The Good News and the Bad News

The good news is that you have made a good choice in choosing the most popular CMS to host your website. WordPress started in 2003 mainly as a blogging platform but has grown over the years to become the #1 CMS with 43% marketshare of all websites and if you consider only sites using CMS platforms that share climbs to 65%. To hold such marketshare while starting with blogging to these days full blown e-commerce platforms says a lot about the advantages and flexibility of using WordPress.

So what’s the downside you may ask. While the core WordPress platform can be used for so many different applications it in indeed can not do them all. That is where the availability of plugins come into play to give you the precise look, feel and function you want in your website. And because of WordPress’ popularity there are about 60,000 plugins that can be used to enhance your website. So the bad news is actually there’s too much of a good thing. Which plugin do you choose, not that you have the time to go through thousands of potential plugins. Most WordPress  sites have 10-20 plugins performing various functions, are they all compatible? Do any pose security risks? The bottom line is that with a little due diligence in selecting plugins, WordPress is a powerful CMS platform that will meet all of your need now and into the future.

So where do you start your plugin selection? Well first you have to realize that your website is one of an estimated 2 billion sites globally. You can have the slickest, most professional looking website going but if people can’t find it then it doesn’t do you or them much good. So when you are building a website you have to build it in a way that people will be able to find it when making internet searches. Social media is also incredibly important. Check out how to embed an Instagram feed on a WordPress site. So that brings us to Google, the dominant search engine on the planet. So every effort should be made to make your site as visible as possible when someone is making a Google search.  There are four broad areas that Google uses to decide how to rank your website:

• Site speed
  
  •  Websites are becoming more and more media heavy and sites that load slowly are often abandoned as the user grows impatient looking for the information they are looking for.
• SEO
  
  • With the growing importance of site speed in Google’s eyes, old-school “bloated” themes that come packed with a ton of site-speed-killing features that never get used just won’t cut it.
• Relavent content
  
  • Google wants to find specific content  that answers a search “question”
• Security
  
  • While there are over 200 ranking factors that Google uses to rank websites, they have publicly stated that security is one of the top ranking factors.

So plugins that enhance these areas are generally must haves for any website. There are secondary factors to consider when choosing plugins that are almost as important as what we have mentioned so far and they have been used in our selection of the 5 Must Have Plugins:

• Ease Of Use
  
  • Some plugins are just plain hard to figure out how to use! Modern “best” plugins should be intuitive out of the box and easy for even the most basic WordPress users to customize.
• Solid Customer Support
  
  • This is an absolute non-negotiable. In our experience, you almost always run into “weird theme issues.” There has to be a responsive support team in place to help.
• Compatibility
  
  • Beyond page builders, today’s best WordPress themes should be generally compatible with things like form builders, SEO plugins and other common tools you’ll want to use on your WordPress website.

While for some websites you may not need all of these plugins but for most of us these are the boot camp plugins that will get you well on your way to building a successful website.

So without further ado, the 10 Must Have Plugins: