[WP plug-in] WordPress website optimization basic plug-in recommendation, wordpress css plug-in

Creating your own WordPress website is just the first step of a long-term plan. I don't mean to make you lose confidence. When you start to select plug-ins to let the website perform certain functions, the painstaking work begins formally. Plug ins can create a perfect user experience for website visitors and administrators. Using smart plug-ins can get some upgraded functions, including convenient browsing, intuitive menus, real-time feedback and spam prevention.

For millions of WordPress users, a large number of add-on programs may be the greatest advantage of this program. But under such circumstances, diversity can be good or bad. Looking at these excellent choices, it is really difficult to choose the plug-ins you really need. How to select a good plug-in from two plug-ins with similar functions? How can I make sure that the plug-in I choose is suitable for my website? These problems often leave users who are just beginning to use WordPress at a loss.

In fact, I have seen many bloggers recommend various plug-ins. To be honest, at the beginning, I followed the advice of others to install various plug-ins. I found various problems after the installation, because the installed plug-ins may not be compatible with the theme, or between plug-ins and plug-ins, so I had to call various technical methods to solve the problems after the installation. Although you don't need to master the programming language to use WordPress, if you can understand the relevant PHP language when there is a problem, you don't need to be as helpless as when I step on the thunder.

Although it is also recommended, I would like to tell my readers what purpose these plug-ins are installed for. If your theme does not match the plug-in, there are other equivalent plug-ins to replace it. You don't have to stick to one plug-in, but you need to know what kind of plug-ins should be installed for a healthy and complete WordPress blog, It is not limited to a certain plug-in.

In the next article, we will explore general WordPress plug-ins, rather than those specific WordPress Theme Dedicated plug-in.

1、 Website maintenance

1. Plugins for reducing spam comments

Optional plug-in: Akismet

Running and filtering spam comments with this plugin can help you save time for limiting, reading and replying to comments.

2. Ensure that there are no unnecessary 404 page plug-ins

Optional plug-ins:

404 Notifier (used to identify 404 errors) Redirection (repair 404 errors by redirection)

When a user tries to visit a page or article that does not exist on your website, he or she may see 404 error messages. This 404 error affects the user's perception, and also affects the search engine's goodwill towards you.

2、 Website acceleration

For the website we built with Wordpress, all the data content is stored in the "database". To provide the speed of the WP website, we need to solve the database problem and the picture problem. Basically, we have improved the speed on these two problems, and the speed of the website will also increase with the swish.

1. To solve the database operation, only two suggestions are given:

Use plug-ins to solve the problem of data redundancy Use plug-ins to reduce the problem of database connection

⑴ Plug in to solve database redundancy

Every time you create a new page or article on WordPress, you sometimes have to modify the content of these pages. If you modify the article many times, WordPress will generate some redundant data, which will occupy your MySQL space. For example, your article occupies 100KB of data base space. If you modify it five times, the space occupied by this article will rise to 500KB, If you have 100 similar operations, you will have 50M of space wasted.

The following plug-ins can help you solve this problem. They can optimize and delete the redundant data in the database.

Optional plug-ins:

WP Clean UpWP WeepWP OptimizeWP DBManager

⑵ Reduce database connection - install cache plug-in

When using cache plug-ins, we hope to solve the following problems:

Support SSL (HTTPS station)

Support CDN (not available for general websites)

Provide GZIP data compression function

Mini CSS/JS can be used to compress CSS and JS

Minify HTML can be used to compress web pages

PreLoad is available, that is, the page can be cached in advance. Otherwise, the cache will be generated when the page is first accessed, resulting in a relatively slow access speed

Recommended plug-ins:

W3 Total cache (powerful, complex settings, not suitable for novices) WP Super cache WP PerformanceFast Velocity MinifyAutooptimize (mainly used to compress the HTML, CSS and JS code of the website, and the cache function is not obvious) WP Rocket (paid)

Each cache plug-in has its own advantages and disadvantages. The first three models mainly serve as data cache, and the code compression function relies on Autooptimize. At present, after many tests, my choice is to use Fast Velocity Mini fy

Using cache plug-ins is easy to cause various problems, such as:

The website style is garbled and the content is not displayed. The website cannot be opened. The background cannot enter

When I first installed Fast Velocity Mini, the header of the page appeared garbled. At first, I thought it was hacked by hackers, but then I had to uninstall it and re debug it

Therefore, before activating such plug-ins, be sure to pay attention to the following:

It is very important not to activate the plug-ins of two Cache classes at the same time! Do not install the Cache plug-in on the website. After the website is completed and launched, you can open the Cache plug-in; Before activating the plug-in, it is recommended to make a backup of the website; If the website is abnormal, deactivate the corresponding plug-in; (This is also suitable for installing other plug-ins. If plug-ins and plug-ins are incompatible with each other, they are also screened through Deactive one by one.) If you can't even access the website background, go to File Management on the server, find the plug-in folder that caused the problem in the/wp content/plugins/folder, and delete it.

2. The image is too large, which is one of the important reasons for slowing down the opening speed of the website

⑴ Plug in for compressing pictures

As the main element in the current website, images will directly affect the opening speed of the website. Although the larger the image quality, the better, but extremely affect the efficiency of users visiting the page.

Because the source file size of photos is usually very large, after plug-in optimization, according to the image file format and compression ratio you choose, images can be compressed up to 5 times.

