5 Brilliant WordPress Plugins

WordPress is the most widely used CMS (Content Management System) in the world today. It is open source, free and based on PHP/MySQL. Since it’s the most widely used CMS in the world today, it’s no surprise that when developing a WordPress website, you have thousands of plugins to choose from that are both free and paid for. The WordPress development community is growing by the day with new plugins and changes happening constantly. There is thousands of plugins that are available to choose from that can do everything from simple to complex tasks making WordPress truly extendible and customizable for any type of user. Below, we will discuss 5 brilliant plugins that you should consider when you are developing a WordPress website:

1. SEO Yoast – This is by far one of the most widely used SEO plugins that exists for WordPress users. SEO Yoast gives you the ability to write better content with the ability to see a snippet preview, analyze your pages from an SEO perspective, meta-tag optimization capabilites, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs and loads more ensuring your site has all SEO factors checked off. It’s one thing to build a website but if that website is not getting found online, then it’s pretty useless. Use this WordPress plug-in when developing a website as it will ensure that your website has all the SEO strucutres in get you ranking within the search engines. This plugin will guide and help you to have numerous SEO factors in place when you are developing, creating and optimizing your WordPress-based website.

2. NextGEN Gallery – This is the most popular WordPress gallery plugin currently and one of the most downloaded plugins in the WordPress development community with more than 10 million downloads currently and counting. It provides a very powerful engine for managing and uploading galleries of images with the capability to do batch uploads, import meta data, group galleries, edit thumbnails easily and much more. This plugin gives you the ultimate flexibility and capabilities when developing your WordPress website. Almost anything gallery related, this is the plugin that you need to seriously look at.

3. W3 Total Cache – This is the ONLY WPO (WordPress Performance Optimization) plugin framework that is designed to improve page speed and user experience. W3C Total Cache improves a user’s experience of your WordPress website by increasing server performance, reducing download times and providing transparent Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration. It is recommended by countless web hosting providers such as Go Daddy, Host Gator, DreamHost, Media Temple along with many more. By going for this WordPress plugin, you can improve a user’s experience without having to change WordPress, the theme, the plugins or even your content. Search engines today also look at all of these factors for your web rankings to give you an idea of how important this is. Even Google, has its own PageSpeed Insights tool to help you with some of these factors which clearly shows its significance. You need to provide a fast and brilliant user experience as people will not wait around, they will go to someone else who is providing it. This plugin is a great one to look at when developing your WordPress website or even if your looking to optimize it further.

4. WooCommerce – If you are thinking about selling anything on your WordPress website then this is the plugin for you. WooCommerce is a powerful, robust and extendible Ecommerce plugin that gives you the ability to sell anything online easily. If you have already finished your WordPress development or are looking to get into Ecommerce but don’t want to change your CMS platform, this is a brilliant option for you. WooCommerce comes bundled with several payment gateways including PayPal as well as the ability to have cash on delivery, free shipping, flat-rate shipping and more within your WordPress website. In addition, you can keep a bird’s eye view on sales, product reviews, stock levels and other critical Ecommerce KPI’s so that you are in complete control always of your online store. If you are thinking about going for Ecommerce within WordPress, then is a very viable solution for your business no matter what size you may be.

5. Jetpack by WordPress – Jetpack gives you the ability to add a variety of powerful features that were only previously available to WordPress.com users. It’s no wonder that it has been downloaded more than 13 million times till date and counting for users when developing a WordPress based website. Some of the features that Jetpack offers is customization, mobile theme capabilities, content tools, increase site performance, increased security, visitor engagement tools, increased search functionality and more. Jetpack is a great plugin if you are looking for a way to get that extra oomph in your WordPress-based website.

Summary
WordPress has more than 35,000 plugins and 829 million downloads currently and counting. One of the best parts about WordPress and why it is chosen for development is the HUGE amount of plugins that are easily available. It’s no surprise why it is the most widely-used CMS platform in the world today. Almost anything you can imagine can be accomplished through WordPress development. If no plugin is available, you can easily develop something with the help of WordPress developers as WordPress is fully open-source giving you the ultimate flexibility. WordPress is secure, reliable, flexible, extendible and highly functional making it a brilliant choice no matter what your needs may be. If you are looking for a trusted and experienced WordPress development partner, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group for any of your development needs.