If you’ve ever made the switch from Blogger or Squarespace over to a self-hosted WordPress site, then you know there is a learning curve involved. When your site is self-hosted, you have access to all of your files, and manually customizing everything can seem very overwhelming. Thankfully, WordPress comes along with a giant archive of awesome plugins that will do the dirty coding work for you. I love finding solid plugins that allow me to accomplish exactly what I need to with a website.
Whenever I set up a website for a client, I immediately recommend five WordPress plugins to make immediately make their experience easier right from the start. Read on to learn which plugins I swear by and why they’re so useful!
1. Jetpack for WordPress.com
Bet you didn’t see this one coming. ;) We are obviously huge fans of the Jetpack plugin, considering all the blog posts we’ve mentioned it in before. Jetpack gives you features like site stats, sharing buttons, contact forms, and custom content types. Check out our full intro to the Jetpack plugin to learn why this is so essential!
2. Akismet
Akismet is the #1 plugin used to filter most (if not all) spam comments. As of right now, Akismet is installed onto new WordPress sites by default, but you still have to activate it and set it up. It only takes a few seconds and it’ll save you lots of time and annoyance.
3. Yoast SEO
For a long time, I didn’t pay attention to SEO (search engine optimization – learn more about it here!), but now I’m a true believer in it. Before hitting publish, we make sure our posts and pages are all SEO friendly with the help of the Yoast plugin.
4. Regenerate Thumbnails
WordPress allows you to set different sizes for your images by going to Settings > Media. However, when you change these settings, sometimes the images previously uploaded become distorted. Regenerate Thumbnails lets you create new sizes for all of your previously uploaded images. I use this all the time!
5. WP Super Cache
Caching is when your browser stores recently loaded websites so that they’re quicker to view the next time you want to visit that site. With plugins like WP Super Cache, you can create a cached view of your website so your visitors don’t have to wait for all of your codes and scripts to load each time they visit your site. Just make sure you clear your WordPress cache whenever you make changes to your coding!
Do you already have any of these plugins installed? What else is on your list of most important WordPress plugins?
Heather says
These are super helpful! Thank you so much for the recs! these will be super helpful as I endeavor down the path to monetization!
Jennifer says
So glad we could help, Heather! :)
Bronnie says
Thanks so much for this!! The Yoast SEO has changed my life! So great to get guidance on SEO (always a grey area for me).
Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine says
Should you clear your cache anyway, even if you don’t change any hard coding?
Jennifer says
Nope it isn’t really necessary to clear your cache unless you’re not seeing recently made changes appear on your site. Hope that helps!
Martina says
I love these as well! I am wondering what your take on Disqus is? I just recently switched because I thought readers will comment more frequently given the easier option to do so but it’s harder for me to reply to since I can’t do it through my WP Dashboard and now I consider to go back to the comment form. I can’t import the Disqus comments though which increased over the last month or so. I am divided.
Jennifer says
Hi Martina! I’m actually not super familiar with Disqus. I’ve commented through Disqus, but I’ve never installed it on my own website. I prefer the standard comment form because in my opinion, it’s cleaner and more customizable. I also don’t like having to log into Disqus to comment/manage comments. I’m sure Disqus has its perks though!
That’s unfortunate that you wouldn’t be able to import your Disqus comments. I’d say if you feel like switching back to the default comment form, it would be best to do it sooner rather than later. Good luck with everything!