jetpack-wordpress-plugin

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Installing Essential WordPress Plugins On Your Site.

 

Installing Essential WordPress Plugins On Your Site.

Essential-Wordpress-Plugins

WordPress makes it super easy for you to download and install plugins from its WordPress Plugin Directory which can add variety of features to improve your WordPress site significantly, including the design, Search Engine Optimization, page load times, and overall functionality of your website.

You don’t need to be a web designer or a programmer or even have any knowledge of website design to install essential WordPress plugins on your WordPress site.

Installing Essential WordPress Plugins On Your Site is crucial to every type of WordPress site you build, regardless of your niche as it can help supercharge your site’s performance and conversion rate.

There are tens of thousands of plugins available to WordPress users. You only need to install the essential plugins to avoid slowing down your site.

 

Recommended Plugins

Here is a list of plugins we recommend to get you started.

What Is A Plugin

  • Plugins
    Plugins are simple software components that enhance the functionality of your WordPress. There are many WordPress plugins that are really useful. They provide the majority of the system requirements to make sure your website is optimized fully for the search engines and additional functions to make life easier.
    WordPress makes it easy to add additional functionality to your blog by installing pre written software modules called plugins. You don’t have to know a thing about writing software to use these plugins. All you have to do is to search for the plugins offering the functionality you want, if available on wordpress.org site except where such plugins are not listed and then install them. It’s a breeze to install plugins on your wordpress site.I’m going to give you a list of ‘must have’ plugins, but first, here’s how you install them:
    Wordpress-Dashboard-Add NewLocate the ‘plugins’ task bar on the left of the Admin Dashboard and click on
    “Add New”.
    The Search screen appears. You can now search for WordPress Plugins you can install. The search screen gives you the option to browse available plugins, or to search by keyword, author or tag.
    We’re going to search by keyword. I use the actual name of the plugin as the keyword. When you’re searching for new plugins that are not on your list, assuming you don’t know the exact name of the plugin, all you need to do is to enter keywords that contain the search term you would normally enter if you were to search for that plugin on Google search.
    For example, assuming, you wanted a Contact Form plugin, just enter the keywords “contact form” without the quotes.  Wordpress.org-Plugin-Search-Page-Top-Right
    Type in search term and click “Search Plugins”
    When you find the plugin you want, click “install”
    You’ll be transferred to the plugin page, click “install now”
    Click “activate plugin”

Featured Plugin: Jetpack

Jetpack Plugin by WordPress.com

jetpack-wordpress-plugin

Jetpack is a powerful plugin with over 1 million active installs. It is very useful in managing your WordPress web sites.

Features:

  • Jetpack is a free plugin.
  • Site Customization:
    Jetpack helps you customize your site including:
    Custom CSS,
    Contact Forms,
    Configurable Widgets,
    Galleries and Carousels,
    Notifications and Subscriptions.
  • Search Engine Optimization:
    Image Performance: It speeds up loading of images on your wordpress sites.
    Jetpack automatically optimizes and speeds up images using the global WordPress.com content delivery network. This saves you hosting costs by reducing bandwidth.
  • Jetpack gives your visitor your site’s stats,
  • It provides security to your websites. Jetpack protects your site against brute force attacks and unauthorized logins.
  • It shows you how many visits your site gets and also helps you get more traffic with tools like:
    Related Posts,
    Publicize,
    Enhanced Distribution, and
    Sharing.
  • Jetpack monitors your sites for downtime and keeps your plugins updated.
  • Centralized Management:
    Jetpack comes with a centralized dashboard on WordPress.com.
    Manage plugins and menus,
    publish posts, and
    view enhanced site stats for all of your sites.

 Install Jetpack Plugin free here  

Top plugins

Once your WordPress site is fully installed, it is time to install all the important plugins that will make your WordPress work flawlessly. There are thousands of plugins, so the intended use of your site would determine the types of plugins that are essential for the site.

Here below are the list of various crucial plugins which is required to make this wordpress work flawlessly. However it is important to note that not all are essential to install for a website.

