In this tutorial, you will learn about the must-have WordPress plugins that all developers use to develop professional websites. It depends mainly on underdeveloped website requirements, but we will list the most common and must-have WordPress plugins.
A plugin is a piece of code to modify core WordPress files to achieve the desired functionality. WordPress core files can also be changed directly, but those changes go away with the theme update. That’s why developers develop plugins to change core WordPress files. Plugins also enabled no-coders to build beautiful business websites. You can build your plugin to get the desired functionality, but if you don’t know how to code in PHP, you’ll have to use other developers’ plugins. Twenty-six percent of self-hosted websites use WordPress, making it the most widely used content management system (CMS). WordPress has many free and paid plugin repositories. As the number of websites developed in WordPress is increasing day by day, developers have shifted all their energy to new plugins.
Visual Page Builders Plugins
Visual page builders allow you to make beautiful website pages using a drag-and-drop interface. You don’t need to know HTML and CSS to design your pages. Just install one of the below-mentioned visual page builders and start creating stunning and responsive pages for your website.
Divi Builder
Divi is the most-used visual page composer. Use the drag-and-drop interface to make changes at the front end. It’s a plugin and theme. If you use the Divi theme, you don’t need the plugin. But if you want to change the design in another theme, you’ll need the Divi Page Builder Plugin. It costs $89 per year, or $250 per lifetime license, and uses an unlimited website. The Divi Page Builder’s main features are as follows:
• Drag-and-drop development
• Customized CSS-control
• Thousands of design options
• Visual Editing
• Editing efficiently and quickly
• Text editor inline
• Undos and revisions
• Global elements and styles
• Save design for future uses
Elementor Page Builder
The Elementor page builder also provides a Divi-like all-in-one solution. It gives you 100% visual design power. It also offers a free version with drag-and-drop, responsive editing, 40+ basic widgets, and 30+ basic templates. The pro version has more flexibility and features. Its year-on-year price You must renew the license after one year if you want to extend support and updates. The plugin works even if you don’t renew, but you won’t receive updates and support. The paid version features the following:
• Header/footer design
• Customized fonts
• Elements sticky
• Embed anywhere
• Price table, price list
• Integration 20 +
• 300 + templates
• Worldwide widgets
• Customized field integration
• Premium support 24/7
Must-have WordPress plugins for forms
WPForms
WPForms is a popular plugin for creating almost every type of form. This form plugin is easy and powerful. Its user-friendly interface allows any person to make beautiful forms. Be it a simple contact form or a form for querying databases, WPForm is the ideal choice for each developer. WPForms has both free and pro versions. The free version also comes with the abandonment of features, and many people don’t even need to buy the pro version. If you want to integrate a payment gateway, receive email notifications, make order forms, or make multi-page forms, then you will have to buy its paid version.
Formidable Forms
This is yet another must-have WordPress plugin for creating forms. It can be used in complex form-focused applications. It also has the features of payment gateway integration, style forms, 3rd party integration, using form data, and several other powerful integrations. It allows you to use calculated fields where you can perform calculations for products, quotes, and forms. These forms can also be used in polls and surveys. You can use images instead of simple radio buttons in quizzes and surveys. The import and export feature allows you to transfer forms or entries to another website or import entries from anywhere. Click here to view the complete feature list of Formidable Forms.
WordPress Backup Plugins
Having a backup of your WordPress website is also essential to avoid any unwanted circumstances. Anything worse can happen to your website; it is therefore recommended to take frequent backups of your website. The frequency of these backups depends on the frequency of changes you make to your WordPress website. If you make daily changes, then you should take a backup of your WordPress website daily. There are many WordPress Backup Plugins, but we will discuss just two that are the most widely used and reliable.
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is the most widely used and must-have WordPress plugin for backup. It has more than two million active installations. It creates a complete backup of your site. You have two options for UpdraftsPlus backup: to download it to a local computer or to store it on a cloud. This plugin has the following advanced features:
- You can schedule backups as well as have a backup of your site on demand.
- You can integrate Google Drive, Dropbox, and similar cloud storage to upload your backups.
- It not only takes a backup of your WordPress site, but you can also restore the backup in the WordPress admin panel with just one click. It has both free and paid versions.
