WordPress plugins are necessary, we all know that and a WordPress website lives and dies with its plugins! If there are too few, you have definitely overlooked an important plugin or not used it out of ignorance. If there are too many, you have overdone it and used unimportant or useless plugins, and the website quickly becomes sluggish and therefore uninteresting for Google. The following overview provides an insight into what we believe to be the most important WordPress plugins, which we also use in our daily work with WordPress.
Of course, you can create a WordPress website completely without plugins using just a simple theme. The integrated Gutenberg editor provides good help when building the site, even if it is not particularly popular. However, WordPress is then limited in its full performance.
Page Builder – For the optimal website experience
The page builders that are very popular today are more suitable. The best known and most popular include the Elementor Page Builder, Beaver Builder, Divi Builder and WP Bakery Page Builder. We consciously use the Elementor page builder because it is not only intuitive to use, has an immense range of functions and also has excellent performance, but also does not leave any shortcodes in the text when deactivated. This is the case, for example, with the Divi Builder and the WP Bakery Page Builder. The Beaver Builder is a good alternative, but too expensive, too confusing and, in our opinion, outdated.
Plugin 1: Page Builder: Elementor Page Builder
Performance – More speed, better Google ranking
Who wants to wait for slow loading websites? Website visitors don't like it and Google certainly doesn't. And that affects the ranking. Therefore, a site with optimized content, few plugins and a slim theme is an advantage. That's why we limit ourselves in our agency to only really necessary plugins. But there are still performance plugins that make the site faster (caching and minification) as well as plugins for image optimization.
For performance, we use WP Optimize Premium, one of the best plugins for caching, database cleaning and image optimization. Other caching plugins include WP Rocket, WP-Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, Comet Cache or W3 Total Cache and many more that we will not list here.
Plugin 2: Caching, minification, database optimization and image compression: WP-Optimize Premium
Security – Malicious attackers locked out
Nothing is worse than a website being vulnerable. When Trojans spy on your customers' data, malware fills your site with useless junk, viruses make your site unusable, or even hackers redirect your site to other sites with questionable content.
We know there is no 100% protection to completely keep malicious attackers out unless you block all access to your website. But this means that your customers can no longer access it, which is of course not the purpose of your website. There are some plugins that are very useful for this, but either do not protect well enough or have too many integrated functions that slow down the website. The most useful plugins here are Sucuri, Wordfence and iThemes Security.
However, we do not use any of these WordPress plugins. We use a fairly unknown plugin called BBQ as a firewall. The firewall can also be implemented in the so-called .htaccess file, but it is then very cumbersome to keep this up to date on all websites. This update is done by simply updating the BBQ plugin. We also use our own small plugin with various useful code snippets on the subject of security and create entries in the .htaccess file and the wp-config.php file to maximize security. These entries save memory and extensive plugins and performance does not suffer.
Plugin 3: Firewall: BBQ (based on the 7G Firewall from www.perishablepress.com) Plugin 4: Additional security: Own plugin and entries in .htaccess and wp-config.php
Search engine optimization – top positions on Google & Co.
The best website is of no use to anyone if it cannot be found in common search engines. Some factors are particularly important in search engine optimization: good user guidance, clean programming, search engine optimized content and small amounts of data. What is missing is optimal on-page optimization. There are powerful plugins here that make work much easier and save time. As described in a previous article, Rank Math is the best choice here and it is precisely this WordPress plugin that we use for perfect on-page optimization.
Plugin 5: SEO: Rank Math (the free version) Plugin 6: SEO: Rank Math Pro (the premium version - the free version must be installed)
Data protection – surfing the internet safely
It has been mandatory for all website operators since May 25, 2018 - the GDPR. This not only includes a data protection declaration tailored to the website and a complete legal notice, but also the website visitor must be informed about what data about them will be transmitted to third parties and what data will be stored on their computer. This data is often stored in so-called cookies. Data can also be transmitted to the host or, when using Google Analytics or an integrated YouTube video, to Google.
In order to protect the customer from unlawful data transmission and data storage, we use the Borlabs Cookie plugin. Even if cookies are not used, this plugin works according to the ePrivacy guidelines and prevents any transfer of data to the outside world until the website visitor has consented to the transfer.
Plugin 7: GDPR: Borlabs Cookie
Conclusion on the WordPress plugins
With just 7-8 WordPress plugins (here it depends on whether our own plugin is used or not, or a separate backup solution has to be used because there is no maintenance contract) a website can be operated creatively, securely, performantly and search engine optimized. We have already seen websites from other agencies or from self-proclaimed WordPress professionals. These either suffered from a lack of plugins (no optimization in terms of security, performance, SEO and GDPR) or were full of plugins (sometimes up to 30 plugins, many of which were unused but still activated).