Available plug-ins:

ShortPixelCompress JPEG & PNG imagesWP SmushEWWW Image OptimizerSmush Image Compression and Optimization

At present, my approach is: because the official website of Compress JPEG&PNG images provides online compression function, I first upload the pictures from the local to the official website and then compress them for the first time. At the same time, the EWWW Image Optimizer plug-in is installed in the WP background, which can perform secondary compression during the upload process.

⑵ Plug in with delayed image loading

For a web page containing a large number of images, when it is opened for the first time, it does not need to load all the images, but only the images displayed on the first screen can be loaded. Only when the user pulls down the page can the request be triggered to continue loading. This will improve the speed of opening the web page. Not all users will pull down to browse all the contents of the web page, so it also saves bandwidth.

Available plug-ins:

A3 Lazy LoadBJ Lazy Load

Note: This plug-in is only useful for blogs with many pictures, so not every WP is required to install plug-ins. You can choose to install plug-ins according to the location of the blog.

Website SEO

1. Basic SEO plug-in

For those who are doing website optimization, although Wordpress program says that the system is very useful, one of its disadvantages is that its own SEO function is not perfect, and even some basic tag tags cannot be set. It is very difficult to configure SEO. Therefore, we must use plug-ins to improve the website's SEO system in order to get a better ranking.

Available plug-ins:

Yoast SEO All in One SEO Pack Simple Tags

My choice: Yoast SEO + Simple Tags ， Yoast SEO It is the best SEO plug-in at present, because I have only used this SEO plug-in, so I will talk about the specific use rules of this plug-in later.

Website security

Website security should be considered from two aspects: one is the security backup of the website, which solves the problem of bugs once the website is updated; the other is the attack defense of the website, which solves the problem of the website being attacked by others

1. Plug in for database backup

If your WordPress blog crashes or you need to reinstall WordPress, you can get all the latest pages, emails and comments in a convenient file, which can be automatically implemented through related plug-ins.

Optional plug-ins:

WP-DBManagerDuplicatorUpdraftPlusBackWPUpBackUp WordPressWP-DB-Backup

remarks:

1. There are three methods for website backup: one is through Wordpress backup plug-in, the second is manual backup, and the third is downloading database SQL files through FTP. (Details will be broken down later)

2. Every WordPress backup plug-in has its advantages and disadvantages. No matter which WordPress backup plug-in you choose, or in other ways, do not store the backup only on the website server. This is just to put all the eggs in one basket. If your server hardware fails or is hacked, your backup is meaningless. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to store backups on third-party storage services (such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, etc.).

3. No matter what kind of plug-ins, a large number of plug-ins will slow down the website. You can install plug-ins for backup when the website needs to be backed up. It is recommended to delete plug-ins when not backing up. I suggest that you back up every month. If you are not very diligent in updating, you don't need to back up too frequently.

2. Plugins for attack defense

As the website system with the largest number of users in the world, WordPress carries millions of blogs, enterprises, e-commerce and other types of websites, and is widely used by people in the online environment. But at the same time, it has become the focus of many hackers. Although Wordpress itself has done a lot of security protection, it is far from enough. To make your website more secure, you must use plug-ins to build a higher level of protection.

Available plug-ins:

BackWPupWPS Hide LoginWordfence SecurityHide My WP

Choice

Although plug-ins can optimize our website to a certain extent, more plug-ins will inevitably affect the website's performance. There are too many plug-ins loaded when the website is opened, which will also slow down the speed of the website.

Therefore, when installing plug-ins, it is necessary to distinguish the priority: which plug-ins must be installed and which are optional. Do not install too many plug-ins for the following reasons:

First: Too many plug-ins will actually affect the access speed of the website, resulting in too long code.

Second: some plug-ins have compatibility problems, which may lead to problems in your blog, such as: garbled code, site crash

Suggestions for using the plug-ins mentioned above are:

Plug ins that must be installed:

1. Wordence Security of security class

2. Data cache class WP Super Cache/Fast Velocity Mini fy

3. ShortPixel of image compression class

4. Yoast SEO of website SEO

5. UpdraftPlus for website backup

The summary is as follows:

For the optimization of images, it is recommended to install many pictures in the article. If there are few pictures, you can directly use Compress JPEG&PNG images to compress and upload them locally, so you don't need to install image compression plug-ins; Akismet, an automatic filtering plug-in for garbage comments, can not be installed if "comments must be approved manually" is set in the background; The data cleaning class WP Optimize plug-in does not need to be normally opened. It is usually closed, and cleaning is enabled once half a month later; The webmaster recommends installing the site map plug-in, but if you use the Yoast SEO plug-in, it is unnecessary to install the site map plug-in because Yoast has its own site map, which is why I did not mention the need to install the site map software above. If you do not install the Yoast SEO plug-in, the site map plug-in must still be installed; Other plug-ins need to be installed according to the personalized needs of their websites, and some basic editing plug-ins need to be installed according to the needs. Everyone has different habits, so they are not recommended uniformly.

epilogue

The above plug-ins are selected after I use them. They are relatively famous and have good effects. It has covered security, optimization, personalization and backup and restore. It may not be perfect, but it should be enough. Of course, you should also avoid blindly piling up all kinds of plug-ins, and do not install them on your own website when you see recommendations.