WordPress Plugins that I Use and Recommend

WordPress Administration Plugins

Elementor Pro – Elementor is truly a revolutionary plugin that changes how WordPress sites are built. It really is a game changer. It lets you build your entire site using the drag-and-drop interface, including header and footer. The basic version is free but if you are serious about building amazing looking websites you should go for the premium version.

Read More: A Definitive Guide to Elementor Page Builder

Slider Revolution – Slider Revolution is a very useful plugin for creating beautiful responsive homepage sliders. Easy to use and works great on all devices. (If you are using Elementor, you do not need this plugin.)

Ninja Forms – Ninja Forms is a free plugin that helps you to create beautiful and responsive forms for WordPress with a powerful drag-and-drop form creator. It is easy to learn, easy to use and works perfectly with most of the CRM tools, Marketing tools and offers unlimited customization features with tons of add-ons. Hands down the best in its category.

WPML Multilingual CMS – WPML is the best multilingual WordPress plugin. It makes it easy to build multilingual sites and run them. There is a learning curve but once you are familiar with the customizations you will love WPML.

reSmush.it Image Optimizer – reSmush.it is an amazing plugin that optimizes your WordPress media library based on API. It saves you space and can dramatically increase your page speed. Completely free too! Set it and forget it!

downML – Download Media Library – If you ever need to download all the image files in your WordPress site, downML is the plugin you need.

Regenerate Thumbnails – If you change your thumbnail sizes and need to regenerate all of your existing media files, you can use this plugin. Install, activate, regenerate and deactivate. Simple as that.

Advanced Custom Fields – ACF plugin allows you to quickly and easily add fields to posts, users, taxonomy terms, media, and even comments with only a few clicks. It is a plugin that can really take your WordPress experience to another level. PRO version allows even more field types and more functionality.

Data Tables Generator by Supsystic – Data Tables plugin allows you to create responsive data tables with filtering, searching and sorting options. I believe it is the best WordPress plugin for creating data tables, it is SEO optimized, totally responsive and, yes it is much better than TablePress.

Ad Inserter – If you are publishing any kind of ads on your site (Google Ads and the others), this plugin can make your life much easier. It offers tons of settings and can help you insert your ads wherever you want on your WordPress site.

Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd – This plugin allows you to create a simple and beautiful Coming Soon Page or Maintenance Mode Page in ten seconds.

Akismet – Akismet protects your comments and contact forms from spam. It is simple, free and effective. Set and forget.

Classic Editor – Hate new Gutenberg editor? You are not alone. You can switch back to “classic” WordPress editor with this plugin. Nobody knows how long it will be around but currently, it is here to stay.

WP All Import Pro – Another “magical” WordPress plugin and it allows you to import any kind of data to WordPress theme fields, including custom fields. from XML or CSV files.

All-in-One WP Migration – If you are moving from one hosting to another from DEV to real-time, this is the only tool that you will need! Works like a charm and it allows you to import or export all your WordPress content with a single click.

GDPR Cookie Consent – Show your website visitors GDPR-compliance notices and banners. Works well with WPML as well.

WP File Manager – This plugin allows you to manage all the files and folders in your WordPress Admin dashboard so that you don’t need an FTP client. It is really powerful and flexible.

WP-Optimize – This plugin is an effective way to automatically clean your WordPress database so that it runs at faster.

ARI Adminer – ARI Adminer connects WordPress and to your database management and allows you to manage your database from your WordPress admin panel. Can work with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite databases.

Share Buttons by AddThis – This social share plugin by Addthis makes it easier for your readers to spread your content with more than 200 social channels. The styling is clean and beautiful and plugin allows you to customize your sharing buttons, adjust coloring and styles.

Google Captcha (reCAPTCHA) by BestWebSoft – Google reCAPTCHA is a free and effective way to protect your WordPress site from spam. You can enable reCAPTCHA for your contact forms, login section, comments section or your discussion forms and customize them as you wish.

OneSignal Push Notifications – Even though I personally don’t like push notifications, there is no denying that they are useful. OneSignal is the most popular push notification plugin. You can use OneSignal to send your website visitors targeted push notifications so they keep coming back.

