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Creating a WordPress blog can be time consuming.
When it comes to choosing the best plugins.Going to WordPress site you will come across large number of plugins. If you are novice it will be really hard to find the best option- requiring lots of time reading reviews, installing the plugin and testing it out and etc.
That is why I decided to help you out with this process. We will first discuss the types of plugins necessary for a proper WordPress site management. Then we will move to some of the most popular plugins, which have proved record of success – reviews, downloads and overall performance.
Security
Let’s start with the most important feature of any site- security. This is one of the trickiest parts, since it requires giving high level access of your site to a third-party company. And this cannot be trusted to a newly-developed company with not much of expertise. That’s why All in One WP Security and Firewall plugin is one of the most optimal solution here.
Having already a few years of history, offering some superior WordPress plugins, the company is very reliable based on customers feedbacks. The list of plugin features is really long to mention, but initially it covers all aspects of security and firewall capabilities, such as user account, user login, user registration, database, file system security, security scanner and etc.
Caching
If you are using WordPress top hosts, the caching is already taken care of, but with most of the hostings this is not the case. Caching issue can get serious affecting the website speed. The internal optimization will help you to keep your site visitors happy. The main trouble with caching plugins is that those can have the opposite effect if mismanaged.
The configurations and settings of caching plugins are important especially for the cases when you use multiple plugins. WP Rocket is really user-friendly in that sense. There is not much to set up and you can easily manage the cached options without causing incompatibility issues with other plugins. If you are looking for a more sophisticated solution, you might check out the WP3 Caching, but most likely you should first read their user guides. Based on the customer feedbacks the plugin is very hard to set up.
Slider
Except of the textual content, any site requires multimedia and proper presentation of it. This can be done using either gallery or slider plugins. We will discuss the slider plugins for now. Some of the slider plugins can make the website load slower instead of displaying interactive content. The slider plugin should be chosen more thoroughly.
If you want to have fancy slider effects and easy back end management then Slider WD plugin is there for you. The slider comes in pro and free versions. And it is worth paying for – since it allows having multiple type of layers (text, video, image and social media), as well as parallax and carousel effects. The settings section is really detailed. In addition you can use drag and drop to move the slides, layers and define the timing for the slide change.
Page Builder
Page builders and visual composers are easy tools for handling complex content. Page builders allow creating desired consequence of information. Here the key point to consider is the compatibility with the theme. If you use standard WordPress themes or a theme which fulfills the WordPress standards, then you will find the Page Builder plugin rather attractive.
The plugin uses WordPress core functionality and helps to handle multiple shortcodes and textual content for any page. If you plan to go with custom themes, you might check out the compatibility first.
Social Sharing
Making the sites integrated with social media is essential today. And this cannot work without social sharing plugins. There are two options here- either using separate plugins with each social media or using a bundle, which contains the entire set of commonly used social sharing buttons. Let’s start with the social media bundle plugins. Here the most popular and most-spoken plugin is obviously Jetpack. The plugin has its fans and haters due to the compatibility issues and some complicated user interface. But still the plugin handles all social media and makes it efficient.
Now let’s move to Facebook and Google Plus integration. The best Facebook integration plugin for WordPress is obviously Ultimate Facebook plugin. It offers commenting, sharing, liking and other Facebook-related functions. It’s simple in use and very user-friendly. The Google Plus plugin will allow adding Google Plus buttons (comes in three sizes) in a custom location within your post or page.Not all plugins have it since Google doesn’t allow customization of the Google Plus button, whereas this plugin has it in three sizes.
There are also some other types of plugins, which can also be useful for your WordPress sites- calendar, catalog, e-commerce, form maker, video player and etc.
