The look & feel of a website is not the only thing your visitors care about. You have to ensure a few fundamental things to be able to make a high-tech website. Security, flexibility & performance are the most important parts of any successful website & blog. Here we listed all the must have WordPress plugins. And we explained their settings & configurations in detail.
All the plugins are FREE & reliable. Let’s get started.
Really Simple SSL
This plugin ensures that your website is loading over HTTPS. And makes the connection secure between server & browser.
Some people have misunderstanding about this plugin. They thought “Really Simple SSL” plugin will install the SSL on their website. But it’s not the case.
You have to get your SSL certificate from your hosting company. And this plugin will ensure that your entire website is loading over SSL.
For example- if anyone goes to your website with “HTTP“, this plugin will redirect them to “HTTPS“.
More clearly, http://yoursite.com will be redirected to https://yoursite.com. And it’s applicable for any URL of your site.
Also all other static files will load over SSL.
Settings & Configuration for Really Simple SSL
Once you activate the plugin, it will redirect you to activate the SSL. Just click the button “Go ahead, activate SSL!”.
You will find some configuration options in the next window. Click the link “Enable” to enable 301 redirects.
After clicking the “Enable” link, just switch on the “Enable 301 .htaccess redirect” and hit save.
That’s all for this plugin settings. And just dismiss any other alerts.
This is the plugin you should install on your website just after installing WordPress.
Site Kit by Google
It’s an official plugin by Google and very easy to setup & configure. All you have to do is click next & next.
You do need to have a Gmail Account to be able to use this plugin.
The main purpose of using “Site Kit” is to connect your Analytics & Search Console. So you will be able to monitor your website traffics and check the site performance.
You can see your website reports within your WordPress Dashboard.
Using this plugin, you can also connect your Google AdSense account.
Google offers to add their four different services using this plugin.
It’s another alternative is Monster Insights.
Yoast SEO
It does not help your website to rank higher only by installing this plugin. Instead it gives you opportunity to optimize your website, so your website can rank higher with your effort.
To clarify, it makes the optimization process much easier.
For example, Yoast creates a sitemap so you don’t have to create it manually. But you do have to submit the sitemap on various webmasters (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc).
We can give you a lot more example, but I think it makes sense.
Settings for Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO settings are a bit long. See their video instructions for the settings & configuration.
Make sure you have not missed the RSS settings. If someone steals your content, then you will rank for it.
RSS feed settings
%%BLOGLINK%%
%%POSTLINK%%
%%AUTHORLINK%%
Prevent the scrapers ranking with your content.
Rank Math & All in One SEO plugins can be the alternatives of Yoast. Rank Math is a new plugin released in 2020, and we are still exploring this plugin on our multiple websites. And the second alternative is one of the oldest & popular plugin. You can also use it as well.
Antispam Bee
This one prevents spammers & spam comments. It does not require any special settings but you can do if you like. Most of the heavy lifting already has been done for you. It’s a plug & play.
Comment Link Remove
It removes the “Website Field” and any link from the comment body. After activating this plugin, go to its settings and enable two options:
- Remove WEBSITE Field from Comment Form
- Disable turning URLs into hyper-links in comments
And save your changes.
For more detail explanations, screenshots & steps, see another post.
Smush
It compresses your images & enables lazy load. It helps your website to load faster.
Generally, a web page loads its all images at the same time. But lazy load brings images when it touches the viewport. That is why it has direct impact reducing page load time.
Settings for Smush
After activating, you will find a new option called “Smush” on your WordPress Dashboard. After clicking on the option, a prompt will open and you can complete the setup only by clicking next & next.
If you have previously uploaded images on your website, you will also find an option to compress them. With one click it compresses 50 images.
WP Super Cache
The name of this plugin is pretty self-explanatory. It has been created by the same company that created WordPress. So quality is assured.
There are lots of alternatives but we recommended this plugin because of its simple setup process.
Most of the caching plugin setup process is complicated.
But WP Super Cache has very less complexity in their settings and it works good.
It’s beginner friendly caching plugin.
Settings for WP Super Cache
Just after activating the plugin, you will get a warning. Just click on “Dismiss“.
And navigate to Settings => WP Super Cache.
Turn on “Caching On” and “Update Status“.
Next, go to the “Advanced” tab and turn on all the “Recommended” options, and “Update Status” again.
That’s it!
