15 Great WordPress Plugins

If you wish your blog to be found by search engines or to make the content more shareable, it is important that you have the best WordPress plugins. Here is a list of 15 best WordPress plugins that keep your blog healthy and prevents your website from getting hacked, helps everything run smoothly and efficiently, and keep spammers at bay.

1. W3 Total Cache

This amazing WordPress plugin is designed in a way to increase the speed of page load on WordPress sites. It boosts overall experience of visitors. The plugin also allows for increasing server performance via minimizing download times.

2. BackupBuddy

is the easiest and most beginner friendly WordPress backup and migration plugin. It allows you to quickly setup automatic backup schedule for your website. You can store your backups in the cloud and sleep easily, knowing all your content is backed up. See how to keep your WordPress content safe with BackupBuddy.

3. Wordfence

This is one of the best basic security plugin for WordPress. It adds an additional layer of protection via locking out those who try to hack their way into website. They may even block IP addresses of bots in an attempt to access your site. You may customize email alerts that can be sent to you in the event anything suspicious goes on. The company will offer a premium version instantly to provide you with access to support in the event you require it.

4. WPForms

This is renowned as the most beginner friendly contact form plugin made for WordPress. It is a kind of drag & drop online form builder. It facilitates one to easily create email subscription forms, contact forms, order forms, payment, forms, and several other types of online forms with a few clicks online. The pro version offers advanced features.

5. Anti-spam

The plugin exactly does what it claims. It is an anti-spam and stop regular spam comments in their tracks. This is done sans using captcha, asking queries or annoying readers who are really interested to leave a comment.

6. Jetpack

The plugin offers a whole suite of dynamic features for WordPress website. One can benefit from enhanced website performance, enhanced security, plenty of content tools, and visitor engagement features. Social Sharing, spam-free comments, post by email, related posts, and many other features are a part of Jetpack.

7. Edit Flow

This plugin provides a highly efficient editorial workflow management system specially designed for WordPress. It facilitates you to have a look at your editorial calendar. Other benefits include efficient management of authors, assignment posts, leave editorial comments, and lots more. Users can also create their own custom post status and plan strategy for content strategy within the WordPress dashboard.

8. Akismet

The plugin is very efficient in filtering out any comments on your blog that appear to be spam. Akismet automatically checks comments against the Akismet Web service. All comments will also have a history for users to view. This shows which specific comments were flagged or cleared by the plugin. Additionally, those comments were marked as spam or unmarked via a moderator that will be highlighted in the history.

9. WP Optimize

WP Optimize is a free plugin that keeps a blog running smoothly via optimizing database tables. Other options include getting rid of old post revisions, and cleaning all of the unapproved comments. Things thrown in the trash. The plugin helps a website run faster not allowing additional data build up and sit on a website.

10. Soliloquy

This is known as the best responsive WordPress slider available on the market. Most of the slider plugins tend to slow down websites that may hurt the SEO efforts. On the other hand, a soliloquy is the fastest slider plugin that loads your sliders at lightening fast speed. It comes power packed with features. Presently, users can enjoy a free version that can be tried on immediately.

11. Google XML Sitemaps

This is a must-have WordPress plugin. It works towards the automatic generation of an XML sitemap for your website. An XML sitemap will help search engines better index your blog. Web crawlers can easily see the structure of your site and retrieve the results in an efficient manner. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo will be notified every time you create a post about your new content.

12. iThemes Security

This plugin facilitates you to fix common holes in the WordPress site from potential automated attacks. Many WordPress administrators are usually not aware of these holes or vulnerabilities. iThemes Security can help with this. Owing to unknown vulnerabilities arising from various other installed plugins, your website can become an easy target for attacks. The plugin identifies and protects these holes in a website.

13. Comment Redirect

This is a free WordPress plugin that helps you to introduce yourself in an attractive way the very first time a new reader comments on your blog. You can also welcome them in an impressive way to your community. The best part is that this plugin allows you to do this automatically.

14. Sucuri

A Sucuri can be used for monitoring the security of websites. These days, website can get hacked or attacked through malicious denial of different service attacks. Hence, it is always better to be prepared than sorry. This plugin for WordPress provides users with website security scanner,  real time alerts, and malware removal service.

15. Contact Form 7

The plugin will help with creating multiple contact forms. These forms can also be managed with the help of this plugin. There is absolutely no requirement for any extra coding while using Contact Form 7 plugin. User can easily customize the form and mail contents through the settings. The plugin also supports CAPTCHA, Ajax-powered submitting, and Akismet filtering to get help with spam.