When you’re building a website, be it for the cannabis industry or any other industry, there are specific types of WordPress plugins that help extend the functionality of your website.
Some are cannabis industry specific, like WP Dispensary, while others are more generalized.
Your cannabis business deserves to operate at top shelf levels at all times, and these WordPress plugins will help move your business forward online.
WordPress plugins for the cannabis industry
WP Dispensary was not the first plugin built for the cannabis industry, and with the growth rate the industry currently has, we will not be the last. Hell, we’ve already built add-ons that help extend WP Dispensary and have more in the pipeline.
But regardless of how fast the industry is currently moving, there are still limited options available for cannabis businesses when it comes to WordPress.
That’s why it’s important to branch out from the typical “weed companies need to do X” mentality and find solutions to real life business problems that transcend industries.
This post aims to do just that. I’ve narrowed down plugins by type and am giving you the top three options (in my opinion), along with links to do additional exploring.
Why WordPress?
This is the first question we must answer. In short, because it’s open source, built by some of the best developers in the world and constantly growing in it’s abilities and popularity – WordPress powers over 26% of the entire internet!
WordPress SEO Plugins
Optimizing your dispensary for search engines should be at the top of every website owner’s priority list.
Different people will tell you that X is the right thing to focus on for traffic, but over the last decade search has been the one constant in an ever-changing sea of social media.
So setting yourself up with the proper search engine optimization will go a long way in the growth of your website’s traffic and popularity.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular choices for SEO.
All in One SEO Pack
The most downloaded plugin for WordPress (almost 30 million downloads). Use All in One SEO Pack to automatically optimize your site for Search Engines
SEO Wizard
SEO Wizard is an all-in-one seo solution. Post/page analysis, social media, link juggernaut, auto linking, 404 monitor, redirects, robots.txt & more.
Yoast SEO
Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using Yoast SEO plugin.
WordPress Security Plugins
Beyond making sure that your website is set up to get the most traffic from Google as possible, you need to lock things down.
According to stats From 40,000+ WordPress Websites in Alexa Top 1 Million, over 70% of the WordPress installations are vulnerable to hacks.
Below are plugins that were built by security professionals and are made to help keep your website locked down and much, much harder for hackers to get through your protective layer.
Wordfence Security
Secure your website with Wordfence. Powered by the constantly updated Threat Defense Feed, our Web Application Firewall stops you from getting hacked. Wordfence Scan leverages the same proprietary feed, alerting you quickly in the event your site is compromised. Our Live Traffic view gives you real-time visibility into traffic and hack attempts on your website. A deep set of addtional tools round out the most complete WordPress security solution available.
Sucuri Security
The Sucuri Security WordPress Security plugin is free to all WordPress users. It is a security suite meant to complement your existing security posture. It offers it’s users four key security features for their website, each designed to have a positive affect on their security posture:
All In One WP Security & Firewall
This plugin is designed and written by experts and is easy to use and understand. It reduces security risk by checking for vulnerabilities, and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security practices and techniques.
WordPress Social Media Plugins
Now that you know your website is secure from would-be hackers, you need to find a way to let visitors easily share your content.
Sure, you could beg for retweets or likes on Facebook in your website’s content directly, but these plugins will help add stylish buttons to your site with a wide arrange of options.
Social Media Widget by Acurax
A Simple WordPress Social Media Widget Plugin Which Allow You To Add Widgets Which Links Social Media Buttons to Your Social Network Profiles Twitter, Facebook,Pinterest, Youtube, Rss Feed, Linkedin, Google plus…
MashShare
MashShare – The Social Media Ecosystem (Twitter counts supported). A free Social Media Plugin, professional and highly customizable ecosystem for social media sharing and optimizing of your valuable content.
Ultimate Social Media Plus
You can add icons for RSS, Email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, “Share” (covering 200+ other social media platforms) and upload custom icons of your choice.
WordPress Cannabis Plugins
This post wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t include some marijuana plugins for WordPress to help your businesses online presence.
Below are three different plugins that we believe will help put your dispensary business become the top shelf website that you deserve.
WP Dispensary
The complete marijuana menu solution for WordPress, WP Dispensary is the top shelf solution for cannabis business owners who are looking to have control over how and where your dispensary menu is displayed.
Dispensary Coupons
Easily add coupons to your website and show them off with a simple shortcode or widget. This add-on was built to extend the WP Dispensary plugin, so when adding new coupons to your site, you’ll be able to select which items in your dispensary menu the coupon is good for.
Dispensary Locations
For the entrepreneur who’s currently operating multiple marijuana dispensary locations, this extension for WP Dispensary will let you easily manage all of the locations from the same menu.
WordPress Backup Plugins
Once you have your content in place, the social media marketing set up and the SEO in place, it’s time to ensure that you don’t lose anything if your server goes down.
That’s where the backup plugins come into play. The plugins below will help you set up backups of your database and files, ensuring that even if you have your site crash, you don’t lose anything in the process.
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus simplifies backups (and restoration). Backup into the cloud (Amazon S3 (or compatible), Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace Cloud, DreamObjects, FTP, Openstack Swift, UpdraftPlus Vault and email) and restore with a single click. Backups of files and database can have separate schedules. The paid version also backs up to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, SFTP, SCP, and WebDAV.
WP-DB-Backup
WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.
Duplicator
The Duplicator gives WordPress administrators the ability to migrate, copy or clone a site from one location to another. The plugin also serves as a simple backup utility. The Duplicator supports both serialized and base64 serialized string replacement
Additional Resources
Now that you have some of the basics of what WordPress plugins your website should be using, you can spend some time going over these additional resources and information.
As always, leave a comment or submit a support ticket if you have any questions that we can help with!
- The best WordPress plugins revealed by 39 WordPress enthusiasts
- WordPress plugins round up by BobWP
- 37 Essential WordPress Plugins You Should Know
- 27 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for 2016
- Best WordPress Plugins: 40 Experts Share Their Favorite WordPress Plugins
- Best WordPress plugins: Essentials every blog needs
You provided really fantastic info about WordPress plugins, Thank you for posting helpful info for marijuana dispensaries.
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You’re a rockstar in WordPress plugins! Thanks for sharing this helpful resource for cannabis dispensaries.