What is a WordPress plugin?
A WordPress plugin is a small program that we install on our website, to add some kind of functionality, which will clearly help improve and make the page look good.
If we want to add a contact form, a reservation system, an online store system or anything else that the project will need, to better interact with the user who is browsing our website, they are considered plugins.
There are free and paid plugins, with which you can complement a web project and make it more dynamic for the user or client.
Precisely, WordPress, being an open source content manager, allows all companies that make private plugins to make new plugins based on what each client needs on their website.
What are the most used plugins in WordPress
rank match
It is a OnePage SEO optimization plugin, it is complete because it contains functions that are not found in other SEO plugins and it is free.
It excels at Consolidating schema-structured data for up to 14 content types, bypassing other plugins, keyword analysis, rank monitoring, WordPress SEO audit tools, 404 error mechanisms, and more.
Access Press Social Share
It is a free WordPress plugin that allows anyone to share their website content on major social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
It is the right plugin to create good content to share on social networks and drastically expand your social reach, this also helps with organic traffic.
EWWW Image Optimizer
This plugin uses industry leading tools and is easy to use, with pixel perfect optimization. It offers the best compression/quality ratios with the potential of premium plugins for JPG, PNG and PDF files.
Protected by a high level of SSL encryption, it provides a secure connection and also provides a free backup that keeps the original image for thirty days.
wordfence
Constant updates to the Threat Defense Feed provide the best protection for your website and prevent hacking.
Provides a live traffic view with real-time visibility into traffic and hacking attempts, it is the most powerful WordPress security solution today.
What types of plugins exist (Highlights)
Visual editors or layout
Are theme and design plugins, in this sense the WordPress visual editor market offers a wide variety of options such as: Beaver Builder, Live Composer, Oxygen Builder Page Builder by SiteOrigin among others.
Backups and backup
Another WordPress plugin that you should install on your website is a backup plugin, especially if your hosting provider does not offer this feature.
As UpdraftPlus is one of them, but there are other options like : Backup Guard, XCloner, Backup & Staging, WP Time Capsule, Backup WD, Complete Central Backup.
Social networks
This other WordPress plugin you need for your website is an add-on that connects you to a social network, displays links to different social profiles, and allows you to share posts and pages with buttons.
With that in mind, the favorite social media plugin is scriptless social sharing, but there are other plugins that add social buttons to WordPress.
post editor
If you post content to a blog on a regular basis, you need a plugin to help you edit your posts. Here you have two options, use the traditional WordPress editor or the new editor for working with blocks, Gutenberg.
If you use the classic editor, here you will see some tools that will help you design a better publication, among those we have tinymce advanced and CPO shortcodes.
How many plugins can be installed on WordPress
Plugins are very useful and necessary for a website to have better features, but we must take into account that the more plugins are installed, the more problems our blog will have, because it could become slower and full of bugs.
We only have to implement those that are really necessary for the website and for this we have to know our page well. Therefore, in WordPress you can install all the plugins you want, however, this is not highly recommended.
It is important to note that plugins are a quick and convenient way to extend website functionality, but installing plugins is more time consuming and labor intensive as the server needs to process more code.
The most recommended first is; analyze whether you really need the features you want to install, always look for plugins that are compatible with the version of WordPress you have installed.
Download from a trusted website, look for something that gets good reviews, make sure they are updated frequently. Remove unnecessary plugins.
You don't have to worry about plugin updates that could compromise the security of your site. And most importantly, there is good support behind it, allowing developers to handle the various incidents that may occur to their users.
Undoubtedly, these plugins are very necessary for the proper functioning of a blog, which will help to better interact with our users and make it easier for them as well as for us with the tasks on a website.
It is valuable to know them and to know which ones would be useful to us, since each website is different and each one will have its own demands depending on the style of the blog.