When you set up a new WordPress website, the second thing you do after installing a theme is search for useful plugins. We offer you 10 top plugins you must have on you new website.
1. All in One SEO Pack.
WordPress is a well search engine optimized platform. To boost your SEO you may need All in One SEO Pack, which helps with fine tuning of page navigational links, optimizes your titles for Google, generates meta tags automatically, and much more.
2. Yoast SEO.
This is another SEO plugin that is highly helpful when you optimize your posts for search engines. Using the snippet preview you can see a rendering of what your post or page will look like in the search results, whether your title is too long or too short and your meta description makes sense in the context of a search result. This is only a small part of what Yoast SEO can help you optimize.
3. Redirection.
Redirection plugin allows to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors. This is one of the best tools to set up redirections in your WordPress website. Read more on redirection in our previous articles: 3 Main Reasons Why You May Need Redirects in WordPress Website and How to Set Up Redirects in Your WordPress Website.
4. BackWPup Free.
The backup plugin BackWPup Free can be used to save your complete installation including /wp-content/ and push them to an external Backup Service, like Dropbox, S3, FTP and many more. Remember: The most expensive backup is the one you never did!
5. W3 Total Cache.
W3 Total Cache is designed to improve user experience and page speed. It improves the user experience of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. It is recommended by numerous hosting providers.
6. OptinMonster.
OptinMonster is a lead generation plugin. It helps you grow you your email list and get more subscribers. OptinMonster allows you to build high converting opt-in forms in minutes. You can choose from 8 different type of opt-ins including: popups, floating bars, slide-ins, sidebar forms, after-post forms, in-line forms, mobile-only popups, and Canvas.
7. Live Chat Software by HelpOnClick.
Live Chat Software by HelpOnClick allows you to talk to your website visitors in real time. Human engagement through a live chat can have a positive effect on your website conversions and sales. The plugin allows real-time traffic monitoring, it has multiple engagement options, virtual agent and advanced reporting.
8. Contact form 7.
Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting and CAPTCHA.
9. Share Buttons by AddToAny.
The WordPress sharing plugin to help people share, save, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, Reddit, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and well over 100 more sharing and social bookmarking sites.
10. NextGEN Gallery.
NextGEN Gallery is the most popular WordPress gallery plugin. It provides a powerful engine for uploading and managing galleries of images and two front-end display styles (slideshows and thumbnail galleries), both of which come with a wide array of options for controlling size, style, timing, transitions, controls, lightbox effects, and more.
WordPress is a great platform, because there are already thousands plugins for everything that you may need on your website. But if you are starting a new website, the above top WordPress plugins are the basis for you.
WordPress today is not a simple blog platform, but a powerful content management system, that allows creating fully functional websites. WordPress websites today are widely supported and beloved of both web developers and non-programmers. Many facts explain this attitude.
Open source platform
Open source means that you can download, install, use and modify the source code for free. It is available for anyone to study and play with it. That is why it is a community software. Anyone can contribute to WordPress by developing plugins, translating it, answering support questions. Near 20% of all websites use WordPress today, so you will not be alone, and it will be easy to find help.
Easy to install
Many hosting providers offer quick installation of WordPress, so you do not need knowledge of hosting administration. Many web hosting companies optimize their hosting for seamless work with WordPress.
Plenty of fantastic themes
There are a few thousand themes developed for WordPress, and you can chose any of them. Solostream offers both free themes and premium WordPress themes. You do not have to be a web designer, or hire one, to set up a website, you can install any theme yourself.
Another great thing about WordPress themes is responsiveness. If you choose a responsive WordPress theme, it will automatically scale on mobile devices and tablets.
Thousands of useful plugins
You can find almost everything you can imagine already developed for WordPress. Just choose WordPress plugins that you need, add them to your website, and you are ready to go. If you need something special for your website, it will be easy to find a developer who can create it for you.
Search engine friendly
Search engine optimization affects your position in search results on Google and other search engines. WordPress websites are attractive for search engines, but if you need more, you can install SEO plugins.
Easy-to-use CMS
Creating articles in WordPress is as easy as creating them in Word. You do not need programming experience to update content on your website.
Handles different media types
Modern websites include various content, such as texts, banners, images, video, audio. WordPress allows easily upload and organize any type of content with no effort. You can embed YouTube videos, Instagram photos, Tweets by just pasting the URL in your post.
WordPress is expandable
New websites often do not need many features. But as your resource grows, you can easily expand it, adding more components. You can even create an e-Commerce store based on WordPress.
Millions users prove that WordPress is a perfect platform for your website.
When you start your blog, you may think of a visual theme for it. Visual themes are very appealing because they have lots of beautiful, emotional pictures that create the mood of your blog. But where to get brilliant photos if you are not a good photographer? In this article we will tell you about WordPress plugins that allow you to get free photos for your WordPress blog and social media.
#Foter.com – for seamless use within the WordPress platform
Foter offers over 200 million free stock photos for blogs, forums and social media. It lets you add photos directly to your blog, and has a cool WordPress plugin that allows adding photos from your WordPress dashboard.
#Compfight – WordPress plugin for photos from Flickr
Compfight is another great website for bloggers. It also has a plugin for WordPress websites that allows you to add photos to your blog with one click. Compfight searches photos mostly from Flickr, and it can also offer photos from Shutterstock.
#PhotoDropper
PhotoDropper has over 243,800,000+ free images (via Creative Commons license) and 10,000,000+ premium images, which can be added to your blog within four clicks. It searches photos on various stock websites, and even handles the attribution.
#Pixabay images
Pixabay images is a WordPress plugin that pics public domain photos from Pixabay. The photos are free to use, and paying attribution or linking back is not required. The plugin allows to upload a 640 px wide or high version of the image directly to your WordPress media library.
#Dreamstime Stock Photos
Dreamstime WordPress plugin offers large selection of free and professional stock photos online without leaving WordPress. One great thing about Dreamstime plugin, if you are already a Dreamstime client, the plugin will connect with your account, and you will be able to use previously purchased images.
Solostream offers several visual themes for WordPress websites, such as WP-Visual, WP-Boundless, WP-Chatter, and others. We hope that you will find the one that suits you best, and fill it with beautiful images.