Posted 3 months ago #
Hi everyone. I'm completely new to WordPress, but have decided to use it as the backbone for our newly commissioned innovation and sales training website.
I'm really interested to know from highly talented and experienced WordPress users about some of the very best plugins to consider when starting-out and why.
I'm sure many people getting started will be interested in the same topic areas as me which is really SEO, social media, and shopping cart functionality.
Thanks so much in advance.
Posted 3 months ago #
When we create a WordPress site, we typically use the following plugins on almost every site:
http://www.websitedefender.com/news/free-wordpress-security-scan-plugin/ - Good if you think you might have been hacked
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/#utm_source=wpadmin&utm_medium=plugin&utm_campaign=wpseoplugin - Good for SEO
http://mattwalters.net/projects/wordpress-file-monitor/ - Checks to make sure you're not being hacked
http://www.videousermanuals.com/white-label-cms/ - Good for customization of the backend and login area for clients. Also helps with minor lock down of the admin menu.
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/ - Prevents against brute force attacks on login.
http://ocaoimh.ie/exploit-scanner/ - Yet another tool in the fight against being hacked.
http://mtekk.us/code/breadcrumb-navxt/ - Good and easy to customize breadcrumb trail.
We don't use WordPress for shopping carts as their are much better out-of-the-box solutions for that. All other "plugin" type stuff we write in-house.
Using someone else's plugins causes too much overhead in that you have to rely upon them to keep it up-to-date. If you write your own plugins, they are customized to exactly what you need and easy to fix if they break.
I recommend that you look into how to create your own plugins, or at the very least, how to use the functions.php file to it's full extent. WordPress is powerful, but that's mainly because of it's flexibility for us end users to basically do whatever we want! :)
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