There’s a reason WordPress powers so many websites across the internet

Its functionality knows almost no bounds. 

But let’s not go wild. Adding plugin after plugin to your website is going to slow it down — and we mean really slow it down. This is why you need to choose wisely during your business website design phase and select a solid foundation of must-have plugins. 

Here’s what you need to get started. 

SEO 

SEOPress 

Solid SEO insight is crucial for any website manager or owner, and yours is no exception. The SEOPress plugin is among the best SEO solutions in the business, providing a slick and sophisticated route to optimisation. 

Spam Protection 

Akismet 

Dealing with spam is an important concern when it comes to website performance and user experience. Akismet makes this easy. 

Page Performance 

WP Rocket 

While SEO Press provides high-level SEO analysis, WP Rocket helps with a number of key optimisation factors by directly improving page performance and load time. We always seek to optimise page performance with our website services, and WP Rocket can complement this with a simple and straightforward process. 

Short Pixel 

Short Pixel helps you reduce images to smaller sizes and configurations, helping to make your website lean, mean, and fighting fit. You certainly need images and multimedia to enrich the experience for your users, but this should not come at the expense of performance. With Short Pixel, it doesn’t have to. 

Heartbeat Control 

WordPress’ Heartbeat API allows the server and the browser to stay in contact with one another. It’s a useful feature, but it also takes up a lot of resources, which can impact page performance. Heartbeat Control makes it possible to reduce the frequency and configuration of communication via the Heartbeat API, optimising performance for your website. WP Rocket also provides this function, so you don’t need to deploy both. However, you need to make sure you are covered either way. 

Security  

Shield Security 

You need to be able to keep your website safe from malware and other threats. This is where Shield Security can make all the difference, providing effective malware scanning and firewall functionality for your WordPress-based page.

Really Simple SSL 

SSL is an encrypted protocol that keeps your website — and your users’ data — safe. Really Simple SSL makes it easy to redirect pages to the SSL protocol, adding an extra level of security and increasing user trust in your brand. You will still need to gain an SSL certificate, though, as Really Simple SSL will not automatically secure your site. 

With these seven critical plugins as your foundation, you will be able to keep your website performing at its best, as long as you go easy on the additional features.