Three years ago I wrote a blog titled “WordPress Developers Top 12 Plug-in List“, and while looking through it I realized that I only use two of them anymore, thats how quickly WordPress evolves. Many of the changes have to do with page speed, managing custom content, and some of the plugins I used 3 years ago have had their functionality built into WordPress. The two that stayed on the list are: iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security), and WordPress SEO by Yoast. I’ll provide a link to the plugins website so you can get the official description, and I’ll describe below why I personally like them.
So what are the best WordPress Plugins?
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Autoptimize
- Classic Editor
- Contact Form 7
- Custom Sidebars
- iThemesSecurity
- Polylang Pro
- WCK – Custom Fields and Custom Post Types Creator
- WooCommerce
- WP All Import – ACF Add-On
- Yoast SEO
1. Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) – website
This plugin is handy for extending any sort of post, page or custom post with extra fields. For example you may have a custom post for upcoming events and for each event you will have a starting time, address and cost. Rather than trying to code those 3 fields with CSS and HTML in every single post for a consistent look, you simply make them as their own fillable fields in the post editor and make a page template for the post type to display them. No coding skills required for the content manager.
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2. Autoptimize – website
A great tool for speeding up your website, it will minify all HTML, CSS and Javascript and load it all at the bottom of the page, only loading the code that is necessary for a quick page load and a great user experience. Much more effective than any optimization/caching plugin I’ve tried.
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3. Classic Editor – website
This opinion may be controversial, I find the new WYSIWTG content editors to very cumbersome, but more importantly those content editors slow your website down to a crawl. Most sites that use them fail with Google Page Speed Insights because they put in some much unnecessary code. The sites end up being slow and clunky. WP Bakery Builder, and Gutenberg are the modern equivalent to Microsoft Frontpage – do yourself a favour and avoid at all costs.
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4. Contact Form 7 – website
This is a very simple and clean tool for adding any sort of contact or lead generating form. It has extensions for exporting the form content that was submitted as well as emailing it directly. Easy to use and configure.
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5. Custom Sidebars – website
Sidebars are starting to fall out of favour with some of the newer responsive designs. Yet they can be really handy for adding calls to action or additional menus. This plugin extends the built in WordPress widgets and allows you to create custom sidebars for whole sections or specific pages.
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6. iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) – website
This plugin is a must have, I generally turn on all the security features to help keep hackers out. My favourite feature is the ability to create a custom URL for your WordPress dashboard. Many exploits come from users running bots to tests 1000s of passwords in seconds to break into your dashboard, so this hides the dashboard from most hackers and instantly blacklists anyone who is lucky enough to find it after the second of third bad login attempt.
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7. Polylang Pro – website
This plugin is for displaying and managing your content in multiple languages. Really easy to use and with most plugins and themes the language pack is included, which Polylang uses without any sort of configuration. For any tricky words that are untranslated deep within a theme or plugin, Polylang gives you a tool to provide your own translation.
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9. WCK – Custom Fields and Custom Post Types Creator – website
I use this plugin with every WordPress website I build, this is great for making Carousel / Banner / Slideshow functions, Callouts, or any sort of repeatable or list content. If your website has any sort of content that doesn’t fit within the built in pages / posts functionality, this tool is a must have. It does also include custom fields, yet I still use Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) and pair these plugins together as ACF has better custom field tools.
10. WooCommerce – website
I have built many eCommerce websites over the years using many different tools as well as building many from scratch. As soon as I tried WooCommerce I fell in love with it. All the shopping cart features are built in and configured already. It has many extensions for selling custom products that don’t fit the standard mould and pairs well with Polylang and Advanced Custom Fields.
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11. WP All Import – ACF Add-On – website
When building websites, you sometimes need to import content from outside sources such as converting a Drupal website to WordPress, or importing a spreadsheet of locations. This plugin allows you to import a CSV file and instantly map the content into custom fields for a custom post type, no data entry required.
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12. Yoast (SEO) – website
A very simple and easy to use tool to make sure you have the proper page titles and meta descriptions on your pages and posts. I like the colour coded bar which lets you know if you have too much or not enough words in your titles or descriptions. It does have some more advanced tools, I find I never use them, the free version works as needed.
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ShortPixel Image Optimizer used to be in this list, I have recently taken if off as it has proven to be unreliable.
I hope you find this list is helpful. This list was created in 2020, it will be interesting to see if I still use these tools in another 3 years. I should mention that some of these plugins have a cost, I did not get compensated in any way to promote them. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me at 416.450.5439.