10 WORDPRESS FREE PLUGINS YOU ‘MUST’ INSTALL FIRST!
Before reading this article, ensure that you have read this previous article also. Click here to read: THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE STARTING A BLOG FOR THE FIRST TIME
Next, read this article on this subject: FREE BLOG Vs SELF HOSTED BLOG – WHICH ONE TO CHOOSE TO START THE BLOGGING?
You are starting a wordpress blog. You have installed wordpress.
Next?
You must make your blog fully safe and fast loading so that it becomes successful in all aspects.
To manage everything, you need to install some important Plugins immediately after installing wordpress.
See, All the Plugins listed in this Post are just a part list. There are many other plugins required for a blog for different purposes. We can see them later in some other posts.
These free plugins may give a basic protection and functionality to your blog. Then, whenever you need some extra features, you can add some more plugins and go for the premium Versions of plugins by investing more for your blog.
Premium Plugins cost more. But, they have competitive functionality to make your blog excel in the Google’s Security and Speed considerations. In general, blogging involves periodical and sizable investments for various purposes. Unless you make your blog popular with good traffic, the investments may take more time to give fruits.
However, you can try with these free plugins and go for premium plugins with the growth of the blog. If your blog takes time to grow in size and income, you should keep extra investments with you to support till the blog grows sufficiently. It may take years for every blog to become a popular blog.
Let me list the WORDPRESS Free Plugins that have to be installed immediately after installing wordpress, one by one:
(1) CHILD THEME CONFIGURATOR:
After installing wordpress, you have to select a theme and add to your blog. You can find some official and free wordpress themes like twenty twentyone, twenty ninteen, etc. You may have to make many changes in the CSS codes of your wordpress blog. When you do this in the original theme, when the updates are made for the theme, the site may break. To avoid this, you should use a child theme that is the exact copy of the original theme. You can operate your blog using this child theme that protects you from the break of your blog because of theme updates. This Plugin CHILD THEME CONFIGURATOR instantly creates a child theme for your theme.
When using the Customizer is not enough – Create child themes and customize styles, templates, functions and more.
(2) WORDFENCE SECURITY:
After installing the child theme, you should secure your blog from malwares, brutal attacks, etc. Install WORDFENCE SECURITY . This will protect your blog from all kinds of attacks effectively and performs Anti-virus, Firewall and Malware Scan regularly even while you are sleeping. A must for a blog. Don’t run a blog without this plugin. A decent and effective plugin. Used by millions. Premium, ie, Paid version gives recovery from hacks also with many advanced features.
(3) W3 TOTAL CACHE:
This is also the most important caching plugin. This definitely increases the page speed significantly. Only the fast loading pages rank well in search engines. This Plugin is the MUST for any blog. This is the highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin that dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. You can also add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress. Used by millions.
(4) AUTOPTIMIZE:
This plugin performs some tasks to increase the page speed effectively. It optimizes Java scripts, css, etc and makes your blog load faster. A MUST for any blog.
(5) WP-OPTIMIZE:
This plugin beautifully and safely cleanses the wordpress database freeing your database from unwanted files. Must be present in your blog. Used by millions.
(6) AKISMET:
Akismet effectively protects your blog from spam comments and messages that may harm your blog and the visitors. Install Akismet to your blog to avoid getting bombarded with spam. Written by Automattic, the owner of wordpress and used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from spam. Your site is fully configured and being protected, even while you sleep. Used by millions.
(7) JETPACK:
This is the very useful plugin that has plenty of widgets that makes your blog complete. Some examples are: (i) JETPACK COMMENTS that helps your visitors to comment using their social media accounts; (ii) SUBSCRIPTION WIDGET: This enables your visitors to subscribe to your blog. Jetpack itself sends mails to the subscribers whenever you publish a new post. (iii) SHARE BUTTONS: Very important feature of Jetpack. The visitors can share your posts to their accounts in all the social media networks. (iv) DOWN TIME MONITOR: A very useful feature of Jetpack, This sends emails to us whenever our site faces downtime and tells us when the site is available again. (v) SITE STATISTICS: This widget shows the number of visitors/ views to your blog on daily or all time basis.
These are just a few features of Jetpack. It has so many more features with it as an ALL-IN-ONE Pack. Having Jetpack saves you from having many plugins. In brief, Jetpack brings the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress and enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users.
To have Jetpack, you need a wordpress.com account. You can open one easily. Used by millions.
(8) SMUSH:
This is an important plugin that optimizes the images that prevents the images reducing the page loading speed. Must be installed.
(9) YOAST SEO:
Don’t run your blog without Yoast. Because, your blog needs traffic through search engines. Yoast helps you to prepare every post in an optimized way to be indexed and shown by the search engines. Yoast itself sends notification of new posts to the search engines for faster indexing. Don’t miss it. The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and much more. Used by millions.
(10) UPDRAFTPLUS BACKUP/ RESTORE:
This must be added to your blog. If your blog gets attacked by the hackers or viruses for any reason, or your blog filees get corrupt, you can get the latest back up of all your files and regain all the posts and features of your blog. This saves you from enormous time because you need not update your blog/site manually again. Just a single click will restore all your files. The best feature of this plugin is that you can save your back up files in Google drive also. It automatically backs up your blog files as per the schedule fixed by you. A very essential plugin.
MORE PLUGINS:
These ten plugins are the “FIRST TO INSTALL WORDPRESS FREE PLUGINS” AS SOON AS YOU INSTALL THE WORDPRESS. There are some other plugins for particular purposes. They can be installed whenever you need them. You will find some articles for every added feature and related plugins.
But, no blog/ website should run without the above wordpress free plugins .
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