WordPress is my digital baby. It’s my favourite content management system (CMS) which is why I use it for almost 90% of my client websites. Over the years I’ve come to realise there are certain plugins that you should ALWAYS have and others you should remove, especially if you’re not using them.
Here they are:
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Wordfence
With any popular open source CMS system you need some form of security. As well as making your passwords hard to guess, making your website secure (HTTPS) and removing the ‘admin’ /default user of your website; you should also install this plugin. This company focuses specifically on the security of WordPress websites and are constantly working against hackers to find vulnerabilities in website and other plugins.
They’ll email you on a regular basis with any threats to the WordPress world or specifically notify you, automatically when other users are logging into your website. As of January 2016 all of my client websites use the premium version of this plugin to ensure their business security.
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Yoast SEO
WordPress is a master of Search Engine Optimisation and Yoast is the king pin of SEO in WordPress. They allow you to do all the important SEO stuff you need to do your on website. This includes editing meta descriptions and title tags, creating sitemaps and scoring you on usability – really important!
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Disqus
Commenting is something that everyone needs in order to get people to engage with your website. It’s something that every WordPress website comes built in, however the built in WordPress commenting system requires users to sign up to their website before being able to say anything. This is obviously bad for User Experience.
This is where Disqus comes in. It allows anyone with a Disque, Facebook, Twitter or Google plus account to leave a comment on your website. This is PERFECT because not only does it make for a great user experience, it also reduces SPAM that is often a problem with websites that offer a commenting function.
Once you’ve got a following and people are commenting, it starts to feature cross referencing articles on your website which is highly engaging for visitor. I can’t recommend this plugin more.