Also this list is not plugins is not going to adequately cover all the essential plugins that you would ever need to run all your websites. Your demand would be dictated by the purpose of your website.

Is is also advisable not to use more than 23 plugins or thereabout at any time as a higher number may slow down the speed of your website.

Here’s a list of my current Top WordPress Plugins.

1. Search Engine Optimization Plugins

1a) On Page SEO – WordPress SEO by Yoast

https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Although Search Engine Optimization doesn’t play such an important role in affiliate sites as it some years back, it is important that you should optimize your website for search to help them determine adopt what your site is all about and rank your website appropriately. It helps in Search Engine Optimization.

WordPress SEO by Yoast is a complete optimization tool that enables you to add titles and descriptions to articles, add open graph meta data, do page analysis, publish an xml sitemap and much more. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

OR

1b) On Page SEO – All-In-One-Seo-Pack – All in one SEO

All-In-One-Seo-Pack

This plugin is used to create SEO friendly tags and descriptions to help you rank better on Google.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

OR

1c) SEOPressor plugin

There is a one time payment, but it is quite cheap and will pay for itself over and over .
Download the plugin to your hard disk where you can easily locate it or your desktop.
Upload and Install the plugin as the directions say.
Click Here To Learn More About SEOPressor

2. Anti-Spam Plugins

2a) Akismet Plugin

Akismet is the oldest and one of the most trusted comment spam filter for WordPress. Not only does this plugin make your site look more professional (without spammy comments) but also decreases the amount of maintenance work for you.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/ 
OR

2b) GASP Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin

Defeat automated spambots (even the new ‘learning’ bots with dynamically named hidden fields) by adding a client side generated checkbox.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/growmap-anti-spambot-plugin/ 
OR

2c) Cleantalk Spam Protect

Max power, all-in-one, premium anti-spam. No comments & registrations spam, no contact spam, protects any forms.

Just install and forget spam Anti-spam features Stops spam comments. spam registrations. spam contact emails. spam orders. spam bookings. spam subscriptions. spam in widgets. Check existing comments for spam

https://wordpress.org/plugins/cleantalk-spam-protect/ 
OR

2d) WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam

An extremely powerful WordPress anti-spam plugin that eliminates comment spam, trackback spam, contact form spam & registration spam. Eliminates comment spam, trackback spam, contact form spam & registration spam.
An All-in-one Spam Solution for WordPress – Without CAPTCHAS Supports: Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, JetPack Contact Forms & Comments, BuddyPress, bbPress, WooCommerce, s2Member, WP-Members, Mailchimp, and many more, including almost all WordPress forms, and almost all WordPress registration

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-spamshield/ forms.

3 Disqus

Disqus is a multi-functional comment plugin that helps you to build a more solid relationship with your readers. Disqus can do a range of things, from auto replying to comments, to social login, to voting. This plugin will increase user participation on your website.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/disqus-comment-system/

4a) W3 Total Cache – Site Speed W3 Total Cache

The loading time of your site is vitally important for the best user experience and search rankings. This will cache your pages, and help load your website faster when you start getting more visitors. W3 Total Cache performs object and browser caching to optimise the loading times and performance of your website.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/ 

OR

4b) WP Super Cache

A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files. Generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/

5. WP Smush IT

You already know how important loading speeds of your site are and WP Smush IT is another plugin that reduces them. With the touch of a button, WP Smush IT can compress image and reduce loading times by up to 40%

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/

6.  iThemes Security Plugin (formerly Better WP Security)

iThemes Security -formerly-Better -WP-SecurityiThemes Security gives you the opportunity to secure and protect your WordPress website in over 30+ ways.

