Essential WordPress Plugins You Should Install

While WordPress offers a ton of features and flexibility, there is still a lot of functionality missing from the core software. The best way to fill in the missing pieces, of course, is to get yourself the right plugins.

What is a WordPress plugin?

A WordPress plugin is a piece of software that “plugs into” your WordPress site. Plugins can add new functionality or extend existing functionality on your site, allowing you to create virtually any kind of website, from e-commerce stores to portfolios to directory sites.

How do WordPress plugins work?

Plugins allow you to add or extend the functionality of your WordPress site without changing core WordPress files. Plugins use access points, formally known as filter and action hooks, provided by the WordPress Plugin API to “hook into” the source code. These access points and methods will call the functions of the plugin at specific times and modify the default behavior of WordPress.

A plugin developer who wants to use the WordPress Plugin API to create a plugin will start by creating a PHP function to, say, delete comments with profanity from their site. Then they’ll hook the function to a specific event, such as saving comments to the WordPress database or publishing a post, by using the add_filter() function or add_action() function.

Let’s say this developer wants to create a plugin that adds a line of text that says “Thank you for reading!” below every post on a WordPress site. In that case, the function of the plugin would be adding “Thank you for reading!” to a post and the event that triggers the function would be publishing a post. So their plugin file would look something like the following:

<?php

/**
* Plugin Name: Thank You Plugin
* Plugin URI: http://www.mywebsite.com/thank-you-plugin
* Description: The very first plugin that I have ever created.
* Version: 1.0
* Author: Your Name
* Author URI: http://www.mywebsite.com
*/

add_action( 'the_content', 'my_thank_you_text' );


function my_thank_you_text ( $content ) {
return $content .= '<p>Thank you for reading!</p>';

?>

Now let’s say you’re a site owner who wants to add this functionality to your site. In that case, you’d need to add the plugin to your WordPress website. Let’s look at the different ways you can do so below.

How to Use a Plugin in WordPress

There are multiple ways can add WordPress plugins to your site. For example, you can do so from your dashboard, from the official WordPress plugin directory, or from third-party sites. Plugins from the official directory can be automatically installed in one click, while some premium plugins have to be manually installed via a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client.

To install a plugin from the official WordPress directory, you simply have to log into your dashboard and select Plugins > Add New. Then search for the plugin using the built-in search bar. From there, you just have to click Install and Activate. 

To understand how to install a plugin that’s not available in the official directory, let’s return to the plugin example above. If the “Thank you for reading!” plugin is not available in the directory, then you would download the plugin as a zip file and save it in the wp-content/plugins folder of your directory via an FTP client. This would automatically install the plugin to your WordPress site.

You’d then navigate to Plugins in your admin dashboard. Once you located the newly uploaded plugin from the list of installed plugins on your site, you’d just click the plugin’s “Activate” link and be all set! From then on, every time you published a post, the line “Thanks for reading!” would be automatically added to the bottom of the post.

Most plugins begin working right away, but you may need to configure their settings to ensure they’re working the way you want them to. For example, if you were using the WP Staging – DB & File Duplicator & Migration plugin to set up a WordPress staging site, then you’d need to go to the plugin’s settings page and click Create New Staging Site. Then, enter in some information like the name of the staging site and what content you wanted to be copied. Otherwise, the plugin wouldn’t up a staging site automatically. 

If this sounds like a lot of work, then you might be wondering why people use plugins instead of editing core WordPress files to add functionality to their site. That’s because, when updating to a new version of WordPress, all the core files — and any edits made to them — are overwritten. To add that same functionality on your updated site, you’d have to go back in and edit the core files again.

However, if you install plugins to add functionality to your site, then you just need to worry about keeping the plugins updated.

Now that we understand what plugins are, how they work, and how to use them, let’s look at some plugins that can add essential features to your WordPress site.

Essential wordpress plugins

WordPress plugins offer all kinds of customization for site admins; however, with over 55,000 options to choose from in the WordPress Plugin Directory, not to mention all the premium products available, it can be difficult sorting the good from the, well, not so good.

So here’s a collection of free and premium must-haves, the WordPress plugins that can help take your site from good to great. I’ve included options for everything from caching the image optimization to security and more.

Enhance Your Site with Plugins

Whether you want to add forms to your site, automatically compress and reduce your images, or monitor your traffic for suspicious activity, plugins can add or extend the functionality of your WordPress site. This can help you anticipate and meet the needs of your consumers today and in the future.

Do you have a favorite plugin from this list? Have we missed one that you think is absolutely essential for every WordPress site? Let us know in the comments below.