Last Update October 12th, 2017 – I wrote the original posts a few years ago and wrote another post a few months ago about plugins to speed up WordPress.
Some of these plugins are a must, others are just personal preference that help me with a particular issue I was having.
When I’m working with clients, I’m always finding new plugins to fit their needs, but in the end these are the ones I use all the time.
All In One WP Security & Firewall
A comprehensive security plugin. It helps you prevent brute force attacks, lock acconts, change your login URL, whitelist your IP and overall secure your website.
Contact Form 7
The most used WordPress form, together with Contact Form DB can be very easy to manage people contacting you. Now it has a new editor and also support for recaptcha. I also use Ninaj Forms. The free version works well, but if you a paid plugn and than ca
Disqus Comment System
The famous comment system. It works great as a filter and it integrates well with WordPress.
Google Analytics
I developed my own plugin to set it up, but it is not available to the public. This plugin is one of the easiest way to install Google analytics, although I recommend using Google Tag Manager to set up all your tracking codes.
Google Tag Manager
I don’t install Analytics directly anymore. Most of the time I use Google Tag Manager to setup tracking codes. Like GA, I have my own plugin. This plugin makes it easy.
Pretty Link Lite
This is a very handy plugin to shorten affiliate links. For example, I use it for Amazon by only using https://ricardonunez.com/amazonlink . It works quite well.
Yoast SEO
A great plugin for SEO. Usually my first pick when it comes to SEO. All the blogs and websites that I create have this plugin. It’s easy to use, allows me to change SEO settings for all the pages and post individually. It has XML sitemaps and other features usually found in multiple plugins.
W3 Total Cache
I’m only using this plugin for a week now and itpromises to easily optimize website speed and user experience. I only saved half a second on the loading time which is not amazing, but I’m sure for a large website that can be a lot.
WP greet BOX
This plugin is used to greet new readers of the website and asks them to subscribe. There are several alternatives to this plugin, but I choose this one because it has the ability to recognize if the reader comes from a search engines, the rss or from the social networking websites ( I think this is cool).
I’m always trying out new plugins, some of them don’t do exactly what I’m looking for, but that’s nothing what a few tweaks in the code cannot solve.
What must have WordPress plugins are you using? Which ones do you recommend?
Great List. I need to check some of these plugins. Thanks for sharing.
Great List. I need to check some of these plugins. Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome. Thank you for the comment.
I use both Contact Form 7 and Really Simple Captcha… Love them both!
Hi Chris, thank you for the comment. I use both in all the websites I create. I received hundreds of spam messages the first time I installed Contact Form 7. Simple Captcha helped me right away and is very simple to use.
Using many of them and try to reduce as much as i can by coding/integrating. Too many plugins increase loading time of your blog.
I agree, that’s why right now I’m trying to implement a way of loading plugins only when they are need it.
Using many of them and try to reduce as much as i can by coding/integrating. Too many plugins increase loading time of your blog.
Right on, this helped me sort things right out.
Using many of them and try to reduce as much as i can by coding/integrating. Too many plugins increase loading time of your blog.
Hi Ric,
Thanks a lot for the kind words. I really appreciate it.
You are using some plugins that I haven’t tested, that’s interesting. I’m especially going to have a closer look at W3 Total Cache.
By the way, I am now using a few new plugins.
– Broken Link Checker (finds all my broken links, and helps me fix them).
– Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin (instead of using Akismet)
– Socialize (instead of sharebar)
Thanks again for mentioning me.
– Jens
Anytime buddy.
I’ll check them out. I still thinking in developing one myself, for the social icons :).
The retweet button in share bar doesn’t count correctly. Few people have told me that.
That would be awesome. Let me know if you do, and let me know if you want some feedback. I would love to help you out and help you promote it.
Hey Jens, just a heads up. I had an issue with W3 total cache, didn’t show my theme properly in Google Chrome. I know websites like Mashable use this plugin, so this is probably an error of my theme. I’ll post an update if I solve the issue.
I had to revisit, which I do if it’s a great article… I don’t know why I didn’t have Askimet activated sooner (I think I thought I did, but I recently started getting a LOT of spam comments).
If you would like to embed audio, The Audio Link Player plugin is great! http://dennishoppe.de/wordpress-plugins/audio-link-player
I also recommend the Lightbox 2 plugin (if you’re going to use thumbnail images linking to full images), Polldaddy Polls (I like it for the post ratings), Flickr-slideshow-wrapper and Custom Smilies.
Thank you Chris. Really appreciate it. Even I came back to check the correct name of a plugin.
I’ll try both plugins, the light box can be handy for photographers.
Nice list ..Great
Very good list some plugins are really useful I personally used for my site.
Hey,
Just a heads up that unfortunately Jens no longer owns slymarketing and you’re linking to the spammy site via article with the anchor “WordPress Plugins” and also in the comments section as well.
Just thought I would let you know, please check for yourself.
– Fred
Thanks, Fred. I’ll update the post and comments.