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 Pre-installed WordPress Plugins Guide
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Pre-installed WordPress Plugins Guide

 

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms used by newbies and professional developers. It comes with pre-installed plugins, allowing you to begin customizing your website the way you want.

When you install WordPress, some plugins are already available in the WordPress Dashboard by default. You can choose to retain or remove these plugins. However, it is only best practice to keep the plugins needed for your website. Take time to review these pre-installed plugins to see if they will benefit your site.

Here is a list of the pre-installed plugins you may see when you install WordPress with Softaculous. Please click each link to see the plugin's description and features.

We have listed helpful articles to guide you with your WordPress journey! Please see the Related Articles ⤵ section below.

Professional Tip / Best Practice

As you review the pre-installed plugins, you will find that several of them provide the same function for email marketing/newsletters. Narrow down which plugin, if any, you want to use on your site. If you are not going to use the plugin, make sure to remove it from your WordPress site. Only keep the active plugins you know are being used on your site and remove any other ones not used. As you maintain your plugins, be mindful of duplicate plugins that provide the same function. They may override or compete with each other's functions. Maintaining only used plugins and removing duplicate ones helps your site to run better and means fewer items to update and maintain going forward.

Akismet Anti-Spam

Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way to protect your blog from spam. It keeps your site protected even while you sleep. To start, activate the Akismet plugin and then go to your Akismet Settings page to set up your API key.

Advantages
  • It has the automatic feature of checking all comments, filtering out those that look like spam, and putting them away in the Spam section.
  • It gives visibility to see the number of approved comments per user.
  • It has a feature that outright blocks the worst spam, saving disk space and speeding up your website.
Disadvantages
  • Some legitimate comments may be flagged as spam.
  • Once Akismet marks a user as a spammer, all comments from that user will be blocked.
A how-to guide on Akismet Anti-Spam

Creative Mail

Email marketing designed specifically for WordPress, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. Send newsletters, promotions, updates, and transactional e-commerce emails. Start for free and upgrade when you grow.

Advantages
  • Automatic syncing of contacts and building of marketing lists.
  • Deeply connected to website and WooCommerce store.
  • Establishes better branding
  • Provides free access to an integrated photo library to make email marketing campaigns with award-winning images.
Disadvantages
  • This plugin will not work on the WordPress version lower than 4.6.
A how-to guide on Creative Mail

Hello Dolly

This is not just a plugin. It symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly. When activated, you will randomly see a lyric from Hello, Dolly in the upper right of your admin screen on every page.

Advantages
  • There are not many advantages to this plugin unless you are looking to develop your own plugin.
  • You get some amazing "Hello, Dolly" quotes in your WordPress Dashboard!
Disadvantages
  • None

HostGator Plugin

As we seek to improve your web hosting experience, we integrated your WordPress site into your HostGator control panel using the HostGator plugin. This plugin will allow you to manage your WordPress website and HostGator control panel, including performance, security, and update features. Please visit the WordPress - HostGator Plugin article for more information about the HostGator plugin.

Advantages
  • You can manage your website and control panel without switching to different systems all the time.
  • Create a 'Coming Soon' page while you build your WordPress site.
  • Configure and clear caching for your site.
Disadvantages
  • This plugin is only available in new WordPress installations created with the HostGator Softaculous application and cannot be installed from WordPress.org.
  • If you do not see recent changes on your WordPress site, you'll need to check the HostGator Plugin's cache settings and clear the cache function.

Jetpack

Security, performance, and marketing tools made by WordPress experts. Jetpack keeps your site protected so you can focus on more important things.

Advantages
  • Allows theme installation and management. The mobile theme enables users to be presented with a mobile theme instead of a regular one.
  • Security using SSO.
  • Social sharing by adding buttons to posts which allows visitors to shared content.
  • Contact forms for posts and pages.
  • Generating XML Sitemaps which is helpful for search engine indexing.
  • Publishing by email where users can publish posts by sending an email.
  • Spam filtering and site optimization.
  • Make Payments by adding payment buttons on the customer's site.
  • Brute force attack protection is where the user is safe from spam, suspicious sign-in attempts, and online attacks.
  • Extra sidebar widgets and customization allow users to add custom sidebar widgets like social icons, RSS and Twitter embeds, upcoming events, etc.
  • Marketing automation by publishing to social media.
  • Uptime monitoring where customers can get an email when the site is down.
  • Custom CSS allows users to add CSS codes without messing with the theme, which stays intact even after updates.
For Premium users:
  • Earn revenue by displaying advertisements on the site.
  • It has VaultPress, which automatically creates backups and does security scanning.
  • Allows users to upload videos to the website hosted on WordPress.com, lessening the load from your server.
Disadvantages
  • Resource-extensive
  • Expensive when purchasing its advanced features
A how-to guide on Jetpack

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a WordPress pop-up plugin that helps you grow your email list and sales with email pop-ups, exit-intent pop-ups, floating bars, and more!

You can also try out Creative Mail, an email marketing tool.
Advantages
  • The builder's drop and drag interface is very user- and mobile-friendly.
  • It has non-interruptive pop-ups that improve conversion rates and do not interfere with site visitors' activities.
  • It gives plenty of customization options to create any pop-up. It allows users to set precisely when and where this pop-up will appear.
  • OptinMonster also has customized templates for ease of use.
  • There are no restrictions on the number of pop-ups users can create.
  • Animation is an additional feature that users can use to customize their pop-ups.
  • It integrates with today's most popular digital marketing tools.
Disadvantages
  • Some of OptinMonster best features are available at a high price.
  • Since the plugin is commonly used, it's highly likely that site visitors are already accustomed to seeing the same pop-up templates from other sites too.
  • It has no internal analytics.
A how-to guide on OptinMonster
  • OptinMonster - YouTube - Want to know how OptinMonster can help you grow your email list and boost your revenue? Check out this short OptinMonster demo to find out how.

WPForms Lite

Beginner-friendly WordPress contact form plugin.

Advantages
  • Securely collect payments with Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.Net to get more income streams from your website.
  • It provides a form that can build marketing campaigns by sending form entries to services like Mailchimp and Drip.
  • Provides forms for customer surveys and polls and generates reports for these surveys.
  • It allows users to create unlimited forms without coding and receive responses by email.
Disadvantages
  • Advanced features available in premium plans are a bit pricey.
  • WPForms do not sell individual extensions like Ninja Forms or Caldera Forms.
A how-to guide on WPForms Lite

Yoast SEO

The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps, and much more. It's one thing to build your website and another to have people find your site online. The Yoast SEO plugin provides tools and configurations to help you with SEO for your WordPress website.

Advantages
  • SEO configuration is made accessible to users of any level.
  • Provides SEO settings that improve your site, from title configuration to auto-generated XML sitemaps.
  • Helps optimize website content for search engines
  • Enhances user readability. The plugin will help you with the best number of words for your subheadings and the use of passive voice, among other SEO elements.
  • Customizes social media (Twitter and Facebook) post-sharing snippets.
  • Helps detect issues with website indexes.
  • Defines the cornerstone articles for your website.
Disadvantages
  • Unable to definite canonical URLs
  • Resource-extensive causing slow site speed
  • Needs the premium version for advanced SEO settings
A how-to guide on Yoast SEO

We created support articles to guide you in installing WordPress.

Need help choosing the right plugins? Check out these articles.

Looking for plugin support articles? Please visit the following articles for more information.

 

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