With Full Site Editing (FSE), every aspect of the site can be designed and managed directly from the block editor, offering unprecedented flexibility and control over elements. However, to take full advantage of this potential, it is essential to use the right plugins.
In this article, we will delve into five types of essential plugins essential for improving the functionality, security, performance, and management of WordPress sites in FSE.
Table of Contents
1. Plugin SEO: Rank Math o Yoast SEO
Search engine optimization is critical to ensure that your WordPress site is visible and attracts organic traffic. After all, you can’t sell anything in an empty room. Rank Math and Yoast SEO are among the major players in the world of plugins for SEO in WordPress, each of which has strengths and weaknesses.
Rank Math is a relatively new but very powerful freemium plugin, known for its intuitive interface and wide range of features offered for free. Rank Math allows you to optimize content directly from the block editor, offering real-time SEO suggestions, keyword analysis, and markup schema support. This plugin is especially beneficial for those using FSE, as it seamlessly integrates SEO optimization with site design, improving visibility without leaving the editor.
Yoast SEO, on the other hand, is an industry veteran with more than a decade of experience and millions of active installations. Yoast is known for its traffic light system that clearly shows how to optimize content based on SEO best practices. Yoast also integrates with the block editor, providing a user-friendly experience that guides the user in optimizing titles, meta descriptions and readability of content. With FSE, Yoast allows you to manage SEO not only at the post and page level, but also at the template and section level of the site, ensuring that every part is optimized for search engines.
2. Site Optimization: WP Super Cache or WP Fastest Cache
Site performance is crucial to retaining visitors and improving search engine rankings. With Full Site Editing, WordPress has taken a step forward in performance, but using a caching plugin is critical to ensure that the site remains fast and responsive. WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache are two excellent solutions for this purpose.
WP Super Cache is one of the most popular caching plugins on WordPress, developed by Automattic. This plugin creates static versions of site pages, reducing the load on the server and speeding up loading times. With FSE, where every part of the site can be managed as a block, caching becomes essential to avoid slowdowns. WP Super Cache offers three caching modes (mod_rewrite, PHP and legacy caching), allowing you to choose the solution that best suits your needs without compromising site speed.
WP Fastest Cache, as the name suggests, stands out for its ease of use and effective optimizations. The plugin combines several caching methods, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript minification, GZIP compression and browser cache expiration management. For FSEusers, WP Fastest Cache is particularly useful because it helps maintain high performance even with complex layouts and heavy multimedia content.
3. Image Optimization: Converter for Media
Images are an essential component of any website, but they can significantly slow down page loading if they are not optimized properly. Converter for Media is a freemium plugin that solves the problem of images by automatically converting them to lighter, more modern formats such as WebP or AVIF.
Converter for Media is especially useful for sites using FSE, where images play a crucial role in site design and structure. This plugin not only reduces the size of images, but does so in a way that is transparent to the user, keeping visual quality intact. This is critical to ensure that the site remains fast and accessible even with a large amount of visual content.
4. Security: Wordfence or Solid Security
Security is a priority for any website, and WordPress is no exception. With FSE, where every part of the site is customizable, protection against attacks and vulnerabilities is even more important. Wordfence and Solid Security (formerly known as iThemes Security) are two essential plugins that offer advanced protection for your WordPress site.
Wordfence is one of the most comprehensive security plugins available for WordPress. It offers a built-in firewall, malware protection, site scanning and more. With Wordfence, you can monitor site activity in real time, receive alerts about potential threats, and block attacks in progress. This level of protection is essential for an FSE-based site, where design and content security is crucial.
Solid Security is known for its simplicity and comprehensive approach to security. This plugin provides robust protection against brute force attacks, SQL injections and other common types of threats. Solid Security is especially useful for FSE users because it incorporates backup and recovery tools that ensure that the site can be recovered quickly in the event of a compromise.
5. Extension of Editor Functionality: Greenshift or Spectra
WordPress’ Full Site Editing is powerful, but to push beyond the capabilities of the block editor, it is useful to use plugins that add additional functionality. Greenshift and Spectra are two plugins that greatly expand what you can do with the WordPress block editor.
Greenshift is a versatile plugin that introduces advanced blocks for creating dynamic and interactive layouts. With Greenshift, you can add animations, parallax effects and more, all without having to write a single line of code. This plugin is ideal for those who want to create highly customized and modern sites, taking full advantage of the potential of FSE. A great strength of Greenshift is the wide range of tutorials available, which explain how to create advanced designs.
Spectra, formerly known as Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg, is a plugin that adds specialized blocks to improve typography, space management, and visual presentation of the site. Spectra is especially useful for those who want to create clean, professional-looking sections of the site, offering tools that make FSE even more powerful and flexible.
Conclusion
Full Site Editing has transformed the way we create and manage WordPress sites, but to make the most of it, having the right essential plugins. The plugins discussed in this article offer a range of features that improve site security, performance, SEO, and aesthetics, ensuring that your design is not only visually appealing, but also secure and performs well.
By choosing the right plugins, you can optimize every aspect of your FSE-based WordPress site, creating a superior user experience and ensuring that your site achieves and maintains a high level of quality. With these solutions, you will be able to meet the challenges of FSE and take full advantage of its potential to create modern, secure and search engine optimized websites.
