In this article we prepared some tips for who want to improve their WordPress web site in matter of performance, appearance, or SEO score. Installing or uninstalling those plugins are easy but before using those tips you should take a backup of your web site against unexpected effects.
This is not neccesary only for our tutorials, you should always take a backup of your web site when you commit to make comprehensive changes. So you can rollback to changes easily if the results didn’t satisfy you.
The most of those plugins mentioned here are used by many with proven benefits. In future, we are planning to share information about other WordPress plugins too.
So let’s begin.
Firstly, you can install plugins easily on your WordPress Admin Panel > Plugins page. First option is searching any plugin by keyword and install it. Second option is uploading archive files downloaded from WordPress’s Plugins Page or somewhere else.
You have to Activate the installed plugins once you installed.
The settings of the installed and activated plugins can be found at on your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Installed Plugins section.
Now, you ready to try plugins:
1. WP Super Cache
A caching plugin that speeds up your web site for visitors which is good for your website’s SEO score. It has 2+ million active installation currently.
An excerpt from developers of this plugin:
“This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts…”
For more detail about this plugin click here.
For activating the caching attribute on your web site, go to this plugin’s settings page after you installed and activated it. And select Caching On (Recommended) option and Update Status.
When you enabled the caching, you can test the generated cache files by clicking Test Cache button on the same page.
If you made a change on your web site and don’t see the effects at the same time, you may want to deactivate the caching or clear the cache files by using Delete Cache option.
You can set caching renewal time beside other advanced settings at Advanced Tab.
2. All in One SEO
With this plugin, you can define your website’s and article’s appearence on the search engines (on Google search results for example) and boost up your website’s SEO score which can lead to more visitors for your website.
It has 3+ million active users currently.
An excerpt from developers of this plugin:
“AIOSEO’s WordPress SEO plugin features are highly optimized for Google and other popular search engine algorithm because we follow the most up to date SEO standards and SEO best practices. We can honestly say that AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin in the world…”
For more detail about this plugin click here.
If you are aiming to reach more visitors, a good search engine optimisation (SEO) can be very useful beside quality content.
You should start AIOSEO Setup Wizard on the plugin settings page. You will define some SEO settings about your web site on that page. The free version has very nice features and if you want to get more features you can try the full version of course.
The snippet preview at setup wizard:
You can change your snippet view later on WP Dashboard > All in One SEO > Search Appearence.
After you completed setup wizard, All in One SEO tab becomes available with it’s dashboard, settings and particular SEO tools will be installed on your web site which includes an article SEO tool with score indicator.
On adding post screen, you will see the prompts for a better SEO score on the Page Analysis section at the bottom of this page (also when you adding your other posts generally), by installed AIOSEO plugin.
For better results, you can customize the plugin’s other settings.
3. CookieYes
Today, the cookie usage details on websites are defined in regulations of some countries (GDPR of EU for example). This plugin helps your website comply to these regulations.
It has a nice free plan for a relatively small websites. You can consider to use paid plans because it is making cookie management easy and to reach more features.
Click here to check plan comparison.
It has 1+ million active installations currently.
An excerpt from developers of this plugin:
“The CookieYes GDPR Cookie Consent plugin will assist you in making your website GDPR (RGPD, DSVGO) compliant by adding a cookie banner to your site…”
For more detail about this plugin click here.
After you installed and activated this plugin, you can create your cookieyes.com account easily, directly on your WordPress Dashboard. Don’t forget the verify your email address.
The default cookie notification of CookieYes is looking like this currently:
If you want to customize that cookie notification, go to your CookieYes Dashboard by clicking Go to Web App button:
On CookieYes Dashboard screen you will find cookie banner & cookie manager options beside usage information and more.
CookieYes Web App Dashboard is looking like this at this time:
4. Simple Lightbox
With this plugin, you can make your article images shown in a biggier and nice looking box (lightbox) when visitors click on the images.
Very easy to use, nice looking with customization options and free. For checking full feature list, support or donation details, click here.
You can find the plugin settings at your “WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Lightbox“after you installed and activated the plugin.
For a pure view, my settings are will be like:
Activation:
Grouping & UI:
After settings, let’s use this feature with article images. On editing post screen, upload your image and set title or other details:
Specify the link of image as “Media File”:
Now, you can check the result by previewing the post in new tab, just click the image:
That’s it.
Check our website for other useful tips & tutorials. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment below our articles.
