Notionet

About 3 years ago when i installed wordpress for the first time. I received an email from my webhost with a notice that my storage was full. I had not even published my first blog post. I really could not tell what was happening until i checked my dashboard. I had installed 40 plugins!

I must admit that i was using  free hosting with less than 500mb of disk space, something that i would not advice anyone to do, but 40 plugins were just too much.

To install the right plugins and for that case the right number, you have to engage a purpose driven kind of wordpress setup. Most wordpress experts will encourage you to install a maximum of 10 plugins, something that seems quite impossible to most beginners but it actually is.

As a webmaster, when maintaining my websites or those of my clients, i use something called the 4s approach. It is the FairFronts’ web maintenance model. It revolves around the 4most essential needs of every website not just wordpress, which are storage,security, speed and SEO.

So, before you publish your first post, your wordpress site should be equipped with plugins that will provide it with these 3 things. Also, not any plugin will provide you with good speed, security and SEO. There are those that are wordpress recommended.

Below are the plugins that any wordpress site needs. All of them are free and can be installed directly via the wordpress plugins installer. You can also download them on wordpress org then upload them via the wordpress plugin upload tool.

1. Jetpack

Jetpack is an all in one plugin created by automattic, the company behind wordpress. This plugin provides you with the most basic features to help keep your website up and running. I.e security,  autopublishing and autoshare, search engine indexing, plugins auto updates among other features. In a word, Jetpack acts as your wordpress’ site manager.

To setup jetpack, you need to create a wordpress.com account. Its free and will not take you more than 5minutes.

2. Yoast

Meet the all in one SEO provider. Yoast guides you through;

• choosing the right keywords for your posts
• Indexing your site with major search engines like google, Bing and yahoo
• Setting up meta descriptions for your blog posts

Yoast also notifies you when you take actions that will affect your overall search engine optimization in your site.

3. Wordfence

Wordfence is a security plugin that protects your site from attackers and malware. It blocks harmful login attempts and scans your site of viruses and other harmful installations.

4. Akismet

There are chances that you already found akismet installed in your wordpress site. It is another plugin by automattic created to protect your site from spam. It will block harmful comments until you approve or trash them. To setup akismet, you need jetpack installed in your site else you have to create a wordpress.com account.

5. Addtoany

Adtoany adds social share icons below your posts and pages with style. Its an easy to use plugin. It can help your viewers share the posts they like with their friends.

Other useful plugins

Paypal cart

If you are thinking of selling products and services on your blog, PayPal cart is the right plugin for you. Its easy to use and flexible as you can Sell products through your blog posts and pages. PayPal cart adds a button under your product images and other features that any website needs to sell products online

Bbpress

Bbpress is a plugin that adds forums functionality to your site. If you are thinking of creating a site like stack overflow, quora and the likes, you can try Bb press

Knowledge base

I believe this is the best free knowledgebase plugin so far. If you are running a knowledge based site or lets say you want to create a client support section for your products/online services then knowledgebase is the right plugin

Woocommerce

Want to turn your website into a store? All you need is woocommerce. Sell anything in any style and collect payments on your site using the payment gateway you choose. Be it paypal, credit cards, mpesa or bank transfer.

Woocommerce has a lot of contributors and extensions so you don’t have to worry how you will sell your items online.

Wp super cache

Another plugin by automattic, wp supercache sole purpose is to speedup your site. Instead of generating your pages every time a viewer loads them via a browser, wp super cache store those pages as static files and delivers them whenever a user loads them. It reduces the loading time hence speeding up your site.