6 WordPress plugins for a successful website, 2021.

With the abun­dance of plug­ins that are now available for Word­Press, it has beco­me incre­di­bly dif­fi­cult to figu­re out which one you real­ly need.

So that you don’t over­c­rowd your web­site, we have lis­ted the most important plug­ins that you should inte­gra­te into your web­site.

• WP Bakery/Elementor/Fusion Builder/Divi!
  The­se page buil­ders help you mana­ge your con­tent.
• All-in-One SEO
  Adds SEO opti­ons to your Word­Press web­site.
• Borlabs Coo­kie
  Allows you to make your Word­Press web­site coo­kie com­pli­ant.
• WP Rocket
  Ensu­res fas­ter loa­ding times of your web­site.
• WebP Express
  Pro­vi­de modern image for­mats auto­ma­ti­cal­ly.
• Redi­rec­tion
  Auto­ma­ti­cal­ly crea­tes 301 redi­rects for posts and pages who­se per­ma­links you chan­ge.

WP Bakery / Elementor / Avada Builder / Divi #

Ok, if you take it exact­ly, that’s alre­a­dy 4 plug­ins — but that has a simp­le reason. The­se are so-cal­­led page buil­ders. They allow you to edit your pages using drag’n’drop. Of cour­se, you don’t need all four, but only one of them. Usual­ly the page buil­ders come tog­e­ther with the the­me. Sin­ce the­se should be coor­di­na­ted with each other.

Befo­re the­re were page buil­ders, all the designs had to be cus­to­mi­zed using ACF (Advan­ced Cus­tom Fields) or cus­tom deve­lo­p­ment. Dif­fe­rent pages were ela­bo­ra­te­ly crea­ted via tem­pla­tes and acti­va­ted for the respec­ti­ve page. Indi­vi­du­al adjus­t­ments were only pos­si­ble to a limi­t­ed ext­ent at that time.

For the lay­man, it was the­r­e­fo­re cos­t­ly to main­tain a web­site hims­elf, despi­te the CMS. The page buil­ders are basi­cal­ly not­hing more than a cus­to­mi­zed inter­face that con­verts what you want to insert into short­codes in the back­ground.

Atten­ti­on: Page buil­ders use Java­Script to pro­vi­de you with the func­tions. Java­Script is exe­cu­ted on the cli­ent side, i.e. in your brow­ser. To ensu­re a smooth dis­play, you should the­r­e­fo­re have enough RAM (this should not be a pro­blem in this day and age).

From the basic func­tion, the page buil­ders are built the same, only the appearance chan­ges.

Depen­ding on the page buil­der, you alre­a­dy have a sel­ec­tion of com­pon­ents available to build your page. The­se include text modu­les, images, vide­os, head­lines and many more. So you can add new con­tent to your page with a sin­gle click.

You can also reu­se con­tent and copy it to other pages. This way you don’t have to crea­te every ele­ment from scratch.

All in One SEO #

With the plug­in All in One SEO you extend your web­site with important SEO func­tions. The­r­e­fo­re, it belongs to the top 6 Word­Press plug­ins in our list. The most important func­tions are alre­a­dy available in the free ver­si­on.

SEO is indis­pensable to be found in the long term on Goog­le and Co. Bes­i­des the con­tent of your page and the key­word opti­miza­ti­on and struc­tu­re, you must also spe­ci­fy the meta title, meta descrip­ti­on and sche­mas.

Thanks to All in One SEO, you have the appro­pria­te input fields for every page and every post.

The input mask also offers you important hints if your title or descrip­ti­on is too long. A pre­view of how your ent­ry will be dis­play­ed in search engi­nes is also included.

In addi­ti­on to the meta infor­ma­ti­on, you can also store infor­ma­ti­on for the sche­ma in the Pre­mi­um ver­si­on.

The sche­mas allow you to pro­vi­de the Goo­gle­bot with more infor­ma­ti­on about your page. The­se help to bet­ter clas­si­fy your page. For exam­p­le, you can defi­ne recipes as recipes, tuto­ri­als as tuto­ri­als and artic­les as artic­les. Also, infor­ma­ti­on about your com­pa­ny is pos­si­ble.

So it increa­ses the pro­ba­bi­li­ty that when someone sear­ches for a reci­pe, your page is also lis­ted. Goog­le always tri­es to pro­vi­de the sear­cher with the appro­pria­te pages.

If you pre­fer to stay with a free ver­si­on, you can also use the Sche­ma & Struc­tu­red Data for WP & AMP plug­in. This also offers you the pos­si­bi­li­ty to cus­to­mi­ze the sche­mas of your site.

