Before concentrating on the topic, let me ask you a few questions. Are you satisfied with the plugins of your CMS? Are they consuming so much of your time and you are looking for some easy and effective plugins? Then this article might help you out.
First of all, we need to understand what Plugin is. It is an element of a software program that can be added to WordPress for providing supports about specific features or functionality. These are commonly used in Internet browsers however it also can be utilized in various other types of applications.
WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that is based on server-side programing language PHP and MySQL. The plugin architecture is a unique feature of this CMS. This extends the characteristics and performance of the WordPress website. This CMS has more than 55,286 plugins that offer custom functions and features. However, many third parties are also there who offers plugins from their own websites, most of them are paid packages.
Here are 10 popular plugins you should check-
Woocommerce (free):
It is a great source for eCommerce. The design of this is for all types of online merchants who use WordPress. It has been launched on September 27, 2011, and it became popular quickly for its simplicity.
Many high-traffic websites use WooCommerce and many Woocommerce-ready themes have been sold on third party websites. Woocommerce has 1,135 themes on ThemeForest, The WordPress.org theme directory has 548 themes and Mojo Themes has 240 themes.
WooCommerce has Bookings extensions which allow the users to sell blocks of time as appointments and Memberships allows the user to restrict access to certain parts of their WordPress website, and sell access to these parts of the website.
Yoast SEO:
It is a free plugin, which also has a premium membership for extraordinary features. It is a tool that can help you out to make your site search-engine-friendly as possible. This can be installed on any self-hosted WordPress site. Here are few features which you might like to know- Optimize synonyms or keywords, Suggestions of Internal linking, Preview the page in Google and social media, Full control over your breadcrumbs, Plagiarism free, Technical stuff in the background, Redirect manager, Focus keyword export, Always updated for Google’s algorithm.
These are the features that many of us are looking for but got confused and careless to try out. However, I would surely suggest you use this plugin.
Contact Form 7 (free):
You can manage multiple contact forms and customize it along with the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. This can give support to Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
If you activate reCAPTCHA (Google) & Akismet (Automattic) features here, the contact form submitter’s personal data may be sent to the service provider.
Due to the default configuration, this does not track users by stealth, write any user personal data to the database, send any data to external servers or use cookies.
Option Tree (free):
The plugin will allow you to build a powerful Theme Administration page that contains all kinds of functionality. There is also a feature to create repeatable fields, tabbed sections, custom galleries, a CSS editor and many more.
There are some of the Option Types which shipped by default with this, such as Text, Textarea, Textarea Simple, Textblock Titled, Radio, Checkbox, Post Checkbox, Page Checkbox, Custom Post Type Checkbox, Category Checkbox, Tag Checkbox, Taxonomy Checkbox, Post Select, Page Select, Custom Post Type Select, Category Select, Taxonomy Select, Sidebar Select.
MailChimp:
A free plugin, which also has a premium membership for extraordinary features. A marketing automation platform along with an email marketing service. Super flexible and user-friendly. Most people love it because it’s been designed for non-technical people. It is easy for everyone, even those who do not have a marketing degree, can also send professional-looking emails. Features like Scheduling, List segmentation, Reporting, Integration.
It reduces your hard work and very useful with your email marketing!
All in one WP Security & Firewall (free):
The most popular security plugin of WordPress. It has three different categories which are- Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. The Basic feature of this plugin is very straightforward. It is absolutely safe to use and non-invasive. Whatever you do, this option will NOT break your site. Few of the intermediate and advanced security features can break your site and can conflict with other themes and plugins.
W3 Total Cache:
A free plugin, which also has a premium membership for extraordinary features. It is a cache plugin for WordPress. Many of us are familiar with the WP Super Cache plugin. However, W3 Total Cache might be a better solution than that. It can be used to hook in a CDN and serves static pages. It can make your site much faster to load and cheaper to host. I would recommend you try it and enjoy it!
Paid Membership Pro:
It is a free plugin, which also has a premium membership for extraordinary features. It is a plugin with which you can do anything. For example, Screenshots, Payment Gateways, Flexible Pricing and Trials, Content Access by Level, Member Reports, Search Engine Optimized, Support Community, Customize Advertising, Email Notifications and many more. So we can say this plugin is an allrounder!
Custom Post Type UI (free):
It is one of the two most popular plugins for creating WordPress Custom Post Types; which are Custom Post Types UI and Types. Both have great user-interfaces and they let users easily create custom posts. Custom Post Types UI is a free plugin. The features they are offering are- Name Plural and Singular, Slug, Description, Title, Editor, Comments, Trackbacks, Revisions, Author, Has Archive, Exclude From Search, Capability Type, Make Hierarchical, Rewrite, Custom Rewrite Slug, Create Custom Taxonomies and many more.
Akismet Anti-Spam:
The free plugin, which also has a premium membership for extraordinary features. It is a spam filter plugin and can be used in WordPress. After launch, it has captured almost more than 100 billion spam comments and pings as of October 2013. It will make your WordPress basically spam free, and to be honest more than 5 million people are using it as their plugin. Clearly they are enjoying this. You can give it a try to enjoy the features.
Plugins are most important for a CMS to make every data in the proper position. Without plugins, it might be difficult to make everything in order as everyone has to maintain loads of programming codes. However, I have provided you a few details about the 10 popular plugins according to statistics and my experience with the hope that you find it helpful to enjoy it.
Have a great experience using these!
