If you’re a publisher, your site is developed with WordPress, and you want to make it more efficient, more attractive, and more effective, you’ve come to the right place! In this article, we will present the 10 essential WordPress plugins to boost your site in 2024. These plugins are among the most popular, most efficient, and best suited for publishers’ needs.
They will help you create a professional site that meets the expectations of your visitors and Google.
But before we reveal these plugins, you might be wondering what a WordPress plugin is, what it’s for, and how to choose them. We’ll explain everything!
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, used by over 43% of websites. It offers great flexibility and ease of use, thanks to its active community and thousands of themes and plugins available.
- What is a WordPress plugin?
- Why install a WordPress plugin?
- How to choose a WordPress plugin?
- Yoast SEO: to optimize your natural referencing
- Elementor: for creating custom pages
- WP Rocket: to improve your site's speed
- Feedzy RSS Feeds: for managing RSS feeds
- Notifadz: for sending Web Push Notifications
- Imagify: for optimizing your images
- Redirection: no more 404 problems
- TablePress: for creating tables
- Polylang: for creating a multilingual site
- WPCode Lite: for inserting code into your articles
- Conclusion
What is a WordPress plugin?
A WordPress plugin is an extension that installs on your WordPress site, adding new features or modifying its behavior. For example, you can install a plugin to create an online store, optimize your search engine optimization (SEO), secure your site, etc.
With over 59,000 free or paid WordPress plugins that you can find on the official WordPress directory or on third-party sites like CodeCanyon, WPMU DEV, etc., it can be overwhelming, especially when you’re just starting out!
Why install a WordPress plugin?
Installing a WordPress plugin has several benefits, such as:
- Adding new features to your site without having to code or modify WordPress’s source code
- Customizing your site according to your needs and preferences, choosing plugins that match your theme, audience, goals, etc.
- Improving the quality and performance of your site, making it more attractive, faster, more secure, more visible, etc.
- Benefiting from the support and updates of plugin developers, ensuring compatibility and reliability of plugins
- Enjoying the diversity and richness of the WordPress community, which offers plugins for all tastes and levels
How to choose a WordPress plugin?
Choosing a WordPress plugin is not always easy because several criteria must be considered, such as:
- Compatibility: the plugin must be compatible with the version of WordPress you’re using, as well as with other plugins and the theme you have installed on your site. You can check the plugin information, user reviews, or test on a demo site before installing it on your site.
- Popularity: it’s easy to tell if the plugin is popular and liked by users by looking at the number of downloads, ratings, comments, etc. You can also consult rankings and comparisons of the best WordPress plugins on the web.
- Quality: consider looking at the date of the last update, the number of bugs, documentation, support, etc. You can also consult tests and reviews by experts on the web.
- Security: it’s important to verify that the plugin is secure by checking if it follows WordPress standards and best practices, uses secure protocols, is audited regularly, etc. You can also consult security reports and alerts on the web.
- Price: make sure the plugin fits your budget by looking at the initial cost, renewal cost, additional options, etc. You can also compare offers and features of free and paid plugins.
Now that you know what WordPress plugins are, why to install them, and how to choose them, let’s move on to our selection of the 10 essential WordPress plugins to boost your site in 2024. These plugins were chosen for their relevance to the needs of publishers and media.
Yoast SEO: to optimize your natural referencing
Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress plugin for optimizing your site’s natural referencing. It allows you to improve:
- The content of your pages, giving you advice to optimize your titles, meta-descriptions, keywords, links, etc.
- The structure of your site, helping you create a sitemap, manage canonical tags, avoid duplicate content, etc.
- The visibility of your site, allowing you to configure the basic settings of WordPress, connect your site to Google Search Console, generate structured data, etc.
Yoast SEO is a free plugin, but you can also opt for the premium version, which offers additional features, such as analysis of secondary keywords, page redirections, priority support, etc.
The advantages and disadvantages of Yoast SEO:
- ✅ It guides you step by step to optimize your site
- ✅ It covers all aspects of natural referencing
- ✅ Regularly updated, it adapts to the evolutions of Google’s algorithms
- ✅ It has an academy to master the tool and learn the basics of SEO
- ❌ Sometimes too rigid, it imposes rules that are not always suited to your content or your sector (be careful of over-optimization)
- ❌ The same for its partnership with SEMRush on keyword suggestions (most of the time it’s off-topic)
- ❌ Too demanding, it can slow down your site or conflict with other plugins
Price of Yoast SEO: free or starting at €99 per year for the premium version.
