While WordPress has plenty of features and options, it still lacks a lot of necessary functionality. One of the best ways to fill these missing pieces to integrate the right plugins into your WordPress website. After all, this is why plugins are developed.
They provide different types of customization for webmasters be it adding a primary functionality like responsive design or merely putting an appealing slider on the homepage. However, there are more than 40,000 useful WordPress plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory, making it extremely difficult for webmasters to choose the most useful and reliable ones for their websites.
Thus, we have compiled a list of top 5 worthy WordPress plugins to help you improve your website’s usability and provide the best possible user experience.
1. Yoast SEO (Formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast)
Yoast SEO is a great SEO plugin that not only optimizes your website for search engines but also helps you write better content. Aside adding relevant descriptions, and titles, it enables you to add open graph metadata, publish XML sitemap, do page analysis and more. The plugin is also packed with real-time content analysis functionality to improve user engagement on your website by helping you write high-quality content.
It basically integrates everything from a real-time page analysis to a snippet editor that assists you in optimizing your meta descriptions, image titles, pages content and more. Though it is a free plugin, a premium version is also available with additional features and support.
Amazing features of WordPress SEO Yoast
- Adds the most advanced XML sitemaps functionality to your WordPress website
- Lets you add a link to your RSS feed pointing back to the original article for better RSS optimization
- Also equipped with a breadcrumb navigation functionality for your WordPress galleries and albums
- Supports Google+ sharing tags and comes with a Facebook Opengraph implementation
- Is fully multisite compatible
- Also integrated with import & export functionality
- Is available in more than 24 languages
- Has page analysis functionality to help you write better content
2. Soliloquy
Soliloquy is a modern, flexible and versatile WordPress slider plugin that allows you to seamlessly add beautiful and functional sliders to your website without slowing it down, unlike other slider plugins. In fact, it is one of the fastest slider plugins available on the market that loads your sliders at blazing fast speed.
It is a premium plugin but has a free version available to try right away. It is loaded with features and lets you add as many sliders as you need to your website.
Additional features of Soliloquy
- Integrated with drag and drop page builder to help you create beautiful photo and video galleries within minutes
- Has pre-built slider themes integrated to let you customize your WordPress slider
- Allows you to create sliders based on your custom post types, pages, and posts
- Lets you create responsive carousel to turn any WordPress slider into carousel
- Enables you to add thumbnail images as navigation for website’s sliders
- Comes with social sharing buttons of Pinterest and Instagram
3. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache, as the name suggests, is a caching plugin that is developed to optimize your website for speed in order to enhance your visitor’s overall experience. The plugin basically works by reducing the load on the server. It also drastically improves web server performance during highest traffic on the website while improving site’s overall performance.
It is an amazing plugin for removing re-downloading of web pages on the readers’ browser by creating static caches for every web page to ensure they are dynamically loaded on every page load. W3 Total Cache is also incorporated with a Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to further reduce the loading time of the website.
Outstanding features of W3 Total Cache:
- Is highly compatible with dedicated servers / clusters, virtual private / dedicated servers and shared hosting
- Comes integrated with transparent content delivery network (CDN) management with Media Library
- Allows caching of database objects in memory or on disk
- Allows minification of posts, pages, embedded, inline or 3rd party JavaScript and feeds
- Enables you to import post attachments directly into the CDN or Media Library
- Offers WP-CLI support for query string updating, cache purging and more
4. Envira Gallery
If you own a photography website or publish plenty of images on your website, Envira Gallery is an ideal plugin for you. It is one of the most popular and responsive WordPress gallery plugins. It enables you to create visually appealing and functional image galleries with easy navigation and tons of powerful effects. The plugin is also optimized for search engine and speed, making your galleries and images load quickly.
Though Envira Gallery is a premium WordPress plugin, it is also available in a free version with a name Envira Gallery Lite, perfect for those who are short on budget.
Impressive features of Envira Gallery Plugin:
- Integrated with drag and drop page builder to help you create beautiful photo and video galleries within minutes
- Lets you make use of various pre-built templates to customize the look and feel of your gallery
- Offers albums, social sharing, watermarking, videos, slideshow, pagination and proofing add-ons
- Comes integrated with WooCommerce to allow you to sell your photos instantly
- Also equipped with a breadcrumb navigation functionality for your WordPress galleries and albums
- Has custom CSS integrated to add custom CSS and styles to customize the gallery
- Allows you to leverage native fullscreen gallery and lightbox display
5. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) is yet another popular and most advanced WordPress plugin that lets you add a list of related posts or pages to the current post. This way you can provide a great opportunity for your readers to browse other relevant content on your site while drastically increasing user engagement on your website.
It gives webmasters an opportunity to either display their own related content or earn extra money by showing sponsored posts from other websites.
Additional features of Yet Another Related Posts Plugin:
- Lets you add list view or thumbnail of related content.
- Shows related posts, pages, and custom post types.
- Integrated with a templating system which offers you advanced control of how your results are showcased.
- Comes with a versatile and advanced algorithm that lets the plugin finds related content from across your site.
- Lets you show related posts in RSS feeds with custom display options.
Author Bio: Jason is a renowned web development professional who works with WordSuccor Ltd., expert in Custom WordPress Plugin Development. He is a passionate blogger who loves to write and share everything about WordPress and new web design technologies.