There are hundreds if not thousands of free WordPress plugins available. A plugin adds new functions or expands the functionality of an existing feature of a host program. We have compiled a list of 7 Free WordPress plugins every blogger should use or at least take a look at. Some have premium or pro versions but the basic functionality described is free at the time of this post.
Contact Form 7
After your homepage, your contact page is the most important page on your blog. Contact Form 7 allows you to create and manage simple or complex contact forms using simple markup. It has excellent protection against unwanted messages with built-in support for CAPTCHA and Akismet spam. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins with over 5 million active installations.
Inline Related Posts
When you start to have more than just a few dozen posts on your blog the older content will often not get the attention it deserves. Inline Related Posts is a plugin that puts related posts (by tag, category or both) INSIDE your posts so visitors can easily get exposed to additional content on your blog. This will keep them browsing your blog for longer and reward creating evergreen content with good titles.
Pretty Links
What if you could shorten or create custom links using your own domain name? Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin that allows just that. Perfect for keeping your internal and external links uniform. We use Pretty Links here on Geezam in many ways, including sharing our social media and newsletter links. For example, instead of sharing a long link for our newsletter, you can sign up at a more clean/professional link at https://geezam.com/newsletter
Simple History
This plugin creates a simple log of things happening on the backend of your blog. Events such as failed/successful logins, plugin updates, published posts, edited posts, new media uploads and more are shown in a dedicated log window. Simple History is handy when running a multi-author blog or to keep an eye on what is happening on your blog at a glance.
Site Kit by Google
Site Kit is a plugin that provides important information related to your WordPress blog and its presence on many of Google’s services – primarily using Google Analytics. Get a really powerful Dashboard that displays information related to traffic, search engine performance, site load speed and even advertising revenue from Adsense.
Code Profiler
Plugins are one of the reasons WordPress is such a powerful blogging tool and CMS. However using too many plugins especially, outdated or resource-heavy ones can really slow down or break your website/blog completely. Code Profiler scans your blog and displays information on just how much individual plugins you have installed affect your blog’s performance.
WP Maintenance Mode and Coming Soon
Working on your blog and want to keep visitors from seeing broken pages or unfinished tinkering before a launch/relaunch? Put on a special “Maintenance Mode” and tinker with that theme or test those plugins in peace or time your launch. WP Maintenance Mode is really powerful and most importantly customizable with support for various templates and any colour scheme.
Recommend a Free WordPress Plugin
Are there any other free WordPress plugins that you would recommend? Tell us on Twitter @Geezam. Also, check out 10 Online Tools every Blogger should be aware of and use. Happy blogging!