The Best WordPress Plug-Ins You Must Use

WordPress users should utilize a feature called plug-ins on their blogs. You may wonder what a plug-in is; they are bits of software that can be uploaded to expand the functionality of your site. This is an awesome feature and gives you the ability to customize your WordPress site.

There are hundreds of plug-ins available to download. There are free and paid varieties. Although there are great free ones, you should also consider opting for some paid ones as well. These tend to offer support staff to help with compatibility and to add security to your site.

Here are some awesome plug-ins you should consider using.

1. Hummingbird

The speed of your site is an important factor. A visitor who has to wait too long for a website to load is bound to leave before seeing your awesome content. Hummingbird scans your website and lets you know the score of your site’s speed. This gives you some insight into what issues need fixed.

2. SmartCrawl

SEO is important for websites; every website developer wants their site to score high on search engines whether they are using dedicated hosting or VPS hosting to host their website. You may think you are doing well, but SmartCrawl finds out if you are drawing in the viewers like you hope. It helps make your site more visible to search engines. Basically, it goes to the search engine instead of waiting for the search engine to find you.

3. Appointments

If your business requires the scheduling of appointments or consultations with clients, Appointments + can do this all for you. It lets clients book their appointments on your website and prevents double bookings from ever occurring. It can streamline your entire business. Clients are even able to pay for their appointments upfront using this plug-in. Then, your clients can sync their Google Calendar. It even has a feature to let you put your staff’s schedule in as well. Talk about taking some burden off your shoulders!

4. Defender

Security is very important. Blogs can be hacked, and then upload a bot able to infect your viewers. You need to defend your website. This is where the plug-in Defender is able to help your website. It searches your site for vulnerable spots. It cleans up your site and tells you what needs fixed. You are able to create a schedule of scans and let it do its job.

5. WordPress Shopping Cart

If your website sells products, you need to have a simple and secure route that your clients can purchase them. This route needs to be secure and allow clients to use a variety of payment methods. The WordPress shopping cart is the perfect plug-in for these sites.

6. Google Analytics

Tracking your website is a vital part of having a successful site. You need to have insight into things such as when your visitors come, how they find your website, where they live and what pages they frequent the most. Google analytics can do this and ore. It will outline your page views, bounce rate, how long the visitors stay, and more. You can use this insight to better your website.

7. Snapshot

Backups of your website are important. If you are hacked or experience a crash, the site will be restored based on your backups. However, if your backup fails, what are you going to do? This is where having snapshot is beneficial. It is able to back up your site and save it to multiple locations, like Dropbox and Google Drive. Also, you can schedule to have regular backups performed so you don’t have to worry about losing much.

8. WP Smush Pro

Images are important for attracting viewers to your site. They grab their attention, but they take up a lot of storage space. WP Smush helps to compress all of the images on your site, creating more valuable space. More space lets your website load faster, yet it still maintains the quality of your images.

Photo by geralt, CC0 1.0