The Most Effective Free WordPress Plugins For Writers And Authors
There are numerous free WordPress plugins available for writers and authors.
If you are serious about writing promotion, book marketing, and author platform building, you will likely choose a self-hosted WordPress site.
To maximize the value of all of your posts and pages, you need plugins that enhance site efficiency, increase site traffic, and, consequently, boost your book sales.
You must also ensure that your WordPress site is safe.
how to choose a free plugin for wordpress
Here is a list of free WordPress plugins for authors and writers. All of them are user-friendly, practical, useful, and have excellent customer service.
You devote a great deal of effort to writing blog articles and other material, and you want to attract as many visitors as possible from social media, Google Search, and other search engines.
You should avoid wasting your important writing time on on-site maintenance, performance optimization, security and backups, and especially social network posting.
For these jobs and many others, the WordPress plugin directory is packed with useful and practical solutions. The WordPress interface makes it simple to add plugins to your site.
However, you should constantly verify the number of downloads whenever you are considering a free plugin. Before installing a plugin, you should evaluate its ratings and forum activity. The same principle applies to choosing free WordPress themes.
In addition, it is a good idea to create a sandbox site as a separate component of your WordPress hosting. It allows you to test new plugins and themes before integrating them into your actual site.
There are numerous popular WordPress plugins available to you if you utilize a free WordPress website.
This list, however, is for a brand-new, self-hosted website only.
akismet anti-spam
When you enable comments on your website, comment spam protection is an absolute must. Always the first plugin we installed on a new website is Akismet.
It is the most popular security plugin for WordPress, installed on over 5 million sites. There is a paid version available, but the free version provides more than sufficient protection for practically all bloggers.
Installation is simple and quick. After installing the plugin via the WordPress dashboard, you must obtain a free API key and verify a few fundamental parameters.
You will likely never view it again after that. However, it will secure your website 24 hours a day.
In your WordPress discussion settings, you can configure an additional anti-comment spam measure.
With these options, you may regulate every remark and be absolutely certain that no spammers will gain access to your site. Akismet will catch between 95 and 98 percent of spam if you do not moderate it.
We have used it for a sufficient amount of time to know how effectively it works.
wordfence security
Every new WordPress site is equipped with Wordfence security.
It's a free plugin that ensures your site is protected around-the-clock against malicious actors.
With Wordfence on, you are safe from the vast majority of hackers and brute force attacks.
Activating the plugin is all that is required. The default settings are sufficient for website security. But they can be modified.
Using the scan, you may rapidly determine whether or not your website is functioning properly.
If you receive a warning, it is typically simple to locate and resolve the issue.
Website security should not be taken lightly.
Fortunately, Wordfence prevents this from occurring.
ninja forms
There are several form builders and plugins available for WordPress.
However, you typically only need to establish a contact form on one page of your website.
Several contact form plugins have been utilized by me. Ninja forms, however, stands out for their ease of use and functionality.
It is free, easy to use, and has no impact on the speed of your website's loading time.
With a variety of drag-and-drop custom fields, you can construct custom forms and opt-in forms in a matter of minutes. You may also configure email auto-replies.
In all honesty, a plugin for a contact form should be dependable, easy to set up, and simple to use. Ninja Forms meets every need.
post smtp mailer
If you have a contact form on your site, it uses the WordPress email function.
WordPress emails also send you admin notices, as well as auto-updating of plugins.
But you have no record of the emails that you have received.
Post SMTP solves the problem. You can find every email either sent or received in the log. From there, you can check or resend emails.
It also logs any auto-replies you might use on your site.
There is an easy setup wizard to get started. Then you can quickly check and monitor all your WordPress emails.
In the past, I used a paid premium plugin to get all these tools.
But now, of course, I’m very happy to have this free plugin that does an even better job.
autoptimize
You probably have a cache plugin, or you use Cloudflare or a similar CDN.
But with any of these, minifying your CSS and Javascripts files is not an easy task. One small mistake or setting can break your site.
Autoptimize makes it easy to minify your files with just a few quick settings. It can also optimize Google fonts.
The default settings will work for most blogs. But you can fine-tune your settings if you wish.
With more than one million users, it is now one of the most popular plugins on WordPress.