There is no real reason to start installing and using a lot of plugins on a fresh install of WordPress. Some plugins can cause more problems with site speed than you'd like but there are some which are my 'go to' plugins when I'm setting up a new WordPress site. I don't install the full list to a new site but they're the plugins which I pick from and of course which you can as well if they fit the needs and requirements of your new WordPress website.
Akismet
The tried and tested spam catcher. I've been using Akismet for many many years and on my personal website alone it has stopped over 170'000 spam comments. Akismet owned and ran by the guys at Automattic (the guys behind WordPress) is the one plugin which comes with your new WordPress.org install and I'd advise to use Akismet from the start to avoid comment spam overall.
WordPress SEO
WordPress SEO is my personal favourite SEO plugin and I've used many including the much acclaimed All in One SEO plugin which I have used up until recently. WordPress SEO's features deserve their own post as they're quite extensive. The WordPress SEO plug-in allows you to see how search engine friendly your content is, before you post it. You just input your focus keywords to see the amount of times you have it within your titles, description, url and content and the plug-in works out whether it is good enough for the Yoast SEO rating. You can literally make your content more SEO friendly as you write it.
Launchpad
Our very own Launchpad landing page plugin. Launchpad has been downloaded many thousands of times and increasing in frequency.
Launchpad enables you to set a landing page for your site whilst you're creating it behind the scenes. The best thing about Launchpad is its design and functionality. Launchpad is mobile friendly and includes auto-launch functionality as well as three themes and being completely social from the start.
WordFence
Helping to secure your WordPress website, WordFence scans your site for viruses, malware, trojans, malicious links, protects your site against scrapers, aggressive robots, fake Googlebots and protects against brute force attacks and much more.
Not only that but WordFence can also repair infected core, theme and plugin files. It will show you what has changed in your infected files. The plugin constantly scans your posts, pages, comments and plugins for malware URLs. It will show you all your traffic in real-time giving you situational awareness to help your security decision making. It can separate human and crawler traffic intelligently.
Best of all, Wordfence uses a cluster of cloud based servers in our Seattle data centre to do the heavy lifting, leaving your sites CPU, memory, disk and network free to serve your valuable customers.
W3 Total Cache
You will always want your WordPress site to run faster and smoother. As Google includes speed as part of its algorithm as well as user research showing that loading times greatly affect visitors on your website. W3 Total Cache improves the performance of your website by caching everything from databases to pages. In doing this it allows the server to go more quickly through your sites content which loads them faster in your and your visitors internet browser. This plugin is used by some of the biggest WordPress sites on the internet.
Disqus Comment System
We know that WordPress comes with its own commenting system which does the job very well. The Disqus Comment System enables you to turn it into a new way to engage your visitors. Disqus works in real time so it's perfect for breaking news, hot discussion, live events and video content.
It enables your readers to find other interesting conversations that are happening on your website. With the ability to share any comment or discussion thread to favourite social networks it directs new referral traffic directly back to your site.
Disqus is a nice to have if you want it. We use Disqus here at Obox and you can see what it looks like by scrolling down to the bottom of this post.
Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is an industry trusted WordPress plugin. It gives you the ability to build and publish your WordPress forms in minutes. Quickly and easily build out your forms with a visual form editor. You can create multi-page forms, order forms and more and make full use of their conditional fields. Gravity Forms is a 'premium' paid for plugin and is another nice to have if you feel like you need or want to use it.
Google Analytics for WordPress
Another WordPress plugin by Yoast, Google Analytics for WordPress allows you to track your blog easily with lots of metadata.
Yoast has made sure to provide a simple installation through integration with the Google Analytics API using the fastest way and most reliable tracking code which Google Analytics offers.
The plugin offers numerous tracking features including site speed tracking, outbound link and download tracking with configurable options how you see fit. One of the larger features is the usage of custom variables to track meta data on pages. It gives the support for the following variables;
- Author
- Single Category and / or multiple categories
- Post type (especially useful if you use custom post types)
- Logged in users
- Publication Year
- Tags
With a whole host of other features, this plugin is definitely one to take a look at and possibly install on your WordPress site.
Broken Link Checker
The Broken Link Checker plug-in is quite something. I would advise that you get it for your blog right now. The plug-in checks all of your posts which you have created and analyses them for broken links including missing images. Sounds obvious doesn't it? The plugin is often missed as people dont realise something so obvious is available to download and install.
To recap
You don't have to install a whole host of plugins for every fresh install of WordPress. You just need those that are going to do the job that you need them to do (apart from Akismet, of course). The list above is collated from sites I've created over the past 5 years and ones I believe can be of service to you. Remember if you're installing new plugins, always keep a backup of your site just incase, crazy things to happen and we wouldn't want them to happen to you.
Can you think of anymore which should be added to the list? Let me know in the comments.
