Top 7 WordPress Plugins We Must Use in 2024

A WordPress Plugin is software that acts as an extension to the popular blogging platform, WordPress. A lot of people have been using this easy-to-use software to create their own website without going through hectic coding and then wasting time learning how to manage a server.

The community behind WordPress has provided a ton of plugin options ranging from SEO optimization plugins, backup utilities, social media integration, etc., to help us make our site more productive. But it’s up to us not to get overwhelmed by too many choices and pick up the one which best suits our needs.

In this blog post, EZ Rankings, one of the best WordPress development company going to list out the seven most important types of plug-in we should be using on our site right now:

• MonsterInsights
• WP Super Cache
• WP Smush
• Akismet
• Social Media Auto Publish
• MemberPress
• Sucuri

1. MonsterInsights:

This is an essential plugin for every WordPress site that helps in bringing more traffic and analyzing the best-performing content by tracking user behavior. The insights tool has Google Analytics integration, which can help you to gain analytical data on how website visitors are engaging with your content.

This plugin gets updated frequently to add new features such as enhanced eCommerce support and ad network tools. If you need to check Google Analytics frequently then try MonsterInsights.

2. WP Super Cache:

This plugin adds a small but extremely important file called “super cache” to the website, which is responsible for speeding up your WordPress site significantly by turning it into static HTML. In simple words, this plugin allows you to serve cached pages on your web server to reduce the loading time of any new page being loaded from your site. It also does not require any special configurations and can be simply activated with one click of a button. 

As website speed is an important ranking factor in Google search engine algorithms, this plugin is an important one to have, especially because WordPress scores poorly when it comes to page loading times.

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3. WP Smush:

In simple words, WP Smush compresses large images before uploading them to your website to reduce their size without losing any quality. This plugin can be useful if you are using high-resolution or large images on your site because a slow-loading site annoys readers and they stop engaging with it. It not only helps in speeding up the load time but also helps reduce bandwidth consumption which saves money for you as a blogger. 

There are a lot of other similar plugins available in the market but according to me, WP Smush is by far the best image compression option for WordPress.

4. Akismet:

Spam is a big problem in this world of blogging. There are thousands of spammers out there who create fake accounts on popular sites and leave spam comments that annoy the site owners and the readers alike. Akismet is an excellent plugin that can help you detect spam quickly by analyzing its contents against a database of over 3 million unique phrases. The plugin keeps adding new phrase detectors to its database which makes it even better at detecting spammy content. 

At one point, it used to be available for free but now requires a paid subscription after passing through 5,000 submitted comments or more per month which ensures every blogger gets only high-quality feedback from their visitors.

5. Social Media Auto Publish:

As we know that publishing content to our blogs regularly is somewhat essential for growing our online presence. But sometimes, no matter how hard we try, it’s difficult for us to publish content on a regular basis. And in some cases, it is not possible for us to make constant updates due to time constraints or other reasons.

This plugin automatically publishes any new post you create with it on your WordPress site at the specific time intervals specified by you without requiring any manual intervention from your side. 

6. MemberPress:

For any blogger who has a niche website and plans to monetize it, this plugin is a must-have. It’s an excellent membership management plugin that lets you create paid “members only” content on your website in minutes. It gives complete control over the visibility of posts or pages which can be made visible either publicly or for members only with pricing options in dollars or Bitcoins. 

Aside from giving you complete control over post contents, its ‘Knowledge Base’ feature allows you to create detailed documentation for your clients where they can even search using keywords like FAQs. 

7. Sucuri:

This plugin offers complete protection against blacklisting and malware attacks on your WordPress website which is a fairly common threat these days. Its firewall scans the full content of your posts and pages before you publish them to check if any malware or spammy links are present in it, just like how many antivirus software works today. It also offers daily server-level backups to keep your site safe from attacks and restores everything in case anything goes wrong.

How many plugins do I need to install?

A common question we usually get in the comments section is: “I am new to WordPress and I don’t know how many plugins I actually need. How many plugins do you suggest?”

Well, it’s not an easy question to answer because there isn’t any fixed number of plugins that can be termed as sufficient for a WordPress site. As every site has different needs, the number of required plug-ins would vary for each one of them. But what we can certainly say is, more plugins mean they might be interfering with each other and hence slowing down your website rather than speeding it up. Thus, it’s important to install only those plugins which are vital for your blog and get rid of any redundant ones.

Wrapping up!

Get started with these seven WordPress plugins that will help you get more out of your website and drive more productivity into it. Ensure you keep all the plugins updated so that they can run seamlessly and offer you the best performance.