Plugins used in WordPress is the software which can be used for creating attractive and appealing websites. It is the special addons or extensions whose features can be used to customize the site, change visual elements or add extra information or content. For example, if you need to do a e-commerce business then you have to use e-commerce plugins for your website.
What are the benefits of using a plugin?
- Plugins are the building blocks of a wordpress website with which you can change font styles, color, themes etc.
- It helps to increase the performance of your site.
- It provides website security
- It makes your website work faster
- It makes your website load faster
- It helps in making a website more appealing and attractive
- It helps your website rank higher in the search engine
- It makes website developers easier to customize the content
- It helps in creating a responsive design, that is compatible in all kinds of devices like mobile phones, tablets and laptops.
There are different types of WordPress plugins with which you can create, customize and add additional features to your website. There are more than 50,000 plugins in wordpress. Let’s see some of the popular and most commonly used wordpress plugins and their uses.
- Hubspot
- Woocommerce
- WPForms
- All in One SEO
- Yoast SEO
- Elementor
- Smush
- Weglot
- iThemes security
- WPSticky
- WP Optimize
- UpdraftPlus
- Broken link checker
- Shoplentor
Hubspot : Hubspot is the most commonly used WordPress plugin. Once this plugin is installed in your website, all the website forms that you have created will automatically sync with the hubspot CRM where you can keep track of the customer records. The customers query and form submissions will be stored with the registered date and time in a unified manner. This helps in maintaining good relationships with the customer. It also has in-built email automation software that sends notification to the customers and thereby increases the conversion rate.
WooCommerce : WooCommerce is one of the most commonly used e-commerce plugin. It is flexible for a high volume store. It has several themes incorporated in it and various other options like memberships, subscriptions and bookings. You can choose the payment options which you want; be it a bank transfer, credit cards and also PayPal. You can even schedule your pickup by customizing the settings in the dashboard-WooCommerce Admin and get connected with the distribution channels and keep track of your product. Create a fast loading webpages using CLI.
WPForms : Creating a contact form has become much easier with just one plugin i.e. WPForms. You can create contact forms, query forms, subscription forms, feedback forms and much more. All you have to do is create a form and drag and drop in your webpage wherever required. It is beginner friendly, no prior coding knowledge is required. It also has 1000+ pre-built form templates where you can customize according to your needs. This saves time as well as you don’t have to do it from scratch. One can create a responsive form design with WPForms which seems to be compatible in mobile phones and tablets as well. It is one of the fastest WordPress contact form plugin where you don’t have to worry about the loading speed.
All in One SEO: This is the popular WordPress SEO plugin. This is used by over 3 million website owners to make their websites rank higher in search engine. This is the most beginner friendly plugin as it is easy and powerful. It is designed in such a way that it is easy to follow the SEO workflows from the initial setup to the optimization that helps you outrank in the search results. It is easy to setup all the SEO features like XML sitemaps, optimized search appearance, SEO meta title, SEO keywords etc., in less than 10 minutes. It provides flawless integration with other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc. This helps you measure the SEO results and the progress easily as it easily connects your website with Google search console, Google analytics, Bing Webmaster tools etc. AIOSEO comes with built-in smart SEO schema markup feature which helps you in generating more traffic to your websites. It helps to setup proper 301 redirects to improve your SEO rankings.
Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO is another WordPress SEO plugin that helps in optimizing your websites. It has several built-in features that guides you in fixing the complications and thereby improvising the website traffic. This helps you in creating SEO meta titles and descriptions much faster and easier. It takes care of the canonical URL’s and meta tags which helps in improving the traffic to your websites. It also has several other features like title and meta description templating, XML sitemaps, structured data integration etc. Setting up of this plugin is easy and hassle-free as it does not require any coding language. You can also build an appealing content with Yoast SEO content analysis which improves the websites performance and ranking. It supports various other languages like English, German, Arabic, Swedish, Portuguese etc. It is compatible in all electronic devices which helps you fix your meta titles and descriptions even with a mobile phone. You can keep track of your rankings with Wincher and make changes simultaneously if needed. Also provides 303 redirects automatically instead of “404 page not found”.
Elementor: Elementor plugin helps you create websites without coding language. You can create websites more easily and quickly by simply dragging the blocks in the sections you have created. You can create any type of websites: be it a e-commerce or portfolio websites using templates or in-line editing drag and drop editor. You can enhance your website by adding various features available in it such as box shadow, background overlay, motion effects, background image etc. You can export and import templates between webpages which helps in creating faster websites. You can also create a responsive design so that it is compatible in all electronic devices like mobile phones, tablets, desktops and laptops. It has various number of widgets incorporated in it such as heading, text editor, images, text image box, image carousel, image gallery, social icons, accordion and much more. It supports over 59+ languages and various typographies and it is also compatible with WPML, Poly-lang, TranslatePress etc.
