Top WordPress Plugins for Bloggers to Enhance Their Sites

WordPress is a blogging content management system, and if you have a blog on it, you are most likely familiar with the term ‘plugin.’ This is especially true if you have used several WordPress plugins on your site. Every WordPress blogger is aware of the thousands of plugins available, and once you understand just how useful plugins are, it is not uncommon to start collecting them and before you know it, you find yourself with a hundred plugins or more.

Having an abundance of plugins collected can single-handedly cause your blog to lag and overly burden your site with security issues. Like all things, having plugins comes with a unique balance. In this case, only using WordPress plugins that you actually require will enhance your website builder experience. The key will always lie in a balance between functionality, such as using a page builder, and SEO performance. Your WordPress site should be quick, safe, and secure, especially when using a page builder like Elementor. But deciding which WordPress plugins are essential out of the unlimited outstanding options, including page builders and sliders, is what makes the process so daunting. To make your life easier, here is our curated list of the 7 most essential plugins for WordPress blogs, including layout and design tools.

1. Akismet (FREE)

Akismet focuses on keeping spam comments at bay while at the same time saving you time and effort on your blog posts. It works by keeping a close eye on the activity in your comments section and if it finds anything suspicious, Akismet will place it for you to review in a different section before deciding to merge it.

Setting everything up in SETTINGS >>> DISCUSSIONS will determine how comments funnel into one separate section for approval and another section if Akismet classifies them as spam. This helps you moderate comments on your blog posts without wading through mountains of spam. On the other hand, if you set no comment moderation under your discussion settings, it implies your comments will not be flooded with spam.

2. All In One Security (FREE)

Every website needs a security plugin, particularly if you are using a layout that incorporates various WordPress plugins. With a good security plugin, you can stop your blog from getting hacked! There are many good security plugins out there (I’ve heard good things about Sucuri and WordFence), but my recommendation is All In One WP Security (AIOS). It’s pretty simple to set up, and even a non-techie like me was able to design a blog page using a website builder.

It offers a ton of useful features, such as the ability to change your login URL to anything else other than /wp-admin (thereby preventing hackers from accessing the site), changing your security settings to augment security during the login process, and the ability to lock certain IP addresses if they repeatedly fail to login for a given period of time. (Just don’t forget to whitelist your own ip address otherwise, you might lock yourself out!)

3. Kit

With Kit’s features, you can easily set up email list subscription forms on your WordPress blog. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, they are automatically added to your subscriber’s list on WordPress.com.

They provide you with beautiful and highly functional forms that can be placed on almost any spot on your website, thus increasing your chances of garnering more subscribers through effective layout. If you don’t use Kit, it is likely that your current email service provider offers similar functionality.

4. CoSchedule

CoSchedule users can benefit greatly from this plugin because it allows the connection of a WordPress website directly to the CoSchedule account, thus creating a fluid connection between the blog and the social media platforms.

Within CoSchedule, a user can draft and schedule a WordPress post, plan all the related social media activities for that post and examine all the related analytics from a single location. All these will be displayed on a single calendar on the CoSchedule app as well as on the WordPress dashboard.

5. COOKIE YES

Having a cookies plugin to manage the GDPR policies is a vital step towards making your blog compliant legally. CookieYes is an essential tool for websites, as it displays a pop-up notification informing visitors about the use of cookies and requesting their consent. This helps ensure compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR and builds trust with users by promoting transparency.

On this site, I have also been using Cookie Yes | GDPR Cookie Consent, and I can say that it is a good WordPress plugin for compliance. You can set it up in less than fifteen minutes, it is super easily adjustable, and you can even set it to your brand colors using widgets.

6. Health Check & Troubleshooting (FREE)

The health Check & Troubleshooting Plugin will hit the website with a number of tests to evaluate if there are possible faults or issues, and provide a summary or report on the overall health of your blog. The most advantageous aspect of this plugin is that it helps to resolve issues in your blog that you have suspected might come as a result of a clash between plugins or themes without impacting your readers’ experience on the site.

Through the Health Check & Troubleshooting add-on, you can initially turn off all your plugins and later turn them on one at a time. This will help you determine which plugin, or combination of plugins, is causing you problems. You can also check by changing the WordPress theme to see if the theme itself is what’s causing the headaches. Best part is all this can be done without any impact on your readers.

7. ShortPixel (FREEmium)

One thing that contribute highly towards speeding your website is image compression. To put it plainly, a picture is a file comprising lots of information and data, but the truth is that only a few bits are necessary for a good view. ShortPixel removes any unnecessary information from a photo while keeping enough essential data so that the image can still be viewed without looking bad, enhancing your blog posts.

There are numerous compression plugins out there that will allow you to significantly reduce the size of your images while maintaining their quality. One of them is ShortPixel, a popular WordPress plugin for image optimization. This plugin is so straightforward and simple it even does all your current and new photos automatically.

Conclusion

Plugins usually help in improving the WordPress experience, but like anything else, they have their advantages and disadvantages, particularly in terms of layout. Installing series plugins for unnecessary functions and features can slow your blog down drastically over time and introduce security issues. The seven plugins we listed, from comment spam filtering and security to image optimization and legal compliance, provide everything a dependable blog needs while ensuring that it is smooth, secure, and easy to navigate. Do not overload your WordPress site for it to stay versatile and well-performing.  

A well-maintained WordPress blog page gets more users and visitors easier than one that is not taken care of. Make sure to inspect your plugins regularly and clear any that haven’t been used for some time. The success of WordPress depends solely on the smart decisions taken with its plugins!