When first starting a WordPress site you may be overwhelmed even by the basics. But then you will realize how easy it is to create a great site with all the bells and whistles that only much bigger websites used to have.

In the past it was almost impossible for an average person to have all these features, but those times are gone forever. Now you can literally do anything with your site within minutes. And your best friends are called: plugins.

In this article I will show you 11 plugins that you will want to use to elevate your site from “Hello world” to the skies.

Under Construction Plugin

Till your site is very underdeveloped you can make great use of this plugin.

Just go to Settings / UnderConstruction on the left navigation bar of WordPress and turn Under Construction Mode on. From this moment all your visitors will see an Under Construction Page, but you will see your page from within WordPress when editing your content. You can just as easily make the website visible again.

In the Design and Content tab of this plugin you can highly Customize how you Construction Page should look like, it has a lot of themes to choose from.

Yoast SEO Plugin

This plugin will help a lot in writing good posts and pages, it will check all your content for SEO optimization, you can edit snippets, it will even check your language and make suggestions. Nice little tool that is worth installing.

Google XML Sitemap Plugin

It needs no extra effort besides installing, it will instantly create a sitemap.xml file on your site that you can submit to Google Webmaster tools.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Also a great plugin that you will need to attach your site to Google Analytics.

Social Media Share Buttons

There are lots of social media share plugins (we will also recommend one more), but this one is an easy and elegant one that you can use with minimal effort.

With half a dozen clicks you can make all your posts and pages likeable and shareable via social media and I guess I don’t have to emphasize how important it is these days. Specially that you won’t get too much attention from Google and other search engines in the first 6 months, so using social media the right way is absolutely vital.

Once installed and activated go to “Ultimate Social Media Icons” on the left pane and make the settings. You just have to choose the sharing services and where they should be displayed, easy as that.

Is your blog already connected to social media? If not, then do it now!

Social Pug

Social Pug is a great alternative to the previous one. It’s huge advantage is that it has floating share buttons. What does it mean? Just look at the left site of this page. Those buttons are always there no matter where you scroll, so anyone can easily share your post any time. You can also add share buttons under the title of your post.

UpdraftPlus Plugin

If you have already played around with the desing and posted a few posts you will not want to lose that all.

This plugin can create a backup of your site with the press of a button. You can also very easily link it to Google Drive, so when you press that button it will immediately create a backup and upload it to your Drive.

MaxButtons Plugin

Do you need a nice button somewhere? Look no further, this plugin is great for that.

Popup Builder Plugin

Do you want to create a popup? This plugin is by far the easiest to use and even the free version can be highly customized.

Ad Inserter Plugin

Maybe it’s a bit early, but once you have a couple of posts and your site looks good, you will need this tool for installing Google Adsense to your site.

Elementor Page Builder

There are many page builders out there, most of them are really bad and clumsy. Elementor is one of the best page builders out there.

And though most of the time you will stick to the basic tools when writing a post or creating a page, but if you ever need to create a custom page with a lot of images, columns, rows, extra elements, you will be glad to have Elementor at your hand.

These 11 plugins are great to start width and you will need these (or some similar ones) to create a great, modern site. I have personally tested and used a lot of WordPress plugins, these are by far the best and easiest to use.

Do you know any other great and useful WordPress plugins? Share in the comment section below!