Essential plugins for your WordPress Website
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This document provides a summary of essential WordPress plugins as identified by Anthony Hortin, a designer and developer at Maddison Designs. It discusses plugins for page building (Divi Builder), security (WordFence), caching (WP Rocket), SEO (WordPress SEO by Yoast), backups (BackupBuddy), ecommerce (WooCommerce), forms (Gravity Forms), galleries (Envira Gallery), spam prevention (Akismet), and other miscellaneous plugins. Alternatives to the main plugins discussed are also provided.
Essential plugins for your WordPress Website
- 1. Anthony Hortin @maddisondesigns maddisondesigns.com Essential Plugins for your WordPress Website
- 2. About me Designer/Developer @ Maddison Designs WordPress Theme & Plugin Developer WordPress Theme & Plugin Directory contributor Created Easy WP Guide (over 170K downloads) Co-Organiser Melbourne WordPress WordCamp 2013 Co-Organiser for monthly WP Melbourne WordPress Meetups
- 3. Plugins are ways to extend and add to the functionality that already exists in WordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to be lean and lightweight, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins then offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs. “ ”
- 4. 44,873 Plugins* * In the WordPress.org Plugin Directory as at June 1, 2016
- 5. Divi Builder “A Drag & Drop Page Builder Plugin For WordPress” 46 Content modules. e.g. Accordions, Buttons, Galleries, Maps, Sliders Pre-built templates to help with your designs Simple, easy to use User Interface Ability to save your own templates Ability to create Global items. e.g. Any changes are applied to each instance Customise colours, spacing and typography with just a few clicks Paid plugin http://www.elegantthemes.com/plugins/divi-builder Page Builders Alternatives Beaver Builder - https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com Page Builder by Site Origin - https://wordpress.org/plugins/siteorigin-panels Visual Composer - https://vc.wpbakery.com
- 6. WordFence Security “Wordfence Security is a free enterprise class security and performance plugin that makes your site up to 50 times faster and more secure.” Real-Time blocking of known attackers Scans for Heartbleed vulnerability and many known backdoors Scans for malware and phishing URL’s Scans core files, theme & plugins against WordPress.org Rate limit or block security threats like aggressive crawlers, scrapers & bots See real-time site traffic Falcon caching engine Free plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence Security Alternatives iThemes Security - https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security All In One WP Security & Firewall - https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall
- 7. WP Rocket “Thanks to our plugin, WordPress has never been so efficient” Easy to set up and very fast Google Fonts optimisation eCommerce friendly (eg. cart/checkout) Minification/Concatenation of scripts & files for faster loading Compatible with Apache, Nginx, Microsoft IIS & LiteSpeed web servers Paid plugin http://wp-rocket.me Caching Alternatives WP Super Cache - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache W3 Total Cache - https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache WordFence Security - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence
- 8. WordPress SEO by Yoast “Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin.” Helps you write better content View search engine preview rendering of your content Page analysis Generates XML Sitemaps Built-in breadcrumbs functionality Social integration Free plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo SEO Alternatives The SEO Framework - https://wordpress.org/plugins/autodescription All in One SEO Pack - https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack SEO Ultimate - https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-ultimate
- 9. BackupBuddy “The best way to back up (and move) a WordPress site.” Database only or Full backups (files & db) Offsite storage (Stash, Amazon S3, Dropbox, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, email) Schedule backups 1GB of free BackupBuddy Stash storage Ability to exclude files & tables Easily migrate sites between domain names (incl. URL replacement) Email notifications Paid plugin https://ithemes.com/purchase/backupbuddy Backup Alternatives VaultPress - https://vaultpress.com WordPress Backup to Dropbox - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-backup-to-dropbox UpdraftPlus - https://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus BackupWordPress - https://wordpress.org/plugins/backupwordpress
- 10. WooCommerce “WooCommerce is a powerful, extendable eCommerce plugin that helps you sell anything. Beautifully.” Sell physical and digital products Smart Dashboard widgets and reports Manage stock levels Multiple payment gateways Can be extended with free & paid extensions Flexible and customisable Free plugin http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce eCommerce Alternatives Easy Digital Downloads - http://easydigitaldownloads.com Jigoshop - https://www.jigoshop.com iThemes Exchange - https://ithemes.com/exchange
- 11. Gravity Forms “Advanced Forms for WordPress Websites Just Don't Get Any Easier than Gravity Forms” Drag ’n drop visual form editor Multipage forms Easily create order forms Conditional fields Schedule forms Can be used to create user generated content (eg. create Posts) Numerous add-ons to extend functionality Paid plugin http://gravityforms.com Forms Alternatives Contact Form 7 - http://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7 Ninja Forms - https://wordpress.org/plugins/ninja-forms
- 12. Envira Gallery “Envira Gallery is a responsive WordPress gallery plugin that creates incredibly simple and easy workflows around building and managing galleries in WordPress.” Create responsive image sliders and galleries Simple drag ’n drop interface Multisite compatible Customisable Numerous add-ons to extend functionality Paid plugin https://enviragallery.com Sliders & Galleries Alternatives Soliloquy - http://soliloquywp.com Meteor Slides - https://wordpress.org/plugins/meteor-slides
- 13. Akismet “Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam or not.” Automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam Easy to setup (Requires API key from akismet.com) Free plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet Spam Prevention Alternatives WP-SpamShield - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-spamshield Spam Destroyer - https://wordpress.org/plugins/spam-destroyer
- 14. Black Studio TinyMCE Widget “The visual editor widget for WordPress.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/black-studio-tinymce-widget Image Widget “A simple image widget that uses the native WordPress media manager to add image widgets to your site.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/image-widget Regenerate Thumbnails “Allows you to regenerate your thumbnails after changing the thumbnail sizes.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails Widget Logic “Widget Logic lets you control on which pages widgets appear using WP's conditional tags.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/widget-logic Adhoc
- 15. Imsanity “Imsanity automatically resizes huge image uploads.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/imsanity Easy FancyBox “Easy FancyBox plugin for WordPress websites gives you a flexible and aesthetic lightbox solution for just about all media links on your website.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-fancybox Beautiful Taxonomy Filters “Supercharge your custom post type archives by letting visitors filter posts by their terms/categories.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/beautiful-taxonomy-filters Advanced Custom Fields “Advanced Custom Fields is the perfect solution for any WordPress website which needs more flexible data.” https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields Adhoc
- 16. I’m Anthony Hortin You can find me here @maddisondesigns maddisondesigns.com @easywpguide easywpguide.com