The Best WP Plugins for your New Site

WordPress has changed things a lot in the world of Web design for small business and is becoming an increasingly commonplace platform for a site to be built on. This is down to the ease of creation, power and also the flexibility of the WordPress platform – in fact there are over 30,000 plug-ins for WordPress.

This sounds great and in a lot of ways it is, however it can lead to confusion. The paradox of choice is truly something that can cause problems for those trying to select the correct plug-ins to use on their site. So, to limit confusion, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favourites.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

A personal favourite – WP SEO by Yoast is a great tool that adds to the already good SEO functionality of the site. The plug-in allows you to add a raft of Meta data easily, specify which pages Google should rank and even helps with social media integration and sitemap creation. It’s easy to use, powerful and a great addition to any site’s arsenal.

Disqus Commenting

Disqus is a commenting system that replaces the original WordPress option. Unlike the quite limited WordPress option, Disqus makes commenting easier, faster and more interactive. It also facilitates community creation, allows indexing of comments in Google and even auto syncs so your comments are backed up – great for a new WordPress web design.

JetPack

Originally only available if you hosted your site on WordPress, this nice clean plug-in is feature rich and shows a whole host of stats. From social networking, to contact forms, to site activity info – it collates a variety of information into one place, making keeping on top of your site a lot easier.

Floating Share Bars

There are a number of great floating share bars out there at this moment in time, though Digg Digg is possibly our favourite. Floating share bars run up and down the side of the page or blog in a neat and attractive manner – essentially floating around the page. The fact they are visible at all times on a page, no matter how long it is, means people are far more likely to click it. It’s certainly one to implement and one we’d recommend at bibblestudio.co.uk if you are hoping to create any sort of social following.

Akismet

There’s social media and then there’s spam and Akismet is there to prevent the former. It’s a powerful, free tool that is easy to add and just side lines spam, preventing it taking up space on your site and making your loved place look a bit scammy.

W3 Total Cache

Caching is often a necessity for sites with plenty of images as it helps speed up these memory hungry additions. W3 Total Cache is a great addition that adds all the caching features you require and speeds up your site – something that’s very important with mobile versions of a site.

404 Redirected

Hitting a 404 is a pain and a broken link can cause all sorts of SEO and usability issues. So, adding this plug-in will help as it automatically redirects anyone who falls on the dead page to an apt live one. This helps sites pass link juice between pages and means there are no dead ends.

These WordPress plug-ins are must have additions for a variety of websites and could go a long way to making using and caring for your site a lot easier.