The best part of playing with blocks is the ability to build, decorate, demolish and to start anew, infinitely. WordPress comes very close to this principle. After all, the CMS provides a flexible, ingenious plug-in structure, with which the standard WordPress installation can be extended as desired. However, there is a small flaw to this: with so many expansion options, the overview of necessary or useful plug-ins can fall by the wayside. The solution: an overview of the current must-haves!

Antispam Bee

Who hasn’t run across this? You want communicate with other readers or potential buyers, but instead you get bothered with spammers. The Antispam Bee plug-in provides a remedy and at the same time observes the German data protection regulations. While you concentrate on the conversation, the plug-in automatically checks whether the comments are from real people or not. Furthermore, it informs you of the number of previous attacks and through various settings provide the opportunity to improve the spam protection of the web page. Conclusion: A successful plug-in for those who want to declare war on spam.

Contact Form 7

A form plug-in - who doesn’t need that? May it be contacts, an order or a newsletter registration, forms are needed everywhere. Therefore there are countless plug-ins. Compelling arguments for Contact Form 7 are its ease of extensibility and its price and that makes it so popular (Number 4 of the most popular WordPress plug-ins). Because this plug-in doesn't cost a penny.

Edit-Flow

Edit-Flow is a real must-have for editorial offices. Because the plug-in has as its task to eliminate delays and coordination problems and instead return the content back into focus. Therefore it includes an interactive calendar, a comment and notification function as well as a story budget tool. Editors, for example, receive information about the article’s status, length and deadline. Moreover, individual user groups can be created to keep the team structure and available resources in mind. Detailed information for this plug-in is available here.

WordPress Database Backup

The WordPress Database Backup plug-in is the key to more safety. More specifically, to regular backups. There are flexible saving options. You can choose between backups to a server, a download or send it via email. Additionally, the plug-in connects up with the database, optimizes it and thus ensures that the website always performs perfectly. The WordPress Database Backup occupies number 27 of the most popular WordPress pluggings with almost 1.5 million downloads and with good reason.

Broken Link Checker

Nothing is worse than to lure a customer (or reader) to an interesting page, which then displays the familiar 404 error. Customer disappointment par excellence, with the logical consequence of having driven the customer on the run. The Broken Link Checker plug-in therefore examines the entire website (including comments) for dead links and missing images. If the plug-in finds something, it notifies the administrator immediately via email. The time interval in which the plug-in will conduct the search for errors can be freely determined. In terms of SEO, the plug-in is gold! Eventually search engines will punish dead links.

Conclusion

Whether dead links, forms or content creation in team work: WordPress has a wealth of plug-ins that make working with the CMS so exciting. In addition to the basic plug-ins, there are other delightful WordPress tools that make life easier. One more reason to again pay attention to the WordPress topic. We will happily assist you in the implementation of the presented must-haves or tell you personally what the nice-to-haves are.