Top WordPress Plugins

 

Which plugins save you from hackers, downtime, and maximize your site’s speed.  Here are the essentials:

General Plugins

Yoast SEO – Easiest way to implement SEO strategy – Yoast SEO
Gavity Forms – Gravity Forms excels at complex forms with unique requirements.
Contact Form 7 – Widely used, very popular Contact Form Plugin – best for simple to medium complexity forms.
WP Classic Editor – If you don’t like the new Gutenberg Editor, or it’s incompatible with your site in some way, you can install the “Classic Editor” plugin to revert back to the pre-version 5.0 editor.

Backup Plugins 

UpdraftPlus Backups or BackupBuddy – For regular backups of your content.
BackUpWordPress – BackUpWordPress will back up your entire site including your database and all your files on a schedule that suits you.

Speed Optimization Plugins

WP Cleanup Optimizer – Clean up comments, old drafts, revisions and dead posts.
WP Rocket – Speed of sight and caching
W3 Total Cache – can improve WordPress Load Time dramatically by caching the database and page requests on your site.
Image compression plugins – Smush,  EWWWKraken.io,  ShortPixel or for manual folks, PicResize.

Social Plugins

Social Warfare – For WordPress Sites that want to use a plugin for their social buttons, we highly recommend the Social Warfare Plugin
Yoast SEO – We highly recommend using the Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin for generating your Open Graph meta tags.

Security Plugins

WordFence – With over 2 million installations, WordFence is definitely one of the most popular and trusted WordPress Security Plugins.
reCAPTCHA – This is to add captcha to your website forms to reduce spam and abuse.
Sucuri WAF – Security or scanner
Login Lockdown – Extra security for multiple logins.
Login Security Solution – Another way to secure logins

Other Plugins

Google Analytics by Monster Insights
AMP –  Accelerated Mobile Pages
BlogVault – Site backups
Instagram Feed WD – Displays an Instagram feed on your site.
Child Theme Configurator –  sets up a child theme.
Sliders – Responsive Slider or Slider WD (widget or plugin)
Shortcode Ultimate – access to a mega pack of shortcodes. From easily creating tabs, buttons, boxes, and
more.
Charitable –  gives you complete control with your WordPress fundraising efforts.
Compact WP Audio Player –  embed mp3 audio files on your site.
Html5 Audio Player – Another audio player option.
WordPress Charts and Graphs Lite OR Gravity Forms Charts Reports – create, manage and embed interactive charts.
Google Website Translator – adds to Google’s own built-in tool.
User Role Editor –  lets you adjust user roles and capabilities with ease.  Members ! –  able to smoothly control permissions beyond what WordPress can do.
Google Map Widget ! –   more control and customization for your Google Maps OR WP Google Map Plugin –  you can add an
unlimited number of responsive maps directly to your site through shortcodes.
Easy Property Listing – the most feature-rich real estate plugin on the market.