You just started a new website, and you find that there is just so many options when it comes to adding functionality with plugins.
We have tested a lot of plugins over the years, and here is a list of some favorites we come back to time and time again.
Themes
Genesis – A theme framework that makes it incredibly easy to create great looking websites. You can find a range of child themes that you can customize to get the look you want. This site is built on Genesis. If you want even more customization, Astra is also a great option.
Atomic Blocks – A collection of blocks that makes the Gutenberg editor even better. Stuff like advanced layout options, buttons, icons, testimonials, and pricing blocks. Pairs nicely with Genesis themes.
Beaver Builder – A page builder that has been a favorite for a long time. A page builder allows you to completely change each page of your website, without any code. With an emphasis on stability, you can trust that it won’t constantly break things. Works great with Genesis and Astra.
WPForms – A newer form plugin with a focus on being very easy to use. Allows you to quickly get all kinds of forms up and collecting information. But it also comes packed with advanced features like templates, conditional logic, user registration, payments, email list integration, and much more.
WP Mail SMTP – A small tool that helps with sending emails from your website. Especially if you are on a shared hosting plan, you need this.
Media
Short Pixel Image Optimizer – If you have a blog with lots of images, this will help resize your images and do other optimizations that will help your website load faster, sometimes much faster.
Enable Media Replace – A cool little tool that allows you to seamlessly replace an existing image. No more trying to delete and rename images.
Marketing
The SEO Framework – A clean, simple tool that gives you suggestions on search engine optimization. Does the basics without a lot of ads or useless features.
MonsterInsights – A great way to setup and view your Google Analytics data right from your WordPress Dashboard. Advanced features like ecommerce and link tracking, but also easy to use.
Security
Limit Login Attempts – A simple but highly effective security plugin that limits the number of attempts to enter a password for your WordPress website. This stops one of the most common WordPress hacks, where intruders will attempt to try every possible password combination.
Cloudflare – A great tool that helps to speed up your website by using caching, as well as protecting your website from a range of different threats. This plugin automatically applies settings that are optimized for WordPress.
Activity Log – A log of all the things that have been done on your website. Great tool if you have more then one person working on the website.
Multilingual
Weglot – Add different languages to your website, with automatic translation and an easy to use dashboard for management.
Utilities
WP Rocket – Its all about speed. Make your website faster and Google will love you. This plugin does all the heavy lifting with just a few clicks.
Insert Headers and Footers – A place to pop in scripts for things like analytic. Better to store them here then in your theme, that way if you make changes to your theme, you don’t accidentally lose them.
And there you have it, some of our favorite WordPress plugins. There is a lot of other great plugins, but these are some of our most used and most appreciate ones.
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