- The pro version comes with add-ons. For example, add-ons for site migration, database backup, search and replace, and many others.
BackupBuddy Backup Plugin
It is another popular WordPress backup plugin. This plugin has more than half a million active installations. It provides scheduled backups. You can restore backups remotely and off-site. You can select which files to back up. You can have a backup of the database, a complete backup, or any custom backup.
You can schedule this plugin to take daily, weekly or monthly backups. This plugin also provides the facility of storing backups on cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Rackspace Cloud. You can also email a backup to yourself.
This plugin has three pricing plans: blogger, freelancer and gold. In Blogger, you can have a backup of one site. In the freelancer plan, you can add up to 10 sites, while the gold plan allows you to back up unlimited websites.
WordPress security plugins
Besides backup, the security of the WordPress website is also essential. WordPress, being the most popular content management system, is more prone to security threats than any other CMS. It is not because WordPress is insecure but due to its extensive usage. It has become a honey pot for attackers because of its popularity, not because of its insecurity.
The following are the most widely used security plugins for WordPress developers:
All-in-one WP Security and Firewall
All-in-one WP Security & Firewall is the most widely used security plugin. It is available free of charge on the WordPress Plugins repository. The visual interface is so simple that even a newbie can guess what is going on. It provides metrics with the help of graphs and provides suggestions about how to achieve additional security.
The all-in-one WP Security plugin takes your site to a whole new level. This plugin checks vulnerabilities and enforces the latest security practices. It has 900,000+ active installations and 913 five-star ratings. This plugin checks and informs you if there are any identical login and display names. Having the same login and display name is a bad security practice because hackers already know the login name.
It forces users to create strong passwords and stops user enumeration. It protects your site from brute-force attacks. It also monitors login attempts and blacklists the IP for multiple invalid login attempts.
Sucuri Security- Auditing, Malware Scanner and Security Hardening
Sucuri Security is another popular WordPress plugin for security. It has both free and pro plans, but the free version comes with the abandonment of features deemed necessary for WordPress security. It has the following features:
- Website firewall: in the premium version only
- Malware scanning
- Brute force attack protection
- Blacklist monitoring
- Implement adequate security via hardening
- Gives notifications about security threats
- Monitors the integrity of the files
We have written a separate article on WordPress security plugins. Click here to read more about WordPress Security Plugins.
WordPress SEO Plugins
Search engine optimization is also essential for any WordPress website. It helps your site be visible in search engines. SEO security plugins give you suggestions to make your site and content presentable for search engines and achieve a better ranking. There are many SEO plugins, but we will discuss two of them: Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack.
Yoast SEO Plugin
Yoast SEO is recommended by many SEO experts as the No. 1 SEO plugin. This plugin has made it possible for millions of websites to achieve better SERP results. The slogan of Yoast SEO is SEO for Everyone. It means that a developer who doesn’t even know about SEO can use this plugin. You need little knowledge of SEO because Yoast gives you suggestions about the use of focus keywords, title headings, image alt attributes, and the length of the content. Yoast even gives you a readability score to make your content more user-friendly. It has the following features:
- Adding schema to your blog posts
- Title and meta description suggestions
- Focus keyword: up to five in the premium version and one in the free version
- XML Sitemap
- Generating breadcrumbs
- Canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content
- Use of different titles for SEO
- The Premium version allows you to expand your SEO to include news SEO, video SEO, local SEO, and WooCommerce SEO.
All-in-one SEO Pack
It is another popular and widely used SEO plugin. It has more than 2 million users and 945 five-star ratings. This plugin also has free and paid versions.
All-in-One SEO Pack has the following features:
- RSS sitemap
- Image XML sitemap
- XML sitemap for posts, pages, categories, and tags
- Google analytics support
- Support canonical URLs
- WooCommerce SEO is available in the free version
- It automatically generates meta tags
- You can have a different title for search engines; this is good for testing other titles
Conclusion
It was all about the must-have WordPress plugins that every developer needs to have. Using many plugins slows down your WordPress site and also poses a security threat. It is therefore recommended to keep the installed plugins to as few as possible. If you have any questions, you can ask them in the comment section below. We will be glad to help you as soon as possible.
