Whenever I make a new website, I don’t like to stuff it with all the plugins that I think that the website will someday use, or with all the plugins that I use on another websites. I like to start clean and to install only what is needed. As you may know, every plugin you install will eat up processing power whenever a page is loaded.

But, there are few plugins that I install on every website from the very begining. 

1. Akismet.

Akismet is an anti-spam plugin, that is already installed and you only have to get an API key and activate it. Don’t skip this step because once search engines discover your website you will start getting a lot of spam messages delivered directly to your inbox.

2. Contact Form 7

The necessity of a contact form is a long debate. I will just say this: how do you expect to be contacted by possible partners, or potential sponsors ? I use contact form because it is simply to use. Recently I started to install a complementary plugin to prevent contact form spam messages: “honeypot for contact form 7″.

3. Yoast SEO.

Any website, of any size and type, can’t ignore the traffic received from search engines. Even if there is no effort involved in search engine optimization, good and rich content will bring you visitors from search engines. If you want to improve the number of visits you receive, then it is a must to install this plugin. When I first started building WordPress sites I was using All in one SEO pack, but today I find Yoast SEO plugin much better.

4. User Locker.

If you don’t want to get your website hacked sooner or later, you have to be protected from brute force. Brute force means repetitive tries to guess your password. A script can run on your login form trying passwords until he gets in. This plugin will block the user after few failed login attempts, and will unlock it after a certain period of time passed. Don’t worry about locking you out of your admin panel, as you can easily reset if from cpanel. If it is your site, then you have access to cpanel in a way or another.

These are the plugins that I install on all new websites. On an average wordpress website I own or maintain, I have 10 to 20 plugins installed at any given time.