Basics of setting up a WordPress website
Step 2 – Plugins
What makes your site functional is its plugins. On the customer facing side it’s things like social sharing, your e-commerce store, a directory, and in the back end it’s things like your site’s speed, security and back ups etc.
WordPress was originally developed as a blog but it’s used for far more today. You can achieve almost anything from your WordPress site. In its original state it has limited functionality but it’s easy to add more through plugins to get what you want.
A plugin is what you literally plug in to make your site act how you want it to.
From your WordPress dashboard click on Plugins to see all the plugins you have installed. Click on ‘add new’ to find and install new ones. Plugins all act differently once installed and activated, some will create a new option in the dashboard whilst others may be stored within another heading such as settings. You should learn how the plugin works and where to find it before you decide to install it. (And keep a note in your time machine document – see WordPress basics.)
BUT there’s A LOT of plugins to choose from, one thing to keep in mind is that there are factors beyond your control such as WordPress and plugin updates, and although they are (hopefully) thoroughly tested, these updates can create conflicts. For this reason, we would only recommend plugin developers with excellent track records and top quality support who can correct any problems quickly.
These are our pick of the plugins that every site should have. Note that those plugins labelled client included are premium plugins that we hold a license to use on our website clients. Those that are labelled (free version) are the free versions of plugins that anyone can download from their WordPress dashboard (see above), the free versions are perfectly adequate, and widely used but often require paid for upgrades for more functionality.
Essential WordPress Plugins
- Backups: Things can go wrong; updates can create conflicts so a regular back up is essential. Your site is made up of a database and files – we recommend backing up both. You should save your back ups off site too otherwise if you lose your site, you lose your back up. Instead, Dropbox or Google Drive are ideal and are free. Should things go wrong you can restore your site back to life. The plugins will walk you through the process, go for a scheduled daily back up.
Snapshot Pro (client included)
UPDRAFT (free version available from WordPress) - Security: In the first instance, you should activate an SSL certificate, this is free to do from your hosting control panel. Second, turn to a security plugin to lock your site down and protect it from harmful bots, spam and more.
Defender Pro (client included)
wordfence (free version) - Image Compression: Photos taken on a phone or digital camera in its original state has a great deal of detail, ideal for printing those images but for an image to sit on a webpage taking up a small 10cm space doesn’t need all that detail. Detail takes up room therefore that page will take an age to load so in the absence of Photoshop, these plugins can take away the headache of resizing your photos and make them more website friendly. Pro tip – if you do have Photoshop, it won’t hurt to resize them to be less than 900px wide and then ensure you save for web.
Smush Pro (client included)
Shortpixel (free version) - Site Performance & Caching – A plugin to speed up your site. A cache plugin will takes a snapshot of a page and remember it so it doesn’t need to re-load the images next time you visit that site, so it it loads quicker. Use this with a cookie notice (see below). Hummingbird is an all rounder plugin that will give you all sorts of impressive performance monitoring.
Hummingbird Pro (client included)
Wp Super Cache (free version) - Cookie Notice: A legal requirement. GDPR means that you have to tell your site visitors what cookies you’re using. Easiest way is a cookie notice pop up. Set up your policy page in your WordPress dashboard too.
Branda Pro (client included)
Cookie notice for gdpr (free version) - SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): Such a huge area! But it doesn’t have to be all that complicated to get the basics down. Use one of these plugins to cover the bases, and there’s wonderful tutorials over on Yoast too.
SmartCrawl Pro (client included)
Yoast SEO (free version) - Analytics: Tell you how your site is getting its traffic. Create a Google Analytics account and the Google search console, then connect to your chosen plugin.
Beehive Pro (client included)
Monster Insights (free version – Yoast’s analytics) - Email Opt In: a plugin that allows you to legally collect peoples email address we recommend using the following together – Hustle Pro (client included) is a complete marketing plugin.
Mailchimp (free version for up to 2000 contacts)
Optional WordPress plugins
- Form Builder: if you want a contact form you ideally need a form builder. Some themes have contact forms built in, but otherwise you need a plugin. Gravity forms is one of the market leaders but is not free. Ninja forms is free.
Forminator Pro (client included)
Ninja forms (free version) - eCommerce: If you want a shop on your website you need some sort of e-commerce. Woo Commerce is widely used worldwide and has lots of functionality, in our opinion there’s nothing to beat it. You can add paid for extensions too to make it even better.
WooCommerce (free & paid for) - Social Media: Social feeds on your site can slow your site down because it has to reload each time someone visits your site, for this reason we don’t use feeds on our site. It’s likely that your social media sent them to your site anyway and as you don’t want them to leave don’t send them away again! Sharing widgets for your blog posts are a great way to encourage your visitors to share your content, and whilst you may have a sharing widget in your theme, Hustle Pro can give you some wonderful additional functions.
Hustle Pro (client included) - Maintenance Mode: should something go wrong, you can just tap your maintenance mode plugin to take over. Will collect email addresses and show social media links whilst your site is down.
Branda Pro (client included)
WP Maintenance Mode (free version) - Akismet Anti-Spam – Spam protection
- Statcounter – Free to join & install and provides excellent traffic behaviour statistics
- GTmetrix for WordPress – To help develop a faster, more efficient website experience for your users.
- Yoast SEO Premium – The all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress.
