WordPress alone is already a very good platform for building your online business website. Nevertheless, it is also equipped with a plugin infrastructure to enhance its features. There are, at this moment, more than 280,000 plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory. Here are a few recommended WordPress Plugins for your websites. I personally use these in most, if not all, of my WordPress websites.
WordPress Security Plugins
1. All In One Security and Firewall
This is a comprehensive and easy to use security plugin. Install it and quickly configure it to further protect your WordPress installation from malicious visitors. It adds some extra security and firewall to your site by using a security plugin that enforces a lot of good security practices.
2. Google Authenticator
This plugin adds a second tier of authentication for your WordPress Admin area. Requires admins to enter a numeric code provided by the Google Authenticator App running on your Android phone.
WordPress Traffic Plugins
1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
Probably the best SEO plugin for WordPress. A must for all WordPress website. It helps you to choose a focus keyword for your articles, and then makes sure you use that focus keyword where ever it matters in your post.
2. Google Analyticator
Brings the Google Analytics into your WordPress Dashboard. It also disables analytics for Admin visits. This plugin is a must if you use Google Analytics on your websites.
3. Tynt
When the Tynt script is installed via plugins or directly into your WordPress headers, it will automatically include a link to your post when a visitor performs a copy paste of your content into their website. This is a good way to automatically generate backlinks from your contents.
Most of the Tynt plugins have not been updated for quite a while now (November 2015). Only one is listed in the WordPress Plugins Repo right now – Tynt Insight for WordPress. The Tynt script, however, fails to work over HTTPS. Thus, it is no longer functioning on this site since I moved to HTTPS. Apparently the script is currently hosted on a site without HTTPS support. Will have to copy the script file over to a HTTPS site to get it working again. Oh well…
WordPress Performance Plugins
1. Quick Cache
There are a lot of caching plugins out there. I prefer to use Quick Cache because of it’s almost plug n play feature. Install it and perform a few configuration (the default works just fine in most cases) tweaks and your site is speeding on the Internet.
Quick Cache is now Zen Cache.
2. Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a Content Delivery Network that also provides your WordPress website with some basic security features. Your visitors will get fast page load times and best performance as the delivery of your web content is automatically optimized by Cloudflare’s service. You will also see a reduction in bandwidth usage as your content is largely delivered by Cloudflare’s servers all over the world. Cloudflare also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from accessing your website.
Cloudflare also allows you to run your site over HTTPS without the need to purchase an SSL certificate. KodeeXII.Net is running on HTTPS using Cloudflare’s FlexiSSL implementation.
WordPress Social Plugins
1. Facebook WordPress
The official Facebook plugin that allows automated posting of your articles into your Facebook Wall and fanpages. Add Facebook buttons (Like, Send and Follow) into your posts. Install this and your website is automatically integrated with Facebook.
2. Google Plus Authorship
The quick and easy way to establish yourself as the author of your blog entries and have your Google+ profile picture displayed in search results alongside your articles. Google Authorship is a good way to get more visitors from the search engine as people are more inclined to click on search results with the author’s photos.
Google has since dropped their Google Authorship program (August 2014). However, we now have Facebook Authorship to work with.
Thankfully, with YOAST’s WordPress SEO makes it very easy to set this up in WordPress. Just specify your Facebook Profile URL inthe the Facebook Fanpage field and you’re done.
However, if you are not using the WordPress SEO plugin, then you may want to have a look at the Facebook Author Meta plugin instead.
WordPress eCommerce Plugins
1. WooCommerce
Planning to run an online store with WordPress? Try out this excellent piece of eCommerce plugin. You can sell just about anything with WooCommerce.
2. WPeStore
The complete solution to sell digital products from your WordPress website securely. Once you set this plugin up, the entire process (buying, payment verification, and delivering of product(s) without revealing the real product URLs) works automatically.
WordPress Marketing Plugins
1. WordPress Affilliate Platform
Simple affiliate management platform. Works hand in hand with WPeStore and WooCommerce. Install and run your own affiliate program with WordPress.
2. WPOptins
Without a doubt, this is the ultimate List Building Plugin for WordPress. WPOptins makes it point-and-click simple to create high-converting squeeze pages, thank you pages, download pages, and even sales pages in just a few clicks.
3. Blog Optin Pro
Increase your newsletter subscription with this Slide Up plugin. It allows you to create a slide with an optin form. Slide Up optin forms are known to work better than pop-up optin forms.
4. Affiliate Link Cloaking
Use your own domain as URL shortener, just like bitly and tinyurl. Hide your affiliate links as a shortened URL in your own domain. Definitely a must have if you are an Affiliate Marketer.
All 15 Recommended WordPress Plugins are currently in use in at least one of my websites. Majority of the above are used in all of my WordPress sites. If you run an online business website with WordPress, I strongly recommend that you take a look at the above plugins.
No doubt, there are other plugins that you feel should also be added into the list above. By all means, do share them with me in the comments section.
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