Top 5 WordPress FREE Plugins to Use in 2020

These are the Top WordPress Free Plugins to use on your Blog

What is a WordPress Plugin?

A plugin is basically a software written in the PHP programming language containing a group of functions that can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress sites.

What is the importance of WordPress Plugins?

WordPress plugins play a vital role in the management of any WordPress site. There is a popular saying that goes around there’s a plugin for everything. Plugins make it easier for users to add features to their website without any knowledge of coding.

What should be the number of plugins on a site?

Did you know that there are over 50,000 WordPress plugins? Now, it becomes really difficult to select the best of the best WordPress plugins for your blog.

With plugins, you can customize the site you’ve already built to better suit your needs and serve your visitors. But you’ve probably heard that having too many WordPress plugins on your website is bad.

There aren’t any hard and fast rules for how many plugins you can or can’t have. One of the most important factors that you must keep in mind is your hosting plan. For instance, for shared or budget cloud hosting, stick between 0 and 5 plugins. If you use cloud hosting, VPS hosting, or a dedicated server, you can run anywhere from 5 and 20 plugins on your site without any issues.

Wondering how to choose the best hosting plan for you? Here is How to Choose the Best Hosting for WordPress Site?

Dan Norris, the co-founder of WP Curve, recommends to never exceed 20 plugins.

What are the problems of using too many plugins?

Now the number and extent of the problems vary from plugin to plugin, how they’re coded, which ones are actually active, and more.

Slowing Down of Websites

The most common and most important problem that your site facing after having too many plugins is that it slows down.

Remember that, according to a report, 40% of visitors will exit a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Fast page loading speeds are essential to keeping site visitors. So the more plugins you install, the slower your site gets.

If you’re curious about page speed or how you can find the speed of your website? You need to check Google Speed – Get Faster Page Speeds using Google Search Console

Security Vulnerabilities

Did you know that just like mobile apps, some WordPress plugins can make your site more susceptible to security breaches? The number and extent of such breaches are increasing every year, so you need to really careful while installing any plugin.

Remember never install a plugin from sites like torrents. Though you get pro or paid plugins for free these are not safe. Same is the case with WordPress themes.

This occurs when malicious scripts are added to the code of a plugin. Websites can also become compromised when plugins are outdated.

According to Sucuri, plugins like RevSlider, Gravity Forms, and TimThumb, accounted for 25 per cent of all site hacks. All three plugins are out of date.

Increase in Downtime of Sites

Plugins can cause site crashes and lack of reliability. WordPress is an open-source project, so people can use, change, and share all WordPress software. That’s also why most plugins are free.

Bad Performance of Sites

For every plugin that you add to your site, more code is added to the browser. That’s more to process, so the less code there is, the better your site performance will be.

Conflict with Other Plugins

Installing too many plugins increase the chances of conflicting with other plugins. In such instances, the codes of one plugin crash with the coding of the other and thus both plugins does not work properly and even some instances create issues for the whole website.

Don’t Miss to Check This: Solve WordPress Issues: Site Health Check & Troubleshooting (Theme/Plugin Conflict)

Important Tips to keep in mind while using Plugins

Install Plugins you need

It is the simplest and most effective way. Never install those plugins you don’t need actually. Also, never use two plugins which serve the same purpose. For example, for SEO of a site, you can use Yoast SEO plugin or RankMath SEO plugin. Don’t install and use the two at the same time. Doing this not only saves you space but also increases your site speed.

Likewise, use only one plugin for spam protection or site security, one plugin for sitemap submission, and so on.

You should uninstall plugins that you no longer need or use. If a plugin isn’t important to your site’s functionality, go ahead and uninstall it. Also, removing inactive plugins from your site is another quick way to boost your website’s security.

The longer you wait to remove inactive and dangerous plugins, the more your site will suffer. Trim down your installed plugins list today.

Update Plugins

Among other important factors and tips, always keep your plugins updated. Regular updates are released for plugins often. These updates include important patches that fix holes in a plugin’s security.

Also, whenever installing a new plugin do check when it was last updated. If it has not been updated for about years, never install such plugins.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that prior to installing any new plugin whether this plugin is tested for your current version of WordPress or not.

Install Reputable Plugins

Keep these tips in mind while installing any plugin:

• Only install updated plugins. Never install out-dated plugins.
• You should also check out the total number of downloads and reviews that a plugin has.
• Install those plugins which have over 100,000 downloads and at least four stars is a good rule of thumb.
• Install those plugins which have support tab available.
• Review a plugin’s code before downloading to make sure that it’s as clean and short as possible.

[VIDEO] Top 5 WordPress FREE Plugins to use in 2020 [Urdu/Hindi]

VIDEO TIMESTAMPS:

• [00:03] What is the total number of WordPress Plugins (2020)?
• [00:59] How to install a WordPress Plugin?
• [01:19] How many WordPress Plugins should I install on my WP blog?
• [02:26] Easy Table of Contents WP Plugin
• [04:35] RankMath SEO WP Plugin
• [06:44] Site Kit by Google
• [08:10] WP Last Modified Info
• [08:36] Secret tip to increase posts ranking (SEO) in 2020
• [10:15] Jetpack by WordPress
• [11:35] Other important WordPress Plugins