According to WordPress, there are over 60 million people who have
chosen WordPress as the platform for their website. WordPress is a very
customizable CMS software, which means you can accomplish almost
anything you want with it. It also has a lot of developer support so
there are many plugins available, most of which are free. I’m going to
share the 10 most essential WordPress plugins for your business website
in this article.
1. Content Aware Sidebars (Free)
If you’ve used other content management systems such as Joomla,
you’ll quickly find the need to assign widgets to specific pages or
posts only. There is no way to do such a thing in WordPress out of the
box.
That’s where the Content Aware Sidebars plugin comes in
handy. It allows you to create an unlimited number of sidebars (widget
areas) for any widget area and assign it to specific pages, posts,
categories, and so on. In a nutshell, it basically creates a virtual
widget area that replaces the real widget area for the pages you
specify.
Once you create a new sidebar, it will show up in the Appearance -> Widgets with all other widget areas.
2. Enhanced Text Widget (Free)
The out of the box text widget that comes with WordPress is useful, but it lacks many important and necessary features.
The Enhanced Text Widget is a free plugin that enables a more
feature-rich text widget for your use. Some of the features supported by
the widget include:
- It allows you to hide or show the widget title
- Turn your widget title into a link
- Assign CSS classes to the widget
- Supports text, HTML, PHP, Flash, JavaScript, and Shortcodes
3. BackupBuddy ($80-$197)
Every business that has a website needs to have a way to back up that
website on a regular basis. Website backups should be secure and
restorable in a short period of time. That it exactly what BackupBuddy
does.
BackupBuddy allows you to create full or partial backups of your
WordPress website including core WordPress, database, and all plugins.
It even allows you to schedule regular backups and store them in various
locations such as local hosting, Amazon S3, FTP, Dropbox, or
BackupBuddy Stash.
This is the most comprehensive backup plugin for WordPress and it
literally has hundreds of useful features that will come in handy. The
best part is that you can restore any backup in a matter of minutes.
BackupBuddy will run you $80 for 2 licenses, $100 for 10 licenses,
$150 for unlimited licenses, or $197 for developer license for
BackupBuddy and all other iThemes plugins. Although the prices seem a
bit on the expensive side, you’ll be happy you paid it when your website
is corrupted or gets hacked and you find yourself needing to restore it
quickly.
4. WordPress SEO by Yoast (Free)
WordPress SEO by Yoast is bar none the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
It allows complete control of page titles and meta descriptions on a
per page/post basis as well as for each taxonomy (category or tag
pages).
Some other useful features include 301 redirection and setting up
rules for search engine robots such as follow, nofollow, index, noindex,
and so on. It also allows you to customize the Facebook and Google+
descriptions for individual pages or posts in case you don’t want to use
the default meta description field.
One thing you won’t have to worry about anymore is the
rel=“canonical” tag because the WordPress SEO plugin automatically adds
it to every page and post. So you can be sure that Google won’t penalize
your website for duplicate content due to dynamic URL string
variations.
5. Akismet (Free)
Although there are many plugins that help you combat spam, Akismet is
one of the best options because it comes with WordPress out of the box
and it’s free for personal use.
Setting up Akismet is a piece of cake. All you have to do is go to Akismet.com
and register to get a WordPress key. Once you’re assigned a key, you
can insert it in the Akismet settings on your website and say goodbye to
spam!
6. Visual Composer for WordPress ($25)
WordPress can be limiting to the average users when it comes to how
you want your page layout to look. Even though you can do anything with
HTML and CSS, most users do not know these coding languages. That’s
where Visual Composer for WordPress can help.
Visual Composer transforms the default WordPress page editor into a
robust feature-rich editor that allows you to add columns, image
galleries, accordions, tour sections, call-to-action buttons, videos,
and much more.
Visual Composer can be hard to find because the only place where you can purchase it is Code Canyon.
7. Gravity Forms ($39-$199)
Every website that intends to generate revenue needs to utilize
forms. Forms allow us to collect information from our users, which we
later use to provide services to them.
There are many WordPress form plugins, but none have as many features
as Gravity Forms. This plugin literally has hundreds of add-on plugins
that expand on its features and integrate into CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) systems such as InfusionSoft, SalesForce, and
Highrise.
Although Gravity Forms is not a free plugin, you can have it on your
website for as low as $39 with 1 year of support and updates. Most
Gravity Forms add-ons tend to be free so you shouldn’t need to spend
more than that.
8. Digg Digg (Free)
If you’re not taking advantage of social media for your business yet,
it is time to start. The Digg Digg plugin adds a floating box on your
website that enables your users to quickly and easily share the page
they are on.
It supports all popular social media websites such as Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest. You can customize which
services you want to show to your users so that you don’t have to use
social media services that are irrelevant for your business or niche.
9. W3 Total Cache (Free)
Website caching necessity varies based on your website. Websites that
are heavy in images and scripts will see a nice speed improvement from
using cache plugins.
W3 Total Cache is a free WordPress plugin that has all the caching
features you will need. In fact, they can be a bit overwhelming at
first, so it would behoove you to just start slow and test each feature
carefully.
10. 404 Redirected (Free)
From my experience, business owners don’t monitor their broken links
nearly as much as they should. Broken pages present a business and SEO
problem for your website. On one hand, your potential customers might
leave your website immediately when they see a 404 error, and on the
other hand, Google will not pass PageRank to your 404 page.
404 Redirected plugin shows all URLs which return 404 errors and allow you to 301 redirect those to actual pages on your website. This will redirect traffic to the appropriate content as well as pass PageRank to the correct pages.
404 Redirected plugin shows all URLs which return 404 errors and allow you to 301 redirect those to actual pages on your website. This will redirect traffic to the appropriate content as well as pass PageRank to the correct pages.
Conclusion
WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world and has thousands of
plugins, so it is very hard to narrow it down to just 10. I know I
missed some important plugins, but I wanted to provide the top 10
WordPress plugins for your business website that I consider to be
essential.
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