Elementor: for creating custom pages
Elementor is the most efficient and popular WordPress plugin for creating custom pages. It allows you to:
- Create pages in your image, using an intuitive visual editor and dragging and dropping elements on your page
- Build pages adapted to all screens, using a responsive design system that automatically adjusts the size and layout of your elements
- Optimize your pages for the web, using clean and lightweight code that respects WordPress and Google standards
Elementor is a free plugin, but you can also opt for the pro version, which offers additional features, such as advanced widgets, ready-to-use templates, dynamic effects, etc.
The pros (+) and cons (-) of Elementor:
- ✅ It allows you to create pages without having to code
- ✅ It offers great freedom of customization and design
- ✅ It guarantees you optimal speed and quality of your pages
- ❌ It requires a learning time and mastery of the options (to date here is the simplest training to follow! It’s a gift! 🎁)
- ❌ It can slow down your site or conflict with other plugins
- ❌ Too expensive, if you opt for the pro ++ version
Price of Elementor: free or between $49 and $399 for the pro version.
WP Rocket: to improve your site’s speed
WP Rocket is the most efficient WordPress plugin to improve your site’s speed. It allows you to:
- Optimize the loading of your pages, using techniques like caching, compression, minification, lazy loading, etc.
- Make the server more efficient using techniques like preloading, DNS prefetching, connecting to a CDN, etc.
- Maximize the user experience, using techniques like resource prioritization, image optimization, accessibility improvement, etc.
The (+) and (-) of WP Rocket:
- ✅ It guarantees a significant improvement in your site’s speed, and therefore your natural referencing
- ✅ It does not require complex configuration and is activated with one click
- ✅ It works with all WordPress themes, plugins, and hosts
- ❌ It does not offer a free version or trial 🫠
- ❌ It may require advanced knowledge to fully benefit from its features
Price of WP Rocket: starting at $47 per year.
Feedzy RSS Feeds: for managing RSS feeds
Feedzy RSS Feeds is the most practical WordPress plugin for managing RSS feeds. It’s the essential extension that every publisher must know. It allows you to:
- Import RSS feeds from any source, using a URL, keyword, category, etc.
- Display RSS feeds on your site, using widgets, shortcodes, Gutenberg blocks, etc.
- Create RSS feeds from your site, using criteria like title, content, date, etc.
The advantages and disadvantages of Feedzy RSS Feeds:
- ✅ It saves you time and diversifies your content by importing quality articles from other sources
- ✅ It allows you to customize the appearance and behavior of your RSS feeds, using various options and settings
- ❌ It only supports RSS feeds, not other syndication formats like Atom or RDF
- ❌ It may seem too complex and may require a good understanding of RSS feeds and their settings
For more information, you can watch this tutorial (which is a bit dated) but is quite comprehensive on how to integrate it into your WordPress site.
Notifadz: for sending Web Push Notifications
This extension enhances engagement and audience monetization for publishers through Web Push Notifications.
The tool allows:
- To configure your template, to collect Web Push subscribers, by asking for their prior consent
- To update your ads.txt for optimal monetization of your subscribers
- To animate your subscriber community for free, by relaying your content to them
The advantages and disadvantages of Notifadz:
- ✅It is innovative, allowing you to communicate with your subscribers directly and effectively
- ✅It is playful, allowing you to create attractive and interactive Web Push Notifications that arouse the interest and engagement of your recipients
- ✅It integrates easily with your WordPress site, offering an intuitive and user-friendly interface
- ✅Supports Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Safari on Desktop and Android
- ✅100% free for publishers
- ❌Limited to Web Push Notifications
- ❌Does not support HTTP sites
- ❌We couldn’t find a third disadvantage, but we included it anyway 🤪
Notifadz is a 100% free software designed for publishers using the Notifadz platform. For the curious, you can check out the documentations from Adrenalead to learn more about Web Push Notification.
Imagify: for optimizing your images
Imagify is the most efficient and popular WordPress plugin for optimizing images. It allows you to:
- Reduce the weight of your images, using techniques like compression, conversion, resizing, etc.
