The virtual world that is the Internet is today replete with numerous websites that make best use of the WordPress content management system. Owing to this, a large number of WordPress plugins have been created for the use of website owners, available both free of cost as well as paid services. With these plugins, the website owners are capable of doing various things such as on-site analysis of data, improving their SEO rankings and content, giving visitors a better user experience on their website, and also making it easier for themselves to manage their blogs and websites. The plugin directory of WordPress allows webmasters to search the listing of available plugins. With as many as 30,000 different plugins available in the directory, there is practically one plugin that meets the needs and requirements of virtually every single website around the world.
Benefits of using WordPress as your website plugin
Let us take a look at some of the top reasons that has given WordPress such immense popularity and why, as a web or blog site owner, you should consider making the switch to a WordPress platform for the design of your company website.
- Ease of use
An intuitive interface, it is extremely easy to use WordPress with such things as adding new images, blog posts and pages seemingly being a breeze. A simple technology, it greatly reduces the amount of time that you spend on formatting your website.
- Easy website management from remote computers
WordPress is a browser-based plugin. Thus it gives you the option of logging in from any computer that has an Internet connection for effective management of your website.
- No requirement for FTP Software or HTML Editing
Being a self-contained system, WordPress does not require any amount of HTML editing. Whether you wish to create image galleries, video files, format texts, create new blog posts or websites, or upload images and documents, WordPress does not require the use of additional FTP or HTML softwares for the editing purpose.
- Exercise complete control over your website
With WordPress, you do not need to wait for your web designer to come along for making simple updates. It allows you to have near complete control over every aspect of your website design while presenting a unique experience for your visitors.
- Completely customizable website design
WordPress is the engine that powers your website with complete determination. Website owners have complete control over a 100% customization of the look and feel of their site. This way, they can allow their brand to shine through on their site while presenting their visitors with an unique surfing and searching experience.
- Extended website functionality
Are you looking to integrate your site with such attractive features as a Facebook Fan Box, Twitter Feed, video gallery or event calendar? With numerous plugins- available both free and at reasonable prices- WordPress makes all of it possible.
- Let your website and business grow simultaneously: One of the biggest attraction of WordPress websites is their scalable feature. Even if you put in a million blog posts or pages of content on your website, the performance is not compromised in any manner whatsoever.
- Permit multiple users: As the administrator of a WordPress site you have the option of setting up multiple users for your site while also assigning capabilities and access levels to each of them.
A list of the top 10 plugins for improving the effectiveness of your blog:
The use of WordPress plugins is an excellent strategy for improving the performance of a website, the search engine optimization rankings and page content, and the overall user experience of visitors to the website. Here we take a look at the top ten plugins- each of them free to download- that will hugely improve the resultant efficiency and effectiveness of your website, giving the visitors every reason to be happy upon visiting and going through the pages that you have set up for them.
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is an excellent plugin that has a considerable impact on the performance of your website by improving its speed of operations. It increases the server performance and results in a far greater experience for every visitor to your website. If you have a website that goes on loading forever, visitors are more likely to take an early leave from it with the probability of them not returning increasing manifold.
WordPress related posts
This is an excellent WordPress plugin that is designed with the sole intention of keeping visitors to your website engaged on reading the content that you have put on offer for them on your webpages and blog sites. With this plugin, the website owners have the added advantage of placing a certain number of “related posts” at the end of each blog post on their site. As soon as visitors are done with a particular post they had been so engaged in reading, they will be offered suggestions of several other posts that feature similar content to what they had been going through until now. The primary objective is to grab the attention of the visitors so that they click and proceed to another similar type of content. This is one of the best plugin tools to ensure that the visitors remain on your website for an extended period of time.
Google Analytics as a WordPress plugin
The Google Analytics plugin makes for a simple solution for those website owners who wish to establish a quick connection between their Google Analytics plugin and a website that is based on WordPress CMS. The Google Analytics plugin was developed by the same development team who were behind the creation of the most popular SEO plugin ever created- WordPress SEO by Yoast.
