Many of us are taking a moment to acknowledge what we’re grateful for: good health and happiness, friends and family, a filling meal, and much more. And the tech experts at Web Design Relief would like to add website plugins to the list! The right plugins can completely change and improve how we use and experience websites and make a designer’s job much easier. Here are the WordPress plugins we’re most grateful for right now.
The WordPress Plugins Designers Are Thankful For
With over three million downloads and counting, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is one of the top-ranked WordPress plugins available—and one of our favorites too! Many plugins focus on a single aspect to improve website use, but AIOSEO addresses everything a website needs to succeed. It offers expert and easy-to-use optimization for search engines in a time where the algorithms for tech giants like Google are more difficult than ever to understand.
AIOSEO really wows us with its range of helpful (and free!) security features. With just a few clicks, you can block bots from trying to brute-force their way into your website, and whitelist IP addresses you know are safe (like your own). The all-star lineup of SEO analyzers and security tools makes AIOSEO a plugin we’re very thankful for.
Another popular WordPress plugin is Akismet. This plugin scans your comments and contact form submissions and compares them to a comprehensive database of spam messages. The database isn’t limited to English language comments or contacts—Akismet can catch spam and phishing attempts in almost any language.
Akismet regularly updates their database to make sure your author website is protected from the latest trends in phishing attempts. It stops spam from automatically going live on your website and allows you to review comments or other public messages before they’re published. We’re grateful to Akismet for stopping spam at the source, rather than us having to trudge through spam comments and manually delete them! And you’ll be thankful you can interact with actual readers and fellow writers instead of battling spambots.
At Web Design Relief, we love a good image carousel or slideshow! However, they can be tricky to create and even trickier to maintain on responsive web pages. Meta Slider makes the process simple. Their slider-creators are intuitive and offer countless different features and design options for any web page. You can create multiple slideshows for different kinds of media (like images, videos, or text slides) and place them exactly where you need them. We definitely appreciate having a tool that allows book covers, author vlogs, or published works to really shine without technical hassles.
If you’re redesigning your author website, Restricted Site Access is a must-have plugin. It limits access to your website by IP address and instead displays a message or login page for any visitors without clearance, so no one gets to see your website under construction except you.
Images are getting bigger than ever! Even smartphones are now capable of taking pictures with 4000+ pixel resolution. Unfortunately, while extra-large photos look great, they can slow down your website to almost a standstill. Smush fixes that! This plugin compresses and optimizes photos automatically without reducing the quality of the image. We’re always grateful when a plugin allows us to have it all—high-quality photos and super-fast web pages!
Website caching is the process of storing web files (like photos and content) online to eliminate delays when visitors access that content. However, letting your author website cache become too full can actually slow down your web pages. Caching may also keep old content on your website even after you’ve updated. Thankfully, WP SuperCache is one of the most comprehensive plugins available to manage your cache. You can use it to automatically clear your website cache at preset intervals, custom-tailor cached content for frequent visitors, and so much more!
In today’s world of cybercrime and hacking, having a safe, secure website is something we can all be thankful for. For even more protection, check out more security tools for your author website.
If you don’t feel tech-savvy enough to make updates to your website, or if you’re ready to create a new author website, the experts at Web Design Relief can help! We’ll design a website that suits your needs and your budget—and that features the WordPress plugins to keep your website working at top functionality and safety! Schedule your free consultation call today.
Not only do we offer assistance with web design, but we’ve been providing traditional publishing and self-publishing options for writers since 1994, and we invite you to call or email us with your questions.
Question: Which WordPress plugin are you thankful for?
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