- Improve the quality of your images, using techniques like retouching, cropping, filtering, etc.
- Improve your site’s speed, using techniques like lazy loading, webp, CDN, etc.
The + and – of Imagify:
- ✅ It guarantees a significant reduction in the weight of your images, and therefore an improvement in your site’s speed, your natural referencing
- ✅ Does not require complex configuration, and applies automatically to all your images
- ✅Works with all WordPress themes, plugins, and hosts
- ❌ Only supports images, not other media types like videos or audios
Imagify is free or starting at €4.99 per month for the paid version
The paid version allows you to access other features like unlimited compression and optimization of WebP images, also lossless compression and metadata removal
Redirection: no more 404 problems
Redirection is the most efficient and popular WordPress plugin for managing redirects. It allows you to:
- Create redirects for your pages, using simple or advanced rules, regular expressions, conditions, etc.
- Manage your site’s 404 errors, by detecting, correcting, redirecting, etc.
- Track the statistics of your redirects, by visualizing, filtering, exporting, etc.
Redirection is a free plugin, offering all the necessary features to manage your site’s redirects.
TablePress: for creating tables
TablePress is the free and open-source WordPress plugin for creating tables. It allows you to:
- Create data tables, using an intuitive visual editor and entering or importing your data
- Display tables on your site, using shortcodes, widgets, Gutenberg blocks, etc.
- Customize tables according to your needs, using various options and settings, such as sorting, pagination, searching, etc.
The advantages and disadvantages of TablePress:
- ✅It allows you to create high-quality data tables, with advanced features and customization possibilities
- ✅It allows you to manage all your tables from your WordPress dashboard, without having to use other tools or software
- ✅It allows you to choose between manual entry or automatic import of your data, depending on your sources and formats
- ❌May seem too complex, requiring a good understanding of the functioning of tables and their settings
Polylang: for creating a multilingual site
Polylang is the most popular and efficient WordPress plugin for creating a multilingual site. It allows you to:
- Create a site in any language, using an intuitive language selector and choosing from over 100 languages available
- Manually translate your site, using an intuitive visual editor, and duplicating or synchronizing your content
- Automatically translate your site, using online translation services like Google Translate, DeepL, etc.
The + and – of Polylang:
- ✅It allows you to create and manage your languages and translations from your WordPress dashboard, without having to use other tools or software
- ✅It allows you to choose between manual or automatic translation, according to your needs and preferences
- ❌It only supports languages supported by WordPress, not regional languages or dialects
- ❌Too expensive, if you opt for the pro version
Polylang is free or starting at €99 with the possibility of unlimited translation.
WPCode Lite: for inserting code into your articles
WPCode Lite is the most practical WordPress plugin for inserting code into your articles. It allows you to:
- Insert code into your articles, using an intuitive visual editor and choosing from over 20 programming languages
- Display code in your articles, using a dedicated Gutenberg block and choosing from over 10 color themes
- Customize code according to your needs, using various options and settings, such as line numbering, copying, folding, etc.
The (+) and (-) of WPCode Lite:
- ✅It allows you to insert code into your articles without having to code or modify the source code of WordPress
- ✅It allows you to display code in your articles with a professional and attractive rendering
- ✅It works with all WordPress themes, plugins, and hosts
- ❌It does not offer advanced features, such as syntax highlighting, autocompletion, debugging, etc.
- ❌To use it, you need to have knowledge of HTML code
In summary, if you need a simple plugin to add headers and footers to your website, the free version of WPCode Lite is sufficient.
Conclusion
In conclusion, here are the key points to remember from this article:
- A WordPress plugin is an extension that installs on your WordPress site and adds new features or modifies its behavior
- Installing a WordPress plugin has several advantages, such as adding new features, customizing your site, improving its quality and performance, etc.
- Choosing a WordPress plugin requires considering several criteria, such as compatibility, popularity, quality, security, price, etc.
- The 10 essential WordPress plugins to boost your site in 2024 are: Yoast SEO, Elementor, Notifadz, WP Rocket, Feedzy RSS Feeds, Imagify, Polylang, Redirection, TablePress, WPCode Lite
- These plugins are among the most popular, most efficient, and best suited for publishers and will help you create a professional, attractive, and effective site
