WordPress is a flexible, easy to set-up Web publishing platform. WordPress in itself already has awesome features for a content management system and as a website framework, straight out of the box. A newbie WordPress user can easily get confused about which plugin to use on their site. In this article, I have compiled a list of must have free WordPress plugins that WordPress users might find a use for.
These are WordPress plugins that solve real problems and do so in a way that won’t damage your website. If you are new to WordPress, and especially if you are building your first site, these are the plugins you don’t want to miss on your site. You may be interested in the following posts: Free WordPress Themes for Directory Listing, Premium SEO Ready WordPress Themes and WordPress Dashboard Free Plugins.
1. ShareThis – Share Buttons and Social Analytics
You may have been selected to get a free ShareThis Multi Post widget upgrade. This subtle change will give your social tools a more modern look and improved user interaction. And don’t worry, the widget still functions the same way so your users can choose from 120 social channels to share your content with their friends and family.
2. Force Strong Passwords
The user profile editor includes a JavaScript-powered password strength indicator. However, there is nothing currently built into WordPress core to prevent users from entering weak passwords. Users changing their password to something weak is one of the most vulnerable aspects of a WordPress installation.
Yoast SEO
WordPress out of the box is already technically quite a good platform for SEO. While this Yoast SEO plugin goes the extra mile to take care of all the technical optimization, more on that below, it first and foremost helps you write better content. Yoast SEO forces you to choose a focus keyword when you’re writing your articles, and then makes sure you use that focus keyword everywhere.
3. BuddyPress
BuddyPress is focused on ease of integration, ease of use, and extensibility. It is deliberately powerful yet unbelievably simple social network software, built by contributors to WordPress. Enable registered members to create profiles, have private conversations, make connections, create & interact in groups, and much more.
4. All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack is a WordPress SEO plugin to automatically optimize your WordPress blog for Search Engines such as Google. Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality. Automatically optimizes your titles for Google and other search engines. Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs.
5. BruteProtect
BruteProtect is no longer actively supported. All new development is now being done on the Protect feature in Jetpack.
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Google Analytics Dashboard
This Google Analytics for WordPress plugin enables you to track your site using the latest Google Analytics tracking code and allows you to view key Google Analytics reports in your WordPress install. The Google Analytics tracking code is fully customizable through options and hooks, allowing advanced data collection using custom dimensions and events.