Smush: Smush is the popular image optimization plugin which helps in loading your webpages faster. You can also convert your images to a WebP format, resize it and compress it without worsening the quality of the image. It scans all your image that you have uploaded automatically and cuts all unnecessary data with proper measurement. It automatically integrates with all the themes and page builders you are working with and helps your website work faster and more efficient. It also includes built-in lazy loading which speeds up loading the images being viewed and delaying others which are further down the page.
Weglot: Weglot plugin helps you to translate your WordPress websites in 110+ languages without coding language. You can translate all your content easily within few minutes. It also translates the newly added content automatically and you don’t have to worry about the maintenance. It integrates with the themes and plugins you are working with. It is optimized for SEO where all the translated pages are automatically translated with the dedicated URL’s. Reduces bounce rate as the user can view the webpage in his/her own language. This plugin is widely used for e-commerce and business websites to scatter their business globally.
iThemes Security: iThemes Security is the best WordPress plugin that provides security to your websites. This plugin helps you identify threats and thereby prevents your websites from their attack. It has built-in site templates suitable for different types of websites and ensure providing security accordingly. It has several features such as two-factor authentication(2FA), reCAPCHA, password requirements, network brute force protection etc. Different levels of security are available which you can choose while setting up the plugin. The in-built site scanner scans your website twice a day and notifies you if there is any malware detected. It regularly backups your data and you can recover it in the event of hack or any security breach.
WPSticky: WPSticky plugin helps your sidebar menu to be visible to the users at all times even when the user is scrolling down the pages. This plugin integrates Theia Sticky sidebar(written in JavaScript language) with the WordPress. This helps the users to easily navigate between pages and it increases your websites usability, accessibility and conversion rates. This works well with different languages and helps you create a responsive fixed sidebar. It is easy to install and use.
WP Optimize: WP optimize is the all in one plugin which creates caches, cleans your database and compresses your image files, thereby increasing the website loading time. It is simple to use and mobile friendly. It automatically synchronize with Updraft Plus and cleans up and backup your database every week thereby enhancing the site’s performance. WP cache removes the unwanted revisions of the edited posts freeing up necessary space and increases the speed and efficiency of the websites. The in-built image compression tool helps you to compress bulk images at a time without worsening the image quality and thereby improving your websites loading time. It ensures that your webpage is cached every time a user uses it so that it loads faster when a next user opens your website. In addition to this it also has a minification feature that helps you to defer the CSS and Javascript.
Updraft Plus: Updraft Plus plugin is used by over 3 million website owners and is one of the most trusted WordPress plugins. This plugin is used to create backups and helps in recovering the lost data. You can backup manually or schedule it to backup every week or month according to your needs. You can also migrate it to a different hosting and domain by simply downloading the database which you require to migrate. It also reduces the risk of broken links created when migrating.
Broken link checker: Broken link checker is one of the fastest and the most accurate plugin that checks and fixes the broken links in your webpages. It scans your webpages frequently ensuring no broken link is missed including all internal and external links within your posts, comments etc. It has two in-built link checker : One is Cloud-based link checker – this has several features like 20x more speed, unlimited page URL checker, edit broken links, any size/any site etc. You can manage broken links on multiple site since it is completely cloud-based. The other link checker is local link checker – this fetches the site content from your server resources to analyze the broken links. This has several features like detecting broken links and redirecting, send notifications to your dashboard, monitors external and internal links. You can use either of them as both are user friendly and you can keep track of the broken links and fix it as soon as possible.
ShopLentor(WooLentor): ShopLentor is the all in one WooCommerce plugin where you have all the essential and most appealing templates and you don’t have to go for any other addon plugins. It comes with the powerful WooCommerce page builder where you can design all your webpages from scratch using the elementor web page builder. It provides you with a plenty of widgets which you can customize according to your needs. Apart from this it also has various other functionalities like woo wishlist, product comparison, flash sale countdown, quick view etc. It also allows you to create templates and edit, remove or add custom checkout page to increase the conversion rate. The various widgets available are product tab(display your products in a tabbed format), product grid(display your products in a responsive grid layout), add banner(create eye-catching banner), special day offer banner, image markers, category list(categorizing products vertically or horizontally), category carousel and many more. It also has email marketing automation module that sends notification to customers, clients and more. It is the perfect tool for the online business owners.