With the vast majority of websites on the internet using WordPress as the platform to run the website from, it goes without saying that it is important that the website has the right elements, or plugins, to suit the functionality that the website needs and the web owner wants. Fortunately for us, the WordPress plugin market place is completely open source, meaning there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of plugins to choose from, to get certain types of functionality. This is where the problem occurs – choosing the right plugin can be a tricky task. You won’t want to choose every plugin either as this has the impact of potentially slowing your whole website down. With this, here are 5 types of types of plugins that are ‘must-have’ requirements for any WordPress website, from running a few WordPress websites for several years.

Two Factor Authentication Login

If you start to generate some serious traffic (100k+ a month), you will start to notice more and more people, and bots, trying to hack into your website. The typical way this is attempted is through, what is known as, brute force. This is achieved by using a bot to try every possible password combination, along with username, until the bot finds the right username and password. It takes time. However, hackers are doing this to hundreds of thousands of websites 24/7 – the probability of getting one right increases due to this.

To put your mind at ease, this can all be stopped by using a plugin that requires two factor authentication (mobile phone preferably). That way, even if the hacker finds out your username and password, they still won’t be able to login unless they have access to your phone.

Removing Spam Comments

Managing the comments section of a website is tough, especially due to the spam comments that are posted on your website. This makes it an absolute must to have a spam filter so you will only ever interact with real comments when browsing the comments section – it will save you an infinite amount of time doing this!

Cache Plugin

The loading speed of your website is of paramount importance. The longer a website loads, the likelier the web user is to click off it and go to the next alternative. A cache plugin stores your unchanged web pages in small bite-size chunks that take a significantly reduced amount of time to load.

Social Media Automotive Integration

When you are posting continually on your website, it can sometimes be quicker to create the content rather than to publish it manually on all your social media channels! This is why it is a great idea to use plugins that automatically post out to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. so that you do not have to do it yourself.

Server Load

There are a few plugins out there which will show you how much load there is on your server. This can help you maintain your website and prevent problems from occurring, such as corruption or the load time of your website. Some plugins will take up a lot of load space whilst others are not – it can be very beneficial to understand what uses up the majority of your servers.