In this article we are going to take a look at a number of must have plugins. These plugins adds functions that most people use and that turns WordPress into an even better platform for everyone who wants to build a website. All plugins that we list on this website are free to download and can be downloaded from within the admin dashboard.
Custom permalinks
Custom permalinks is a very good plugin that gives you complete control over your site structure. You are free to set whichever URL you want for for your pages. You can set the URL for each page individually and do not need to use the default URL structure that WordPress use. WordPress have a good URL system right out of the box but this plugin takes it to another level and I think every one should install this plugin.
Contact form 7
Contact form 7 is a plugin that makes it very easy to create a contact us page. You can also use it to create a number of other forms. Contact form 7 is light weight and does not contain any functions that you do not need.
YOAST Seo
Yoast seo is a plugin that help you create content that is more suitable for the search engines and that is more likely to rank higher. It optimizes WordPress and tells you what you can change in your blog posts and pages to increase the chance that your blog is going to rank highly in google and other search engines. Yoast makes it easy to create highly optimized blog posts.
Disable Emojis
Disable Emojis by Ryan Hellyer is a great plugin that removes Emojis support from WordPress. This will remove a lot of unnecessary code from your WordPress blog. Code that is added to all pages of the blog if you do not disable it. Most people do not need Emoji support but if you are one of the few who wants to use emojis on your website then you should not install this plugin.
Asset Queue manager
Asset queue manager is a plugin that gives you complete control over which files that are called in the WordPress header. This makes it easy to optimize your theme and remove an unnecessary files. It also makes it a lot easier to combine your CSS file into one new file.
Be careful when you use this plugin because it is very easy to break your website. Do not dequeue any file that you do not know what it does.
Simple 301 redirects
Simple 301 redirects is a plugin that makes it very easy to 301 redirect any URL to another. This is very useful when you decide to move or remove a page. By using a 301 redirect you know that your visitors will find your files even if you moved them.
WP robots txt
WordPress robots txt is a plugin that allows you to edit the robots file from within the WordPress dashboard. This make it a lot easier to block spam bots and other undesired bots from visiting your website.
Akismet
This plugin is installed be default. It is a very good way to reduce the amount of spam comments that are posted to the blog. I recommend that you register to get an API key (it is free) and activate the program as soon as you started working on your blog.
WP Super cache
WP super cache is a great plugin that helps make your website faster and reduce the server load. It does this by caching the WordPress pages so that they do not have to be rebuilt every time a user wants to see them. You can decide how long it keeps its cache before it generates a new one. Wp super cache also makes it very easy to use CDN to serve your images.
WP super cache is one of the absolutely best caching plugins for WordPress. Another good plugin is W3 Total Cache but I find that to be harder to use and configure than what WP Super cache is. I therefore recommend super cache to all beginners.