This plugin protects your WordPress site by hiding vital areas of your website. It protects access to important files on your website, preventing brute-force login attempts.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/

7. WordPress Meta Robots/

The Meta Robots plugin gives you control over allowing search engines to index or not index any page or post at the touch of a button.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-meta-robots

8 Share Buttons by AddToAny

This plugin enables visitors to share, save, and Email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, Reddit, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and well over 100 more sharing and social bookmarking sites.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-to-any/

9. Contact Forms

9a) Contact Form 7

Contact -Form-7Contact Form 7 makes it a breeze for you to create different types  of elaborate forms without knowing anything about coding.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/

OR

9b) Contact Form Clean and Simple

Contact-Form-Clean-and-SimpleThis is a simple AJAX contact form with Google reCAPTCHA, Twitter Bootstrap markup and Akismet spam filtering.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/clean-and-simple-contact-form-by-meg-nicholas/

10. Login Lockdown

This security plugin records login attempts by time and IPaddress in order to protect the site from brute force password breaking attempts.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/login-lockdown/

11. Plugin For Internal linking of Keyword phrases

SEO Smart Links –

The one that is most important here is SEO Smart Links (or equivalent). What this plugin does is create an internal link web. Internal link webs are hugely important. Connecting related pages helps google organize your content and discover related themes. Boost Internal Linking Structure automatically
This also helps you maximize anchor text links within your own site. In a nut shell, a link web is the process of linking your pages together with the correct anchor text.

http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-smart-links

12. Affiliate Links Cloaking Plugin

Pretty Link

Pretty Link is an affiliate link cloaking plugin. It makes the affiliate links you are cloaking to look more friendly to visitors. It makes affiliate links which are generally long, to look more user friendly and attractive. It reduces people’s resistance to affiliates’ links by preventing such people from noticing that your recommendation is out to make you money.

Pretty Link also provides tracking statistics. Pretty Link Lite Pretty Link Plugin can shorten your affiliate link

https://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/

13 WP Review

wp-review-pluginWP Review is a review plugin that will enable you to give, star, % or point reviews of products or services (in our case affiliate products). The reviews can be placed inside content (articles) or as a widget in the sidebar. This plugin is extremely powerful for our review blogs.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-review/

14 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

This plugin will dynamically insert post links within your blog posts to help your user find relevant content. ? Install the YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin)

https://wordpress.org/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

15. Recent Posts Plugins

15a) YD Recent Posts” plugin.

The YD Recent Posts Widget plugin has been officially replaced and superseded by the WP Frontpage News Plugin, available free on the WordPress plugin directory

http://www.yann.com/en/wp-plugins/yd-recent-posts-widget

OR

15b) WP Frontpage

WP Latest post display latest posts from a category, page or tags in various way and easily. News plugin can be called in editor or as widget

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-frontpage-news/  
OR

15c) Advanced Recent Posts

Plugin that shows the latest posts with thumbnails in the widget and in other parts of the your blog or theme with shortcodes. new feature Responsive Grid Layout based on Masonry script and you can insert the new layout in your page or template with shortcode

https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-recent-posts/ 
OR

15d) Special Recent Posts

The most beautiful and powerful way to display your WordPress posts with thumbnails. Perfect solution for Web Magazines or just Simple Blogs and it comes with more than 40+ Customization Options. Features Included, Wonderful Dynamic Widget Interface, Responsive Layout, Advanced Thumbnail Management, Incredible Powerful Thumbnail Adapative Generation, New Thumbnail Cache Support, Advanced Post Filtering Techniques, Advanced Post Content Display, Custom CSS Editor, Multiple

Widget Configurations, PHP Code/Shortcodes Support, More than 40+ Customization Options

OR

15e) Recent Posts Slider Responsive

Recent Posts slider responsive displays your blog’s recent posts either with thumbnail image of your post and the post title. Features you can Customize Total Posts Per Slider, Posts Per Slide, Slider Speed, Image Size, Auto Slide the Slider, Post to include / exclude, Category to display 8. Color of Post title / Background

https://wordpress.org/plugins/recent-posts-slider-responsive/ 
OR

15f) Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails

Small and fast plugin to display in the sidebar a list of linked titles and thumbnails of the most recent postings This plugin is based on the well-known WordPress default widget ‘Recent Posts’ and enhanced to display thumbnails of the posts.
The thumbnails will be built from the featured image of a post or of the first image in the post content. If there is neither a featured image nor a content image then you can define a default thumbnail.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/recent-posts-widget-with-thumbnails/

16. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML sitemaps A great plugin for creating your sitemap, 100% necessary for good SEO. .
To get a sitemap made of your site you should install Google XML Sitemaps plugin onto your WordPress site. The link that you will submit to the search engines will look like this:
https://www.apexhomebusiness.com/sitemap.xml
Install the “Google XML Sitemaps”, default settings are fine

https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/ 

The next Step:

Sign up with Google Webmaster Tools

To sign up for Google Webmaster Tools Use your google ID to sign up at

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

If you already have a gmail account it is a breeze. You should use your google ID to login into google.com. After signing in, you should then sign up for Google Webmaster.

