There are thousands of wordpress plugins – where do you even start? For those of you starting out, there are a few plugins you must install and you can add or remove as you go.
Contact Form 7 is a great plugin for your contact page. Allows you to setup an easy contact form, edit the relevant text boxes and fields and setup the submit email.
Duplicate Page is a nice plugin when you learning. You setup a page, and before you start testing out other ideas, use this plugin to replicate what you have in a new page so you can edit and change and compare what you had. You can then easily remove the one you don’t want.
Google Analytics I always say if you cant measure it you cant improve. No matter how big or small the site – take the time to put Google analytics on it (there are many plugins that do this – just choose one and configure it) – you’ll be glad in the long run that you can track how your site has done.
Real Simple SSL automatically detects your settings and configures your website to run over https. You need to get an SSL certificate through your hosting provider (if you contact me I can setup your hosting, install wordpress and you’ll get an SSL certificate with this). Clients like to know the site they are using is secure – you can see this when the padlock is locked on the left of your domain name.
Smush optimises images – it compresses your images and thereby improves your Google Page Speed. The unpaid version does up to 50 images at a time, perfect for starting off.
Wordfence Security is one of the many security plugins you can use. At the end of the day if someone is going to hack your site they will, but this is a great plugin to have in place to make it harder for them. It also alerts you to multiple attacks, has IP blocker etc.
Yoast without a doubt the best and most important plugin you can use. Firstly it automatically generates an xml sitemap – which is the only way google ever knows about your site. Secondly it does basic SEO on your site and prompts you what to put in and where to help improve your SEO.
If you have any questions feel free to mail me