Security / Performance Plugins

WP Rocket – WP Rocket is the best WordPress performance plugin. It allows you to manage caching and a wide variety of tweaks to speed up your WordPress site, like Minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, Concatenate your CSS and JavaScript files, Add lazy loading for images and videos, Optimize your database Make tons of smaller tweaks, like removing query strings, disabling emojis, and more.

CDN Enabler by KeyCDN – CDN Enabler plugin integrates a CDN in WordPress site and allows you to link your content to the CDN URLs and link assets to load from a CDN. You can also define exclusions and enable/disable for HTTPS. I use and recommend KeyCDN.

Lazy Load – This plugin lazy loads images to improve page speed. (If you use WP Rocket, you don’t need this plugin)

Sucuri Security – Sucuri Security WordPress plugin is a free plugin that increases your website security. It offers Security Activity Auditing, File Integrity Monitoring, Remote Malware Scanning, Blacklist Monitoring, Effective Security Hardening, Post-Hack Security Actions, Security Notifications, and Website Firewall.

WP-Optimize – WP-Optimize is an effective plugin that automatically cleans your WordPress database so that it runs at maximum efficiency. It removes all unnecessary data like post versions, comments, unused data, pingbacks, trackbacks and expired data. You can also schedule automatic weekly or monthly database cleanups.

UpdraftPlus Backup and Restoration for WordPress –UpdraftPlus allows you to backup your files and database into the cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3’O, OneDrive, FTP and much more) or local drive and restore with a single click! You can perform backups manually or you can schedule automatic backups.

Limit Login Attempts Reloaded – As the name implies, this plugin limit the login attempts your WordPress login page and makes a brute-force attack basically impossible.

Google Authenticator – This plugin gives enables two-factor authentication for WordPress plugin using the Google Authenticator app for smartphones makes your WordPress Admin much more secure.

Bonus: Instant Page – This is not really a plugin per se but it is a JavaScript library that dramatically speeds up your WordPress site, making navigation effectively instant in most cases.

Go to your Admin Dashboard > Appearance > Editor and on the right menu open ‘Footer‘. Then drop the snippet of code below.

<script src=”//instant.page/1.2.2″ type=”module” integrity=”sha384-2xV8M5griQmzyiY3CDqh1dn4z3llDVqZDqzjzcY+jCBCk/a5fXJmuZ/40JJAPeoU”></script>

SEO / Marketing Plugins

Yoast SEO Premium – Yoast SEO is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin by far. It has tons of features, such as;

• Creating XML Sitemaps and Index rules.
• Optimize for keywords, keyphrases and synonyms and related keywords and all word forms
• Internal linking suggestions
• Snippet Editor and preview of your post in on Google, Facebook and Twitter
• Creating meta description templates for a different post and page types (can literally save you tons of hours)
• Readability check
• Creating and managing Breadcrumbs
• Content insights – Premium only
• Redirect manager – manage your 301 and 404 redirections

It is frequently updated and the team always provide good support as well. If you are using WordPress, you should be using Yoast. Period.

MailChimp for WordPress – MailChimp for WordPress plugin allows you to design, send, and track e-mail newsletters to your subscribers. Another must-have plugin for every WordPress site.

Broken Link Checker – This plugin monitors your blog (your posts, pages, comments, the blogroll, and custom fields) looking for broken links, missing images, and redirects and lets you know if any are found. Super useful for broken link building.

Redirection – Redirection plugins helps you to manage all 301 redirects as well as monitoring 404 errors. (If you are using the premium version of Yoast, you do not need this plugin as Yoast Premium also handles the redirections.)

Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights – This plugin by MonsterInsights allows you to connect your site with Google Analytics and to track your Google Analytics reports on your WordPress dashboard. It is useful, visually beautiful and saves you time.

Facebook Pixel – Official Facebook plugin to install Facebook Pixel to your website. Integrates with your Facebook Ads account and works fine with most of the Contact Forms (including Ninja Forms)