I’ve written about plugins a couple of times on my blog. I’ve talked about my favourites, ones for backing up your site, how to pick a good one and even my serious love affair with Editorial Calendar. I haven’t talked much about the ones that I consider essential however. Here are a few plugins that will help keep your website secure, safe and running smoothly.
- Akismet This plugin is built by the folks at Auttomatic (the guys who make and maintain WordPress). It is the best plugin for keeping spam off your website. It ships with all WordPress installs, but you have to make sure that you Activate it and sign up to get an API key. It’s run by donation, so if you love it, throw them a few dollars.
- Backup Buddy I’ve written about other backup plugins, but I especially love this one! You can set it to automatically backup both your website and database (which is where all of the content is stored), which means that it is sort of a set it and forget it plugin. That said, it’s important to check with your hosting company to find out how regularly they back things up. It’s really smart to have two back up systems in place. If you want to be even more careful, use a plugin like Duplicator, to manually back everything up, every once in a while.
- W3 Total Cache I don’t use this plugin on every site, but I could! It really helps keep the site moving quickly and things loading as they should. Install it and use this blog post to set it up properly.
Kate Moore Hermes 