms to be customized to suit the user’s needs. It offers support for Ajax-powered submitting, the use of CAPTCHAs and filtering by Akismet to weed out spam. In addition, it’s reliable, easy to setup and integrates seamlessly with both WordPress pages and posts. Download Contact Form 7
Shortcodes Ultimate |By Vladimir Anokhin
5 Star Rating
Anyone who’s ever worked in WordPress knows the value of shortcodes. They make it easy to add custom content to posts and pages. Shortcodes Ultimate is a WordPress plugin that gives users, developers and bloggers alike a veritable cornucopia of helpful codes. The plugin allows for the easy creation of buttons, tabs, sliders, boxes, videos and more. Shortcodes Ultimate is so easy to use that those new to WordPress can have it working in no time. Its free version is feature-rich and it offers several premium add-ons. It’s even multilingual.
Yoast SEO | By Team Yoast
5 Star Rating
Search engine optimization is tough stuff. Any web designer, blogger or developer can attest to that. But fortunately, Team Yoast has worked hard to provide every WordPress user with the tools they need to improve all aspects of SEO. This plugin offers page analysis and automatically checks SEO related issues you may not have thought of. For example, do all of your images have “alt” tags with focus keywords? Is your post long enough for Google’s liking? Does your keyword appear in your text enough to make it viable? Yoast SEO monitors all of these things and provides tips on how to optimize SEO.
MetaSlider | By Matcha Labs
4.5 out of 5 Star Rating
Sliders, those big moving picture bars at the top of many websites, present information to visitors in a clean and professional manner, and Meta Slider is WordPress’ most popular slider plugin. It lets web developers create dynamic sliders quickly and easily. Just choose the images to be included, add captions and links, and you’re done. You can also complete optional SEO fields. Best of all, the Meta Slider plugin offers four different slider styles from which to choose. It even comes with shortcodes so embedding sliders into a web page is super easy.
So there you have it — a list of 6 incredibly useful plugins you can implement on your WordPress website right now. They can help streamline your workflow and assist you in just about every aspect of website development and maintenance. And best of all, they’re free.
Editors Note:
Not sure how to install a wordpress plugin? It can save you a lot of time and headaches to hire a professional web designer. With WordPress you can handle all the content and posting yourself and just hire a webdesigner to install and configure the plugins for you. Check out web design pricing calculator for a free website design estimate.
By John Michael West Guest Blogger