10 Essential WordPress Plugins for 2018

Creating Your First Website Series

WP Super Cache - Essential WordPress Plugins!

WP-Super-Cache

WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates HTML files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

All in One SEO Pack

WordPress SEO

Unknown, please advise

The All in One SEO Pack optimises your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimisation) including automatically optimising your titles for search engines, generate META tags automatically and it avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs.

Google Sitemap Generator

The Google Sitemap Generator is another Essential WordPress plugins which generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

More information what XML-Sitemaps are and how they can help you to get indexed by the major search engines can be found at Sitemaps.org and the searchenginewatch blog.

Breadcrumb NavXT

WordPress Breadcrumbs

This plugin generates breadcrumb navigation bars for your WordPress blog. These breadcrumbs are highly customizable to suit the needs of just about any blog. The Administrative interface makes setting options easy, while a direct class access is available for theme developers and more adventurous users.

Add to Any

WordPress Add to Any

Helps readers share, save, and bookmark your posts and pages using any service, such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, and all the rest. The button comes with Add to Any's customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor's browsing history.

SEO Slugs

The SEO Slugs WordPress plugin removes common words like 'a', 'the', 'in' from post slugs it more search engine friendly.

The slug is generated on saving a post (so you get a chance to look at it before publishing, and change it), or on publish. It won't overwrite an existing slug. You can force a new slug generation by deleting the existing one.

Subscribe to Comments

This subscribe to comments plugin will allow your readers to get email notifications when comments are left on a post after their own. The install is very simple and does not modify any WP core code. As well, it's future-proofed to work, as is, with the next version of WordPress without your needing to upgrade the plugin.

The Related Posts Plugin will generate a list of related posts by comparing post tags, and display a list in your theme using a widget or embedded code. Related posts help your readers find similar content and improve deep linking into your website.

Page Navigation

This plugin adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog in the form of a numbered linked list as well as first/last/prev/next links. If your theme does not support page navigation this essential WordPress plugins will allow you to add navigation.

Feedburner FeedSmith

The FeedSmith plugin is a reliable way to track your entire feed-reading audience and can even result in that elusive "bump in subscribers" effect when you first activate it. The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.

Tutorial Series

This post is part of the series Creating Your First Website. Use the links below to advance to the next tutorial in the couse, or go back and see the previous in the tutorial series.