Once you have signed up with Google Webmasters Tool, follow the steps given by Google to verify your website.

Then use Google Webmaster Tools to submit your website sitemap url to Google.com.
This is very important for every website you create. It is still one of the best and acceptable ways to get your site indexed by google fast.

For subsequent websites, all you need to do is to add your sites to your Google Webmaster Tool

This step alone ensures that Google indexes all your site immediately.
After submitting your site to Google webmaster, you should also submit your sitemap to Yahoo and Bing through Bing Webmaster Tools.

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

This also ensures that Yahoo & Bing will index your site immediately.

Google Analytics

You need to use your google ID to sign up for Google Analytics

http://www.google.com/analytics/

After signing up for Google Analytics connect your Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics.

17. Traffic Analytics Plugins

17a)

Google-Analytics-Dashboard-For-WP

Google Analytics Dashboard For WordPress

This is your google analytics plugin which you can use to track your traffic statistics.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp/

OR

17b) Google Analyticator For WordPress Plugin

It serves the same purpose of allowing you to view your Google Analytics and real-time statistics inside your WordPress dashboard. It also allows you to add your tracking code too.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analyticator/

18. SEO Friendly Images Plugin

This is an optional plugin that will allow your images to be search engine optimized for you automatically. It is not realyy necessary if you already have any of the Search Engine Optimization Plugins installed on your website.

You can use any of those plugins to achieve the same result.

Adding keywords to images

http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-friendly-images

19. WordPress Ping Optimizer

Saves your wordpress blog from getting tagged as ping spammer.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-ping-optimizer/

20. Nextgen Gallery Plugin

nextgen-wordpress-slideshows-thumbnail-gallery

Nextgen Gallery Plugin is one of the most popular WordPress gallery plugins of all time. It has been downloaded over 15 million times since 2007. This plugin has both the free and pro (paid) versions’

There are over 1 million active installs of Nextgen Gallery Plugin

The free version of NextGEN provides two main display styles (slideshows and thumbnail galleries) and two album styles (compact and extended), all of which come with a wide array of options for controlling size, style, timing, transitions, controls, lightbox effects, and more.

On the back end, the gallery plugin has the ability to batch upload, import meta data, add/delete/rearrange/sort images, edit thumbnails, group galleries into albums, and many more other features.

21. NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster Plugin

nextscripts-wordpress-social-networks-auto-poster-plugin

NextScripts is a WordPress Social Networks Auto-Poster plugin.
It automatically publishes posts from your blog to over 17 accounts on Social Networks.
When you install and configure the plugin with your social networks profile.
Anytime you publish a new post on your WordPress blog, the plugin automatically publishes the post from your blog to your Social Network accounts such as:

  • Facebook,
  • Twitter,
  • Google+(Google Plus),
  • Blogger,
  • Tumblr,
  • Flickr,
  • LiveJournal,
  • Flipboard,
  • Instagram,
  • Telegram,
  • DreamWidth,
  • Delicious,
  • Diigo, Instapaper,
  • Stumbleupon,
  • LinkedIn,
  • Pinterest,
  • Plurk,
  • VKontakte(VK.com),
  • YouTube,
  • App.net,
  • Scoop.It,
  • WordPress,
  • XING etc.

The whole process is completely automated.

22. BackItUp Plugin

Complete WordPress solution for Backup. This plugin will help you restore and/or migrate your site from your server to a new host or new domain with ease.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-backitup/

Home Business Resources: WordPress Themes