Also included is the opti­on to tell the search engi­ne bot how to hand­le the page. You can eit­her defi­ne this glo­bal­ly for all pages, or again indi­vi­du­al­ly for spe­ci­fic pages and posts.

For exam­p­le, if you want to make sure that your imprint and pri­va­cy poli­cy do not appear on Goog­le, you can sim­ply check No Index here.

Note: Some bots — espe­ci­al­ly tho­se that are respon­si­ble for spam — igno­re the robots’ infor­ma­ti­on. Howe­ver, repu­ta­ble pro­vi­ders such as Goog­le and Bing use them. The­r­e­fo­re, if you want to make sure that a page can­not be acces­sed, you should pro­tect it with a pass­word.

The most important fea­ture comes at the end, of cour­se, the site­map. All In One SEO also crea­tes for you a sitemap.xml file that you can then sub­mit to Goog­le and Co.

The site­map ser­ves as a table of con­tents for the search engi­ne bot. With it, you can ensu­re that pages are inde­xed as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Other­wi­se, your page may only appear in Goog­le after months or years.

It is the­r­e­fo­re advi­sa­ble to enter the site­map in Goog­le Search Con­so­le. If you are not yet regis­tered with Goog­le Search Con­so­le, you should do so as soon as pos­si­ble.

Borlabs Cookie #

Sin­ce 28.05.2020, the BGH has con­firm­ed the coo­kie opt-in obli­ga­ti­on (Click here for the press release).

What does this mean for a web­site ope­ra­tor? Quite sim­ply, befo­re coo­kies can be set, the visi­tor must agree to this. Whe­ther this appli­es to essen­ti­al coo­kies or only to marketing/tracking coo­kies is dif­fi­cult to assess.

If in doubt, you should spe­ci­fy all coo­kies via coo­kie opt-in.

Borlabs Coo­kie is a pre­mi­um plug­in (fee requi­red), but you can con­fi­gu­re and design it as you wish.

The dash­board also allows you to quick­ly see which visi­tors have accept­ed which coo­kie groups.

Essen­ti­al coo­kies

The­se include coo­kies that are requi­red for the ope­ra­ti­on of the web­site. The­se are, for exam­p­le, ses­si­ons, infor­ma­ti­on for the log­in.

Sta­tis­tics

The­se are coo­kies that track the beha­vi­or of visi­tors. The­se include, among others, Goog­le Ana­ly­tics and Mato­mo.

Mar­ke­ting

This group includes, for exam­p­le, coo­kies that are set via Goog­le Ads (form­er­ly AdWords). Among other things, the­se are the coo­kies that are used for the dis­play of indi­vi­du­al adver­ti­sing.

Templates

Borlabs Coo­kie also offers tem­pla­tes for the most com­mon vari­ants.

After sel­ec­ting the most important infor­ma­ti­on is alre­a­dy dis­play­ed. For Goog­le Ana­ly­tics or Goog­le Tag Mana­ger, only the pro­per­ty must be spe­ci­fied.

Exter­nal media like iFrames are auto­ma­ti­cal­ly reco­gni­zed by Borlabs Coo­kie and assi­gned an opt-in. And for all plug­ins that have not yet been adapt­ed to Borlabs Coo­kie, the­re is the Script Blo­cker. This allows you to search and block indi­vi­du­al scripts. Only after the opt-in, the­se are then loa­ded.

Customized design

Even the appearance of the coo­kie opt-in in the front­end can be cus­to­mi­zed to your busi­ness. Through the inter­face you can cus­to­mi­ze the colors, texts and ani­ma­ti­ons as you like.

Wit­hout much work you can adapt the dis­play to your web­site.

How do I find out which cookies are set?

Good ques­ti­on, this can be rea­li­zed quite easi­ly. Your brow­ser (Chro­me, Fire­fox, Safa­ri) has a deve­lo­per con­so­le (Dev­Tools). In Chro­me, for exam­p­le, you can open it by pres­sing the F12 key on your key­board. So first go to your web page. Once it has finis­hed loa­ding, you can open the con­so­le.

The who­le thing looks then appro­xi­m­ate­ly like abo­ve. You will then have various tabs at your dis­po­sal, inclu­ding Con­so­le, Ele­ments and Appli­ca­ti­on. For the coo­kie infor­ma­ti­on we have to switch to the Appli­ca­ti­on tab.

On the left side you will find the tab Coo­kies and below it should be your domain. Click on it.

The­re you will find all coo­kies that are set by your web­site. You should now include all the­se coo­kies in your opt-in.

WP Rocket #

With the help of WP Rocket you can speed up the loa­ding time of your web­site. It is a pre­mi­um caching plug­in. Why load times are more important than befo­re?

In mid-June 2021, the Core Web Vitals will be acti­va­ted as a ran­king fac­tor for Goog­le. The loa­ding time of your web­site will thus affect your ran­king.

