Looking for the Best WordPress Plugins? WordPress is one of the most widely used Content Management Systems (CMS) on the web. As per recent statistics, it is used in over 60 million websites; including more than a quarter of top 10 million sites. While the CMS has made it incredibly easy for everyone to create and manage websites, it doesn’t include built-in features to deliver a truly exceptional user experience. However, it is certainly possible to enhance the speed, usability, reliability and security of a WordPress website by using some cutting-edge plugins. This article will list the seven best plugins that are currently available to optimize your WordPress website:
1) WP-Optimize
Are you aware that WordPress creates a separate entry in its database for every update done to a post or a page? This process not only consumes valuable space, it can also slow down the site significantly over a period of time. WP-Optimize is an optimization and database cleanup plugin that takes care of this issue. It frees up database space by removing stale post/page revisions, draft posts, unapproved/spam/deleted comments, trackbacks / pingbacks as well as trash posts thereby improving the overall speed of the website. The plugin also takes care of database table overhead and shrinks wasted memory space plus it can also be configured to run in the background after a fixed interval.
2) W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is a performance optimization framework designed to improve the overall speed and user experience of a WordPress website. It not only improves a site’s loading time by caching it’s pages, files and images on the server, it can even improve conversion rates as well as the overall search engine ranking of the website. The plugin can deliver up to 10x faster speeds when configured correctly plus it can also be set up to work with the Content Delivery Network(CDN) available with WordPress Media Library. This is one of the best WordPress plugins to improve your websites performance with automated caching.
Download W3 Total Cache plugin
3) Word Fence
Word Fence is the most popular WordPress security plugin that protects websites from all types of hacking and malware threats. The plugins includes enterprise-class security features such as a built-in WordPress firewall, blocking of malicious attackers, networks, bots, scrapers and robots; two-factor authentication, enforcement of strong passwords, protection against brute-force attacks, automatic scanning for unknown Trojans, malware, back-doors, and other security threats as well as real time monitoring of traffic.
4) P3 Profiler
Most WordPress users do not think twice before installing plugins on their sites and you may be surprised what a difference plugins can make when trying to optimize your website’s speed. However, some plugins can consume a lot of resources and impact the overall speed and performance of the website.P3 Profiler is a useful plugin which helps the webmasters identify the plugins that are consuming the maximum amount of resources. The plugin generates performance reports that show memory and query time consumed by each and every plugin allowing webmasters to remove or replace the offending plugins.
5) Server IP & Memory Usage Display
This nifty plugin shows current memory usage and memory limits in the admin area of a WordPress installation. This is especially useful for heavy traffic sites that consume a lot of the resources. The plugin also displays visual indicators (light red if the memory usage is above 75%, red if it goes above 90%) that can help webmasters to take remedial actions immediately.
Download Server IP & Memory Usage Display plugin
6) WP Smush.it
Most modern websites display a large number of high-resolution images, infographics and videos. While these features make a website more visually appealing, they can significantly impact the speed, availability and performance of the site. WP Smush.it is an incredibly powerful WordPress plugin that resizes and optimize images without compromising on quality. The plugin first scans all the uploaded images and then resizes them while getting rid of the unnecessary bulk. This results in faster image render times and a much better user experience.
7) Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO) is the most powerful SEO plugins currently available for WordPress. The plugin not only analyses keywords, titles, description and content of all the posts and pages of a WordPress website; it even provides real-time feedback on how to improve the overall SEO for the website. An improved SEO score can make a world of difference for website visibility, traffic and conversions so the plugin is highly recommended for all the WordPress site owners.
There you have it, the 7 Best WordPress plugins you can add to your site to help improve the overall performance and functionality. These plugins are used by millions of WordPress users and receive frequent updates. If we’ve missed any plugins please let us know in the comments.
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