One of the things that makes WordPress so attractive as a website platform is the availability of plugins. If you’re not familiar with WordPress plugins, they’re pre-programmed extensions to your WordPress installation that add desirable functions. Some WordPress plugins are designed to add functions for users; others are designed to improve the management and administration of your WordPress site. In this post, I’ll take a look at 5 WordPress plugins you may find indispensible.
WordPress plugins worth looking at
WordPress SEO by Yoast Having been downloaded nearly 10.5 million times, WordPress SEO by Yoast is easily the most popular WordPress plugin available today. By providing tools to help you identify focus keywords, meta descriptions, image tags and other SEO elements, and by analyzing how effective your page is at meeting known search engine SEO expectations, WordPress SEO by Yoast puts you in full control of your website’s search engine optimization.
Contact Form 7 Being able to present a contact form is exceptionally important for some websites. This WordPress plugin makes designing and implementing a working contact form a snap. It’s simple to use and has been downloaded more than 17 million times.
Aksimet If your website – or some part of it – accepts visitor comments, you’ll want to consider Aksimet. This handy WordPress plugin works with the Aksimet service to compare the comments that land on your website with its database of known spam/ham comments. Saves time on your part and helps you to avoid silly, irrelevant and/or irritating comments on your site. Aksimet has been downloaded more than 20 million times.
Google XML Sitemaps Another handy WordPress plugin that you’ll want to download and install. This plugin generates an XML sitemap that search engines can use to examine and understand the content on your website. This administrative tool, which has been downloaded nearly 14 million times, is too handy to be without.
Jetpack Jetpack is kind of the Swiss Army Knife of WordPress plugins, and adds a wide variety of both administrative and user options. Jetpack offers everything from simple stats and site metrics, to social media functions, a comment “like” function, email posting capabilities, Twitter feed streams, a CSS editor, spelling and grammar checking, widget visibility control and much more. With a WordPress plugin that’s been downloaded more than 10 million times, you can’t go wrong.
If you would like more information about WordPress plugins and how you can use them to enhance your WordPress website, please contact our Creative Director, Dave Ramsell or give Dave a call at (330) 243-0651 to set up a consultation.
Photo Credit: pilotgeek, via FreeImages.com