You can find out how your site per­forms in terms of Core Web Vitals by using the Goog­le Page­Speed Test.

With just a few clicks, you can cus­to­mi­ze your web­site here.

File Optimization

First, you should make sure that the fol­lo­wing check­bo­xes are set in the file opti­miza­ti­on:

• Mini­fy CSS
• Opti­mi­ze CSS dis­play
• Mini­fy Java­Script
• Java­Script delay­ed loa­ding
• Delay Java­Script exe­cu­ti­on

If you are still on a hos­ting that uses HTTP1.1, you should also enable the check­bo­xes:

• CSS mer­ge
• Mini­fy Java­Script

You can easi­ly find out which ver­si­on you are using via keydcn.

Alter­na­tively, you can test it in your brow­ser. Just go to your web­site and open the deve­lo­p­ment con­so­le (F12 in Chro­me).

Jump to the Net­work tab and then rel­oad the page.

In the Pro­to­col column, you can see if HTTP/1.1 or h2 is used. h2 stands for HTTP/2.

If you still have http1.1 enab­led, you should talk to your web host or chan­ge your web host if neces­sa­ry.

HTTP/2 allows mul­ti­ple data to be loa­ded in par­al­lel (mul­ti­plex­ing). With HTTP/1.1, a TCP con­nec­tion is requi­red for each file.

So you should defi­ni­te­ly use HTTP/2. So that your page is loa­ded as fast as pos­si­ble.

Media

Next, you should take care of the media. This includes images, vide­os and iFrames.

If you don’t use Lazy­Load yet, you should acti­va­te it here. To be on the safe side, you should check it first. If your the­me or ano­ther plug­in alre­a­dy has Lazy­Load enab­led, you don’t need to enable it again here.

Lazy­Load ensu­res that images are loa­ded with a delay when they enter the visi­ble area of the brow­ser.

Important: Lazy­Load is appli­ed to all images, inclu­ding your logo. Howe­ver, you should disable this. This also affects the FCP value of your Core Web Vitals.

You can exclude indi­vi­du­al images from the Lazy­Load by adding them under image or iframes excep­ti­ons.

You should enable the fol­lo­wing opti­ons for the media:

• Acti­va­te for images
• Enable for iFrames and Vide­os
• Replace You­Tube iFrame with thumb­nail.
• Add miss­ing image dimen­si­ons
• Disable Word­Press embeds
• Enable WebP caching

The­se are all quick wins that you can imple­ment wit­hout much effort.

WebP Express #

Do you know the new image for­mat WebP? You don’t? Then you should read on now.

WebP is a new gra­phics for­mat that makes it pos­si­ble to store images even smal­ler than befo­re. Espe­ci­al­ly on the web it is extre­me­ly hel­pful to enable fast loa­ding times even with lar­ge images.

See how much memo­ry you could save just by chan­ging the gra­phics for­mat:

If you have only 10 images on your page, you can easi­ly save 50% of the page size.

The pro­blem is that not all brow­sers sup­port WebP for­mats yet. The­r­e­fo­re, you should use the WebP Express plug­in.

It auto­ma­ti­cal­ly crea­tes copies of your images in WebP for­mat (JPEG and PNG). When you open your web­site, the plug­in checks if the brow­ser sup­ports WebP for­mats and deci­des which gra­phic for­mat to load based on that.

It could­n’t be simp­ler. For the who­le thing to work, howe­ver, your web host must have acti­va­ted a libra­ry for image pro­ces­sing.

Becau­se your ser­ver must take over the con­ver­si­on of the images. Howe­ver, the­re is also a sel­ec­tion available for this. Other­wi­se, it is best to ask your web host.

Redirection #

A small but nice tool that takes a lot of work off your hands. We know it, a web­site is alre­a­dy online for a long time, and you final­ly want to clean up or some­thing chan­ges in the link struc­tu­re.

How annoy­ing would it be if all your links that Goog­le inde­xed were sud­den­ly gone? And only becau­se you for­got to set up a 301 redi­rect to the new page?

To pre­vent this from hap­pe­ning to you again, it’s best to use Redi­rec­tion in the future. The plug­in moni­tors chan­ges to the per­ma­links on demand and auto­ma­ti­cal­ly crea­tes a 301 redi­rect.

In addi­ti­on to that, you can also add redi­rects manu­al­ly. Quite useful if you want to tem­po­r­a­ri­ly acti­va­te pages for actions from time to time.

And as an extra, you get a 404 log. Here you can see at any time which call has gene­ra­ted a 404 error.

Summary #

So, tho­se were our top 6 Word­Press plug­ins 2021, what are the most important plug­ins to remem­ber for you?