WordPress is much more than a blogging tool. Since its 2003 launch, this flexible, easy-to-set-up web publishing platform has served as the foundation for more than 500 million websites, according to WPZoom. Its popularity has spawned an incredibly rich ecosystem of more than 60,000 WordPress plug-ins that help webmasters improve their sites in numerous ways, including search engine optimization (SEO) and comments management. Our top plug-in picks will help you find just what your WordPress-powered website needs, and they won’t cost a dime (though some offer premium tiers with additional functionality). Every plug-in featured here has been updated within the past three months as of this writing. An out-of-date plug-in may work with your recently updated WordPress installation, but it’s not guaranteed to do so.
One more thing. Plug-ins can be installed only on self-hosted WordPress sites or sites using managed WordPress hosting services; if WordPress.com is your host, this article isn’t for you. But if you are self-hosting a website, check out our list of excellent plug-ins below.
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Artificial intelligence is an inescapable part of modern tech. See if AI fits your website needs with AI Experiments, the official WordPress plug-in for experimental AI features. With it, you can do many things, including creating site content and improving workflows. You can opt out of features you don’t want or check out the roadmap to see what’s coming up. AI may ultimately be a bust, but WordPress at least lets you sample it for yourself.
Akismet checks comments and trackbacks against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam. If any comments and trackbacks are deemed bogus, they’re automatically shuffled over to your WordPress installation’s spam folder. Clicking Akismet Stats (located in your Dashboard) shows a breakdown of your spam, missed spam, ham (Akismet’s term for real comments), and false positives (legit comments and trackbacks mistaken for spam).
Sometimes a site simply needs a solid contact form. You can add one to your WordPress-powered blog with this useful, customizable plug-in. Contact Form 7 supports Akismet and CAPTCHA spam filtering, too, so that you don’t have to deal with the bots and other shenanigans that plague the online space.
Elementor Website Builder
Elementor offers numerous tools to make your WordPress site as robust and attractive as possible. For example, you can add video and image galleries, integrate Google Maps and other services, display social media icons, or insert custom HTML code to further expand your site’s functionality.
You don’t want to miss important events, whether they’re offline or online. With the Events Calendar plug-in, you can create and view events, coordinate with venues and fellow organizers, and publish your schedule for visitors to browse.
Jetpack is an official WordPress.com plug-in that gives your self-hosted WordPress blog a truckload of extra features. The plug-in serves up visitor stats, social media sharing options, and After The Deadline (a grammar and spell checker). Featuring design, marketing, performance, and security tools, Jetpack gets you started with a little bit of everything.
No one has time for a slow-loading website. We have places to go and things to do, after all. LiteSpeed Cache helps your WordPress-powered site pick up the pace. This plug-in includes optimization features designed for site acceleration, including server-level cache for easy integration with existing tools.
It’s pretty hard to build a website if you can’t read what’s on your screen. Loco Translate helps you edit WordPress translation files right in your browser. It integrates with existing automatic translation APIs from DeepL, Google, Microsoft, and other notable companies. Using Loco Translate, you can update and customize language files and save them to a protected directory.
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Redirection is a plug-in that lets you redirect links, track 404 (“page not found”) errors, and fix other link-based issues. It’s incredibly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website or making changes to your site’s WordPress directory.
Want to add a forum to your WordPress setup? Simple:Press lets you do just that. Don’t underestimate its capabilities; with Simple:Press, you can customize the forum with skins, create sub-forums, grant user rankings based on post numbers, and more.
You put so much effort into building a website, so the last thing you want to do is lose it. UpdraftPlus lets you back up your WordPress site and files to cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. Rest easy knowing you can restore your site whenever you want.
The internet can be a dangerous place. Wordfence Security protects your WordPress site and keeps your visitors safe from malicious attacks. A strong firewall filters out known suspicious IP addresses, deeply integrated encryption thwarts data leaks, and multi-factor authentication adds that final safeguard to your WordPress login. You owe it to your users to keep your site safe and sound.
If you want to make money with your website, e-commerce is the way to go. With WooCommerce, WordPress’s official open-source e-commerce tool, you can create storefronts that make your products truly irresistible. Get paid!
WPForms lets you add a variety of useful, stylish forms, giving you more ways to interact with your WordPress site. This plug-in handles contact, feedback, payment, and subscription forms. The drag-and-drop builder tools are designed for beginners who want to get started quickly without much fuss.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the single most important thing for getting your website in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Millions of WordPress sites trust Yoast SEO to offer all the insight they need to keep their SEO game on point. This tool analyzes your content for keywords, monitors your ranking, and helps you clean up your URLs. Premium users can even preview how their site appears on social media.
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