I have been working with WordPress for more than ten years now. I have Installed thousands of sites for clients and myself.
Each site is different and uses different themes and plugins as the project needs. But, there are a few plugins that I personally like to have in each of the new installations. I am going to list five of these essential plugins type that each new WP installation must have at the beginning.
01. Under Construction:
There are several under-construction plugins in the WordPress repository. You do not need to pay for these plugins. Go for a free plugin like: Under Construction or Maintenance By WebFactory Ltd.
You can use any of them actually. I like these two because of their simple interface and easy-to-modify branding text. This will make sure nobody can enter or visit your unfinished site.
Also, after installing the site on your domain, do this:- from the reading settings of the WP dashboard. Mark the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. This will tell the search engine bots not to index the under-construction site.
02. Jetpack
When you install WordPress via cPanel or your web hosting’s control panel, they sometimes encourage you to install the jetpack plugin. Please do so.
Jetpack is by far the best Automattic plugin every self-hosted WP installation must have. It contains the functionality of a bunch of other plugins.
You can make your site image load faster via their image CDN, monitor the uptime of your site, get visitor stats, brute force protection, comment spam blocking and so many more.
A free WordPress account and the “WordPress mobile app” are all you need to take care of your site from mobile.
03. Caching Plugin
If your site is living on a shared server, I would recommend you install a good caching plugin. WP Rocket is by far the best choice if you can afford a premium plan.
Configuring WP Rocket is a bit complicated, but there are help and guides for that. You can go with the basic settings.
If you are hosting your site on a VPS then you might not need a caching plugin, but it surely improves the site loading time.
On a lightspeed server, there is a special plugin to control the WordPress cache called “LiteSpeed Cache”. This is an amazing plugin to control and optimize almost all of your site’s cache and optimize databases with it.
There are some other good caching plugins like:
If you are not sure about the plugin configuration and do not have the time to configure it by yourself then go for the WP Super Cache.
Our WP Manager service will help you to configure all of this if you purchase a plan.
04. Backup plugin
If you’re on a shared cPanel server, then most probably your hosting is taking a backup each week. Some hosting plans back up the entire cPanel account daily.
But, if you are on a VPS, you need to back up your own sites. Although I recommend that you back up your site at least once a month and store it in your own cloud and local computer.
Always make 2 copies of your backup and do not delete them until you have a new one.
You can use Updraftplus & BackupBuddy plugins. UpdraftPlus will let you back up your sites in Google Drive, One Drive, or external FTP. This is a very convenient option.
05. Security Plugin
There are a few security measures you need to take to manage your WordPress site. The first one should be updating your site’s themes and plugins regularly. The second is to take backups each week.
Apart from these steps to enhance the security, stop spam attacks, and tackle bruteforce entry, you might need a plugin like Wordfence Security. I have been using this plugin for many of my client’s sites without a problem. The free version is sufficient in most cases.
Another great security plugin would be iThemes Security. They also have a pro version with more control over your site.
Non-essential Plugin
06. SEO plugins
Some say an SEO plugin is needed, but some would disagree. We say an SEO plugin will help you to optimize your content structure, but there is no guarantee it will rank your content. Google or Bing is much smarter than the SEO plugins.
SEO plugins will help you to rewrite the title, generate sitemaps automatically, and put a no-index for a certain category or archive, which otherwise you have to do manually via .htaccess file.
In simple SEO plugins help.
Here are the best three SEO plugins we recommend if you are using one.
Some themes even have their own SEO options and you can generally use those without installing and configuring complicated SEO plugins.
In our WP Manager services, we also help to configure the SEO plugins for our client’s site. Give us a DM and we will check your site.
So, here is the basic list of plugins I use after installing a new WP site. Some I use for speed and others for stability. WordPress is a great platform to begin with, but you have to keep in mind that nothing on the WEB is 100% secured.
What is your choice list of plugins? Put it up in the comment box.
I am a Blogger and Online Marketer. I started blogging in 2006 and since then I self taught myself "how to earn a decent income from online profession".
Currently, I am working as a freelance Web Designer and Marketing Consultant.
You can contact me for a schedule. Send me an e-mail at: [email protected]
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