WordPress is much more powerful when integrated with the right plugins. Before I decide to use a plugin, I spend some time understanding its functionalities and testing it.
The best WordPress plugins allow developers and designers to achieve their web design and development objectives. In addition, I also want to make sure they are simple and user-friendly.
A list of the best WordPress plugins I love using to build websites for our clients.
Five of the best SEO plugins for WordPress blogs
The best SEO plugin for you will depend on your specific needs and preferences. If you’re looking for a comprehensive SEO plugin with a wide range of features, then Rank Math or AIOSEO are good options. If you’re looking for a more basic SEO plugin that’s easy to use, then Yoast SEO or SEOPress are good choices. And if you’re looking for a lightweight SEO plugin with a basic set of features, then The SEO Framework is a good option.
Rank Math is a comprehensive SEO plugin that offers a wide range of features, including keyword research, title optimization, and sitemap generation.
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is another popular SEO plugin that offers a similar range of features to Rank Math.
Yoast SEO is a long-standing SEO plugin that offers a more basic set of features than Rank Math or AIOSEO.
SEOPress is a newer SEO plugin that offers a wide range of features and is known for its ease of use.
The SEO Framework is a lightweight SEO plugin that offers a more basic set of features than the other plugins on this list.
Elementor: Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder that makes it easy to create beautiful and responsive websites.
Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO is a powerful SEO plugin that helps you improve your website’s search engine ranking. A great website without quality content and SEO isn’t a website. For every WordPress website we design, we use this Yoast SEO plugin for one single purpose, to optimize the websites for search engines. This plugin is powerful yet easy to use for most users.
WPForms: WPForms is a user-friendly contact form plugin that makes it easy to add contact forms to your website.
A List of the best WordPress plugins for your blog
WP-DBManager by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan
Use Google Libraries: A lightweight plugin to help off-load your web server, this Use Google Libraries plugin makes use of Google’s AJAX Library API instead. Good performance benefits that most people need.
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions: if you’ve got a WordPress website (especially a niche review site like SweetMemoryStudio) that requires continuous updates over time, chance is that each post has many revisions. For example, before optimizing, this website’s database is 19.079 MB. After running this plugin, the size is just 4.095 MB. You save 14.984 MB. That’s a lot. Like it’s named after, the Optimize Database After Deleting Revisions plugin for WordPress is an easy-to-use database cleaner and optimizer.
WP Clone by WP Academy: What’s the easiest and fastest way to migrate a WordPress website or blog from one host to another? Undoubtedly, the WP Clone plugin is simply the best solution for this. We’ve used this plugin regularly. 99% of the time, it works very well. For a huge WordPress site, we don’t recommend you use this WP Clone. Two things you should note are that: the plugin does not support multi-site and site size limits.
Backup Buddy: It doesn’t hurt to have a backup copy of your blogs. It hurts when you don’t have a copy of your website backup. Download this Backup Buddy plugin now.
All-In-One WP Migration: Moving a WordPress site from one web host to another can be a pain if your host doesn’t have any way to this support. All-In-One WP Migration is another option to the WP Clone by WP Academy plugin.
Hyper Cache
This is one of a few lightweight caching plugins we love. It’s simple and easy to configure. Presently, we’ve been using the Hyper Cache WordPress plugin on our Vultr VPS.
Broken Link Checker
The real beauty of the web is the link. A broken link is a thing to avoid. The Broken Link Checker does one thing well: It scans your WordPress website for any broken links and lets you know that you should fix the issues. Need extra help to boost your SEO rankings? Use this useful plugin.
Smush Image Compression and Optimization
Facebook and Messenger load photos fast. There are many factors, one of which is highly compressed images. On your WordPress websites, you can also have this little plugin Smush Image Compression and Optimization to help reduce large photo file sizes to optimal without losing much quality.
Really Simple SSL
Not all, but some web hosts don’t offer the absolute SSL solution. However, a simple way to make sure that all pages are over HTTPS is having this lightweight Really Simple SSL.
Cloudflare
Most of WordPress sites we host and manage are on Cloudflare. It offers everything we can dream of having for small and medium business websites and blogs. Speed and performance. Yes. Security Yes.
Broken Link Checker
A key factor to improve a better web browsing experience is fixing dead links. The Broken Link Checker will help taking care of that. As a result, you’ll gain a better SEO, too. Overall, all we want to achieve is speed and performance on a low-resource web server.
Toolbelt
WordPress.com’s Jetpack plugin is very popular. But it must be a joke. It consumes so much of your web server’s resources. Developed by Ben Gillbanks, Toolbelt plugin is a simpler, minimalist version that works to address a number of issues you need.
WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache
WP-Sweep
Security Plugins
Limit Login Attempts
The Limit Login Attempts plugin provides a simple, smart security solution.
LessButtons & Social Pug: Social Share Tools
It’s one of the best social share plugins to have on most websites. We use this LessButtons plugin for most, if not all, of our WordPress websites we develop. The simple sharing buttons are very nice.
Another (up-to-date) plugin for social sharing we highly recommend is Social Pug. We love it and use it on a number of websites that we manage. Check out Social Sharing Buttons – Social Pug!
Table of Contents Plus
This plugin makes it easy to create a list of internal links within a post or page. The Table of Contents Plus plugin by Michael Tran can also produce output a sitemap listing all pages and categories.
Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin (AWPCP)
We spent a lot of time searching and testing the best plugin for Classified Listings and Ads. This AWPCP is currently the one we use. It works well. It fits the basic requirements that allow registered users to add their listings to a WordPress website.