Subscribe2
Subscribe2 is a WordPress plugin with which website owners have access to a relatively easy-to-use subscription management system besides efficient and effective email notification systems. Individuals visiting the website can easily submit their email addresses in relevant places so that they can be notified and alerted each time the site publishes some new content. This is an excellent option for the website visitors who want to receive instant notifications each time there is some new material to be read. It is equally great for the website owners who wish to have some dedicated readers as Subscribe2 helps to bring back interested visitors to their website seemingly on an auto-pilot mode.
404 to Start
This is a WordPress plugin that rapidly eliminates any instance of a 404 error by redirecting the error pages to either the homepage or any other URL as specified by the website owner. So, if a visitor makes an error while typing in the URL, they will simply be redirected to some other functioning page instead of being presented with a big 404 error message. Also, any individual who makes an attempt to visit the site through a broken link will either land on the homepage or on some other landing page as specified by the owner instead of encountering an unfavorable error message.
Mashshare
With the Mashshare Share buttons, blog and website owners can get to see the total share count of their work on Twitter and Facebook at a glance each time they visit the page. Mashshare helps in putting some clean designed and beautiful Share Buttons at the top and end of every blog post in a bid to generate the most number of social share feedbacks possible from the visiting individuals. It draws inspiration from the Share button that Mashable itself uses on its website. Social sharing is one of the most important components in terms of content marketing. As the world continues to make progress, social signals are being looked upon as an integral part of the search engine optimization campaign. By providing a nice looking social toolbar, this WordPress plugin provides the website visitors an easy means of sharing content across their profiles on various social media platforms.
Google XML Sitemaps
Here is a WordPress plugin that generates an XML Sitemap for your website and also helps the posts and pages to get indexed by the major search engines. Each time there is a new post coming up on the blog site, the search engines are notified by the plugin. This is the easiest way in which web spiders are provided with an easy structure on which to crawl.
Contact Form 7
With this plugin, webmasters can effectively manage the multiple contact forms on their website. It also has such helpful security features as Akismet spam filtering and CAPTCHA. Having registered more than sixteen million downloads around the world, this is the most popular choice for the website owners who wish to work with a simple-to-use contact form.
Akismet
Akismet represents a WordPress plugin that is a must have for the simple reason that it prevents users from filling up your blog with spam comments. As a website owner, you have complete freedom to review all spam comment on your site within the comments admin section available on the WordPress dashboard. Spam is something that neither you as the website owner or individuals visiting your website are in favor of, so ensure that you have this excellent plugin installed on your site.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress is one of the best CMS tools in terms of laying out a great foundation for the search engine optimization features to work on. Moreover, adding this plugin allows even the average webmaster to get acquainted to the factors that are important and significantly impact the overall search results. While using this plugin does not necessarily guarantee a top ranking for your web page, it helps in guiding the website owners through simple steps towards an effective search engine optimization for their website.
Is a WordPress plugin necessary for your website?
As we near the end of this blog post, not only have we helped you in understanding the various benefits of using a WordPress plugin on your website but also provided you with the various plugin options that you can choose from. Now, as a last help, we will also help you understand the thought process every time you contemplate the use of a WordPress plugin on your website.
Start by asking yourself these questions:
- Is it necessary to provide the functionality or solve the issue that you are concerned about?
- Are you in need of a plugin-type help for finding a solution?
- Are you using a theme with built-in functionalities the way you want it?
If the answers to the first two questions are in the affirmative but the final question features a negative answer, then it is time you should consider implementing a plugin on your website.
Do all your necessary homework, pick the plugin you think is the best from the exhaustive list that we have provided and take a confident step towards an intelligent deployment of the WordPress plugin in a manner such that it works effectively for your website.
If you think that some professional help will do your website a world of good, hire PHP programmers for a reputed business solution service provider or programmer hire services company. Their team of expert professionals, adept at CMS development using PHP frameworks and programming methodologies, will help in giving your business and website an altogether new dimension for growth and success.
James Patrick Winson, is a professional website designer who specializes in CMS development using WordPress development tools. He has been attached with GetAProgrammers, a premium PHP programmers and developers hire company in Sydney, Australia for an extensive period of time.
