As said many times in our WordPress guide, plugins are the power of WordPress. You can find millions of plugins that can help you do almost whatever you want inside your WordPress website, without the need to know any html code. Here, I list the more useful plugins with a brief description of each one.
To install these plugins to your website, just follow the instructions listed in this part of our guide: WordPress plugin tutorials
List of the must have WordPress plugins
SEO WordPress plugins
All in one SEO Pack
Maybe the most used plugin in WordPress. It is essential to boost your search engine rankings. It is free and you can install it very easily
WordPress SEO
A very good alternative, since some SEO process is fully automated . Created by Yoast, one of the real SEO experts!
Google XML Sitemaps
This is an essential plugin for the SEO process. It creates automatically your sitemap that can be found easily by Google
SEO Friendly Images
It automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Perfect for SEO!
RSS Includes Pages
Since you have submit your website to RSS directories, then an extra backlink for each page will be created from your RSS feed, linking to the new pages you create. By default, WordPress includes only your posts in your RSS.
Microkid’s Related Posts
Be able to add related posts below each of your posts just by clicking some buttons. Very good plugin for SEO and very easy to use
Essential plugins
Google Analyticator
Firstly, create your Google Analytics account and then simply put your Google Analytics UID to your plugin settings. You will be able to track the visitors of your website. Do this very often. See what is the content that receives the more traffic and improve it. See how many visitors your website receives every day. Take care about the content that drive your visitors out of your website. To create your Google Analytics account click here: Google Analytics
Akismet
It is used by millions and it really protects your blog from spam comments and pingbacks. Unfortunately, without this plugin, you will receive many of them!
Content Editor
Ckeditor for WordPress
Edit your text easily without html knowledge. Color, highlight your texts. Create and insert tables in your posts and much more ( Important note: This plugin may not be compatible with other plugins, so you may need to deactivate it when you use some functions of other plugins and then activate it again)
Websimon Tables
Create and style your tables easily. Create attractive tables and display them to your website
Extra WordPress Features
WP-Filebase
Add a filebase to your website. Allow users to download files from your website and track all the downloads through an easy to use control panel
WP Photo Album Plus
Create photoalbums and choose whether to display a slideshow in your sidebar or in your main content.
TubePress
Insert related videos from youtube to your website. You just set the keywords you want and then you choose where in your website, the video gallery will be displayed. You can choose to use videos from Youtube or Vimeo
Clickdesk Webchat
Interact with your visitors using web chat. The most easy to use and to set up plugin that allows you to chat with your visitors in real time using your Google Account. Highly recommended plugin, especially if you are running a business website. Interacting with your visitors means direct communication with your potential customers that will result in more sales. Full overview of this powerful plugin in the official Clickdesk Webchat website
Onlywire
Automate your social bookmarking process. Automatically post your new content to all the major social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Reddit etc. At the same time it can post your content to your Facebook , Twitter, Linkedin accounts etc. To see the features of this plugin visit the official Onlywire website
Contact Form 7
Add a contact form in your website easy to customize. Allow your visitors to use a nice contact form to be able to contact you.
Share this
Add Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc buttons to each of your pages and posts, and make it easy for your visitors to share the content of your website with their friends. Make your website social!
Wunderslider
One of the best choice if you want to add a powerful slideshow to your website that will make your website really amazing! Create slideshows for your website with lots of customizable elements. Visit Wunderslider website here
Paid Downloads
The most easy way to sell digital products through your website. Just upload your product, get the code and paste it to the place you want the buy button to be displayed. Fully integrated with Paypal!
Conclusion
These are the must have WordPress plugins. Of course you may not need all of them but depending on your needs most of them may be very helpful to you. Remember that you can find very nice WordPress plugins for almost everything you want to do with your website. Make your website attractive, interact with your visitors, make all the SEO process correctly and the soonest possible, your website will get on the top of search engines!
If you think that there are other must have WordPress plugins that are not included in this list, don’t hesitate to comment below!
