I have been blogging for about 12 years, and my website hasn’t undergone any significant changes. Writing was once my passion, and I had always dreamed of showcasing my work to the world. That dream finally came true when I created this website.
However, I faced some challenges while building my site. I wanted to add an online store to promote and sell my eBooks, but I knew nothing about e-commerce or how to build an online store. I wanted to add a form to my contact page, but I had no idea how to connect a form to my business email. I wanted people to subscribe to my website, but didn’t know what tool I could use to create a subscription form.
I wanted to be a bit more creative and add a photo gallery page and a page to download free stuff, but I didn’t know how to do that either. I wanted to add a few enhancements to my site, so I did a little research and discovered some free plugins that I could use to add new features to my website.
Maybe you’re facing similar challenges with your website. Whether you’re a writer, an artist, a photographer, or a creative dreamer, you can also turn your passion into an online presence by not only building an engaging website with WordPress but also with special tools called plugins that can add new features and increase the functionality of your site.
Here are 14 essential WordPress plugins to help you improve your website’s performance and enhance functionality.
1. Page Builders, Content and Design Tools
Elementor Website Builder – Drag and drop website builder. No coding is necessary. You have full control over the layout and style of your website.
Kadence Blocks (Gutenberg Blocks with AI) – A powerful plugin that has a built-in AI content editor to improve text and tailor your message so that it is polished and error-free. You can also create beautiful responsive web pages with its AI design library.
Spectra Gutenberg Blocks – Another powerful website builder that uses powerful building blocks to create your website faster.
2. E-Commerce and Digital Product Sales
Easy Digital Downloads – Use this plugin to create an online store and sell digital products and subscriptions. This plugin can be integrated with PayPal and Stripe to accept card payments.
WooCommerce – A powerful e-commerce plugin that you can use to create and launch an online store. This is one of the best WordPress plugins to use to sell multiple products from your website.
PDF Embedder – Easily upload and embed PDF files directly into your posts and pages on your website. It’s as easy as adding images. The PDF Embedder plugin is fully responsive, so the embedded PDF file will adapt to the screen size of any mobile device.
3. Marketing and Engagement Tools
Mailpoet – This is a newsletter builder and marketing tool that lets you create and send beautiful emails from scratch or by using responsive templates and manage and grow your email marketing campaigns. This plugin also lets you schedule newsletters to send right away or at a future date.
Pretty Links – This plugin comes in handy when you want to create affiliate links, shorten URLs, and track link performance. This tool allows you to shorten links using your domain name, which makes it look more professional.
Social Warfare – Unlike other social sharing plugins that slow down your website, Social Warfare enables you to add beautiful and lightning-fast social share buttons that encourage more social shares, which can lead to increased website traffic.
4. Multilingual and Accessibility Plugins
TranslatePress – One of the easiest ways to translate your WordPress site is to use the TranslatePress plugin. Use this multilingual tool to translate all your website content directly from the front end into any language. It is fully compatible with all themes and plugins, and it is integrated with Google Translate. It is also compatible with WooCommerce, so you can also translate the content in your online store.
WP Accessibility – Use this plugin to fix a variety of accessibility issues on your WordPress website. It can fix accessibility issues caused by various WordPress themes. It can fix common issues such as missing skip links, incorrect tab index, and missing labels on forms. It helps make websites more user-friendly for people with disabilities by improving readability, navigation, and overall user experience.
5. Security and Maintenance Essentials
Updraft Plus – Backup your website and all its contents by installing the Updraft Plus Backup and Migration plugin. Use this plugin to backup, restore, and migrate your WordPress websites.
Wordfence Security – You’ll sleep better at night knowing that your WordPress website is protected by the Wordfence Security plugin. This powerful tool includes an endpoint firewall, malware scanner, and robust login security features to keep your website safe.
WP Fastest Cache – Need to optimize your website’s performance? You can do that with the WP Fastest Cache plugin, which enables you to speed up your WordPress website. It also helps to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ranking in Google search results.
Conclusion
All the plugins mentioned above have a variety of features that help you to enhance the functionality of your website. You can find these plugins on the WordPress.org website. Although I found many of the tools to be useful, not all of them are suitable or relevant to my site. So, I would advise you to choose plugins that you believe would improve your website, and not because of their popularity.
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The Beginner’s Guide to WordPress
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