WordPress is everywhere even if you can’t see it. I always joke saying that WordPress is for the online industry exactly what the iPod was for the music industry. It revolutionised the way we build a website, the way we promote our businesses and the way we interact with our readers. Its simplicity and modularity forced the web development community to change its vision and start creating now only html templates but also WordPress themes. Also, web developers are not focused on creating plugins for this platform which are now available for million of users from around the world. We can say that WordPress created a new type of standard because now if you develop something like a wordpress plugin for your website, you can basically use it on every other wordpress website.

WordPress can be customised without almost any programming knowledge; for example you can create an e-commerce website in under 30 minutes and with only $40 but this doesn’t mean that everything is honey and milk. There are some limitations that you will probably stumble upon or there are some features that you need on your website. In these cases, the best approach is searching for plugins because there is a high probability that someone already made it.

In this article you can see a collection of 20 extremely useful wordpress plugins that any website owner must know about.

404 to Start

Send 404 page not found error directly to start page (or any other page/site) to overcome problems with search engines. With optional email alert.

Google Publisher Plugin

The official Google plugin for publishers, written by Google. Supported products include AdSense and Webmaster Tools. The Google Publisher Plugin enables you to easily use Google’s products – including AdSense and Webmaster Tools – with your WordPress site. Adding AdSense ads usually requires you to generate snippets in AdSense and paste these into your site, or to manually edit PHP files. This plugin lets you place AdSense ads using a simple point-and-click UI.

Broken Link Checker

This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found. Once installed, the plugin will begin parsing your posts, bookmarks (AKA blogroll) and other content and looking for links. Depending on the size of your site this can take from a few minutes up to an hour or more. When parsing is complete, the plugin will start checking each link to see if it works.

DraftsForFriends

This plugin will generate a unique link that you can send to your friends to allow them to preview your draft before they are published. You are able to set the expiry for the link as well.

SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress SEO plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for SEO purposes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well. ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your images to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match. TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.

JSJ Code Highlight

JSJ Code Highlight is a simple syntax highlighter for all your WordPress code snippets. The plugin includes four visual themes to enchance the look and feel of your code. These themes (taken form Highlight.js) have been enhanced for a more contemporary feel. Above all the plugin aims to be simple and intuitive. Rather than bloating the plugin with features, the plugin has only a small set of carefully curated options to maximize simplicity and ease-of-use.

WP Post Series

WP Post Series is a lightweight plugin for making a series of posts and showing information about the series on the post page. The information box is prepended to the post content, and it can work with any theme (given a bit of CSS styling) – no setup required.

Co-Authors Plus

Assign multiple bylines to posts, pages, and custom post types via a search-as-you-type input box. Co-authored posts appear on a co-author’s archive page and in their feed. Co-authors may edit the posts they are associated with, and co-authors who are contributors may only edit posts if they have not been published (as is core behavior).

Print Friendly and PDF Button

The Print Friendly & PDF button saves paper and ink when printing or creating a PDF. It’s fast, easy, and looks great when printed. Add the button now, and your users will see the difference. The Print Friendly & PDF button automatically creates printer friendly and PDF versions of your pages without the hassle of having to create a print CSS file. No coding, hacking or programming required. Simply install the Print Friendly & PDF plugin, activate, and choose settings for full customization. It also gives your user the ability to remove images and paragraphs of text, so they really only have to print exactly what they want.

GZip Ninja Speed Compression

Very simple plugin that allows you to quickly compress and GZip your site. Only Works On Apache Servers (almost all WordPress installs are on Apache Servers). This will give you the ability to increase your speed and possibly even your rank in Google from a speed increase.

Simple Pull Quote

Simple Pull Quote WordPress Plugin provides an easy way for you to insert pull quotes into your posts and pages. It adds an easy-to-use “Pullquote” button to both the HTML and TinyMCE editors.

Bump This

Bump This is a simple plugin that adds a button to all your posts with which users can bump their favorites. If there are enough users who also bump the post, it will move to the top of the page. However, new posts will appear above it. This plugin is a good way for your users to provide feedback on posts they like.

LeadIn

LeadIn is an easy-to-use marketing automation and lead tracking plugin for WordPress that helps you better understand your web site visitors. When a person submits a form on your WordPress site, you want to know more about them. What pages they’ve visited, when they return, and what social networks they’re on. Our WordPress marketing automation and lead tracking plugin gives you the details you need to make your next move. Because business isn’t business unless it’s personal.

Gmail Comment Approval

This plugin incorporates the Gmail action API for WordPress comment approval. You can directly approve the comments from your Gmail inbox without logging into your site.

Meet My Team

Ever needed to display a lot of team members but you find it too lengthy to put into a single page? Meet My Team solves that problem by providing an intuitive interface that allows you to add your team members and display their information in a modal! Sounds great?

iThemes Security

Themes Security (formerly Better WP Security) gives you over 30+ ways to secure and protect your WordPress site. On average, 30,000 new websites are hacked each day. WordPress sites can be an easy target for attacks because of plugin vulnerabilities, weak passwords and obsolete software. Most WordPress admins don’t even know they’re vulnerable, but iThemes Security works to fix common holes, stop automated attacks and strengthen user credentials. With one-click activation for most features, as well as advanced features for experienced users, iThemes Security can help protect any WordPress site.

Easy Coming Soon

The Easy Coming Soon plugin allows you quckly create a Launch page / Coming Soon page for your wordpress website. Simply activate the plugin, Setup Page Title , Description and you are ready to go. The Easy Coming Soon plugin works with any WordPress theme you have installed on your site. Logged out users will see the coming soon page while logged-in users will have access to the website. This is ideal for web developers who want to present their clients with a Under construction page while working on the website.

Shareaholic

Three powerful apps to amplify your content and create conversations, across the web. Shareaholic has proven time and time again to be an extremely useful and successful tool in getting your readers to actually discover and submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites.

Thank Me Later

Thank Me Later sends ‘thank you’ emails to your commenters. Simply write a message saying thanks and it will be emailed after a time of your choice — 5 minutes, a day, a month, whenever!

JM Twitter Cards

Once activated the plugin adds appropriate meta on your WordPress website allowing you to get Twitter cards for your posts according to your settings. Enjoy ! Compatible with : WP SEO by Yoast (do not check cards option in this plugin if activated) and All in One SEO. The plugin allows you to customize your cards per each post. If you use SEO by Yoast plugin do not activate the Twitter card’s option. Otherwise markup will be added twice. If you choose full customization you will see a metabox in your post edit.