Being prepared for something before actually doing it is one of the crucial moments of any endeavor. Planning out how, what and who will do and fulfill what purpose in advanced is very important. The same way it is very important that you know which plugins you will be using on your WordPress site in advance.
It is ill advised to have too many plugins strapped to you site, the reason being that some of them might slow down the performance of your site. You also should concentrate on plugins that do multiple tasks and have more features (instead of having 5 plugins, install rather 1 that has all 5 features).
1. Coming Soon Pages
Coming soon pages are one of those things that one would not think are essential in any kind of way, but that is where you are wrong. It is brilliant when you think about it, it creates suspense and mystery, what will this site be when it gets published. You can add a countdown of sorts to indicate when the site is going to go live.
The other crucial part of these plugins is the maintenance part. You will be faced with a lot of need for maintenance of your site or blog. You would be surprised by the amount of times you will have to put your site on hold just because you need to change up a couple of things.
So, while you are fixing up your site, you are in need to give people an explanation to why the site is not online. That is why this is a great thing to set up beforehand. You create a under maintenance page that will automatically be shown when you decide to do maintenance on your site.
This is important because you do not want people to come to your site and see that there is nothing there or an error page, they will automatically assume that your site has been scraped or that you have run out of business.
But if you greet them with an under maintenance page, they will think that everything is in order. If you want a plugin that deals only with the creation and automation of maintenance pages then I would recommend the “Under Construction” plugin as well as “Maintenance”
If you want a plugin that has the ability to do all of the above (coming soon and maintenance pages), then you should better opt for Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode (even though Under Construction also has all of these abilities).
2. WP Reset
Well here is a plugin that you will learn to love, no matter what the site is and what you will be doing on it. WP Reset is the go-to plugin for developers and normal day to day users of WordPress. With its easy installation and simple yet powerful features you will be amazed by the many applications that this plugin offers you.
You will screw something up on your site eventually, with this plugin you simply restart it and start anew, without doing it manually. It is a great plugin when you want to test out some of your new features that you will be offering your users on your site.
With just a simple click of a button you can reset any aspect of your site. You can for example make the plugin remove all of your custom uploaded images and recordings, you can reset only the themes that are in use and so on.
3. Yoast SEO
Here we have the top pick for best plugin for SEO. It is the go-to plugin when you want to rank higher on google or on other search engines. It is brilliant because it can show you who your competitors are at any given time. So that you can see what you have to improve upon in order to rank higher than them on Google.
Considering that the plugin is free, and some of its features are better than those from some other plugins out there that cost money. It is safe to say that this is truly the best SEO tool that one will want to install on his or her site or blog.
4. Jetpack
Here is another must have plugin that will benefit you blog. Jetpack is a very multifunctional plugin that is able of so many things. I especially love the analytics system that this plugin provides. The show related post option is so brilliant that I cannot restrain myself from talking about it.
It is one of those crucial things that a blog needs in order to lower the overall bounce rate on your site. You don’t want people to click one link and then leave the site, you want them to bunny hop all over the place on your site, and with “show related posts” you will get just that.
The plugin is also a good way of deterring hackers from trying to force their way into your blog(when they use the brute force technique).
5. Akismet
You do not want your site or blog to be plagued with spam!
It is a horrible and sad thing to see on one’s site, especially when you have put so much time into the site itself, only to see it get flooded with spam. Akismet has supposedly removed over 400 billion spams to date. That is quite impressive considering how many spammers are out there. It is simple to install and use and it will get the job done more than perfectly.
Closing Up
If you are new to the blogging world on WordPress, then you will see that when you are backed by powerful plugins that things aren’t all that hard. All you got to do is find the perfect plugins that suit your needs and your site.
Plugins are half of the work; the other half is up to you and how much effort you put into your work. These plugins will surely help you out in you blogging endeavors but just remember to utilize them in the right places and don’t slack around. Write quality content and you will see how far these plugins will fly you to!
Happy Blogging!
