When you install WordPress and choose a theme, it can’t do absolutely everything nor should it. Having the ability to pick and choose only the functionality that you need is essential to keeping the WordPress website lightweight and easy to use. There are 50,000+ WordPress plugins that do different things. In this blog, we have listed essential plugins to build and design a fully-functional website.
Plugins in WordPress
Plugins are add-on software that are installed in WordPress to achieve a specific function or set of features that the WordPress theme originally don’t have. Plugins allow you to use WordPress to its full and most customized potential. The plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrated within WordPress website. Plugins are an integral part of the WordPress ecosystem and they are essential for building great websites using WordPress.
Finding and installing WordPress Plugins
One can find free as well as paid premium WordPress plugins by visiting WordPress.org plugin directory or you can also find them directly from your WordPress admin area. WordPress will search the plugin directory and display the available plugins in a list. You need to review the results, and click on the install now button next to the plugin you want to install.
Selecting WordPress Plugins
Its really important not to just download and install every plugin that seems useful. Don’t install plugins from the sources you don’t trust. For example, you’re adding the plugin to your website, which can leave all kinds of doors open for abuse. There are malicious plugins out there that you definitely want to stay away from. Plugins that are available through the WordPress back end and on wordpress.org can generally be trusted. But trustworthiness isn’t the only issue. Quality is important as well. Make sure to install a plugin that does exactly what you want it to do and does it well. Performance is another factor to be considered. But just like your phone slows down when you install too many apps, plugins can also slow down your website. In short, install limited number of plugins, that fit your needs and do what you need them to do. And this requires some research and potentially some tough choices.
Listed below are some of the essential plugins required to help you kick-start your website.
Essential Plugins to build a WordPress website
Elementor Website Builder
Elementor Website Builder is a visual WordPress website builder that replaces the basic WordPress editor with a live frontend editor, so you can create complex layouts visually, and design your website live, without having to switch between the editor and preview mode. With Elementor, you can create beautiful and functional webpage designs without needing to use code or CSS and without relying on developers for help. The user interface is beginner-friendly, so you can be up and ready to design within minutes. With just the free version of Elementor, you’ll already get access to the visual, drag-and drop editor and a wide selection of widgets and style options that can be used to design content.
Elementor Header & Footer Builder
Elementor Header and Footer Builder is a simple yet powerful WordPress plugin that allows you to create a layout with Elementor and set it as header, footer, and block (anywhere on the website). This plugin gives the flexibility to design beautiful sections using which you can create creative and out-of-the-box header and footer designs. Apart from the header and footer, you can design custom templates with Elementor and set them at any place on the website with a shortcode. Along with the main footer, the plugin gives the additional area above the footer where you can append your custom template. This gives flexibility in footer design. The plugin also offers inbuilt widgets that help to create header/ footer layouts. Elementor Header and Footer Builder plugin works with all WordPress themes.
Essential Addons for Elementor
Essential Addons offers 80+ creative easy-to-use elements and extensions to customize your website in every possible way. It literally translates to, achieving nearly any design with your imagination. With this plugin you can enable and disable individual elements to make your page loading faster and smoother. One can also deactivate unnecessary widgets to keep the site light. Pre-designed widgets like Post Grid, filterable gallery, sticky video, dual colour heading, flip box, and many more help you enhance your page design.
Contact Form by WPForms
WPForms is a drag & drop WordPress form builder that’s easiest to use. By using this form builder plugin, one can easily add custom form fields, rearrange them, and basically create a complete contact form. WPForms allows you to create beautiful contact form, feedback form, subscription form, payment form and other types of forms for your site in minutes. WPForms is a 100% mobile responsive contact form solution, so contact forms will always look great on all devices (mobile, tablet, laptop, and desktop). WPForms also comes with pre-built form templates that you can add, remove, or re-arrange fields as necessary to help you save time.
Header, Footer and Post Injections
Header, Footer, and Post Injections plugin let you insert HTML code to the header and footer sections of each webpage and before and after the content of posts. Its main purpose is to add various scripts to track the access to the webpage (such as Google Tag Manager/ Google Analytics code, Facebook Pixel, Google Search Console, etc.). This plugin lets you integrate different external services without installing multiple plugins.
WPvivid Backup Plugin
A website stores a large amount of data, be it critical data required for website performance or sensitive customer data. It is hence, imperative to safeguard these large volumes of data as critical data loss can kill your website. There are a lot of things one can do to keep your website safe. However, the single most important step is to perform website backups. Having a recent backup of your site can help you in many situations such as your website getting hacked, website crashing, hosting server gets infected by virus or malware, etc.
WPvivid Backup plugin lets you backup your site on schedules. WPVivid Backup Plugin has been tested by users to migrate well on websites built with Elementor, Page Builder by SiteOrigin, WordPress Page Builder and much more. Using this plugin, you can choose to back up the entire site, all files or database only.
