WordPress Plugins
Choosing the right plugins is crucial for optimizing your WordPress site’s functionality, performance, and security. This guide outlines the must-use plugins that should be installed in every project by default, as well as optional plugins that can be added based on specific project needs. Additionally, administration tools and plugins under consideration are listed for potential inclusion.
Legend
- 💎 (Premium): This symbol indicates that the plugin is premium (paid). For Must-Use plugins credentials to purchase and download these plugins can be found in Passwork. In other cases they need to be purchased on a project-by-project basis.
- ⚙️ (Auto): This symbol indicates that the plugin is automatically installed and activated by the automated installation script.
Must-Use Plugins
The following plugins must be installed in all projects by default.
| Plugin | Notes |
|---|---|
| 💎⚙️ Advanced Custom Fields Pro | Provides advanced tools for creating custom fields, enabling developers to add custom content fields to WordPress edit screens with a simple and intuitive interface. |
| 💎⚙️ Advanced Custom Fields Extended Pro | Enhances Advanced Custom Fields with additional features, tools, and UI improvements for more complex and flexible custom field management. |
| ⚙️ Better Search Replace | Server migration tool that replaces domains and URLs in a safe way by handling serialized strings |
| 💎⚙️ Gravity Forms Pro | A powerful form builder plugin that allows you to create custom forms with ease, including contact forms, surveys, and user registration forms, with advanced functionality like conditional logic and multi-page forms. |
| ⚙️ Gravity Forms reCaptcha | Integrates Google reCAPTCHA with Gravity Forms to protect forms from spam and abuse by adding a CAPTCHA field to your forms. |
| ⚙️ Post SMTP | A robust SMTP mailer plugin that improves email delivery by sending emails via a configured SMTP server, providing logging and email error tracking. |
| ⚙️ Redirection | Manages 301 redirects and tracks 404 errors, helping to reduce errors and improve site ranking by keeping your URLs up to date. |
| ⚙️ Yoast SEO | Optimizes your site for search engines, providing tools for improving content SEO, generating XML sitemaps, and managing meta tags. |
| ⚙️ Duplicate Post | Allows you to duplicate posts, pages, and custom post types, making it easier to replicate content for new drafts or updates. |
| ⚙️ Simple Custom Post Order | Enables drag-and-drop sorting for posts, pages, and custom post types, allowing you to easily order content. |
| ⚙️ Advanced Editor Tools | Enhances the WordPress visual editor with additional formatting and editing options, providing a more robust and familiar WYSIWYG experience. |
| ⚙️ EWWW Image Optimizer | Automatically optimizes images as you upload them to your site, reducing file sizes and improving site speed without compromising image quality. |
| ⚙️ W3 Total Cache | Improves site performance by caching pages, database queries, and objects, reducing load times and increasing server performance. |
| ⚙️ Activity Log | Tracks and logs all changes and activities in your WordPress site, helping with troubleshooting and monitoring site security. |
| ⚙️ WordFence | Provides comprehensive security for your site, including a firewall, malware scanning, login security, and real-time monitoring. |
| ⚙️ Zero Spam | Protects your site from spam and automated bots without requiring CAPTCHAs, by using AI and machine learning to block spammy behavior. |
Optional Functionality Plugins
The following plugins are recommended for optional functionality that should only be installed if needed for a specific project.
| Plugin | Notes |
|---|---|
| 💎 ACF Theme Code Pro | Automatically generates PHP code for Advanced Custom Fields, speeding up theme development by providing ready-to-use code snippets. |
| 💎 ACF Custom Database Tables | Improves performance by storing ACF field data in custom database tables instead of WordPress's default post meta table, allowing for more efficient data handling. |
| 💎 ACF Add-Ons | Extends the functionality of Advanced Custom Fields with additional field types, layouts, and tools, offering more flexibility in custom field management. |
| 💎 ACF Extended Phone Add-on | Provides a specialized field for phone numbers, offering validation, formatting, and internationalization support within Advanced Custom Fields. |
| 💎 Yoast SEO Pro | Enhances the free version of Yoast SEO with advanced features, including content insights, internal linking suggestions, and premium support. |
| Super Cache for Cloudflare | Integrates Cloudflare with WordPress caching plugins, optimizing page load times by delivering cached content through Cloudflare's CDN. |
| Disable Gutenberg | Disables the Gutenberg block editor and restores the classic WordPress editor, useful for sites where the block editor is not suitable. |
| 💎 TranslatePress | A user-friendly translation plugin that allows you to translate your entire site directly from the front-end, supporting multilingual content with ease. |
| 💎 Events Calendar | A feature-rich event management plugin that lets you create and manage events, display calendars, and integrate event details seamlessly into your site. |
| 💎 Event Tickets & RSVP | Works with Events Calendar to sell tickets for events, including RSVP management, ticket sales, and attendee tracking. |
| 💎 Ultimate Member | A powerful plugin for creating membership sites, offering features like user profiles, registration, and login forms, with extensive customization options. |
| 💎 MemberPress | A comprehensive membership plugin that allows you to sell memberships, manage subscriptions, and control access to content with flexible payment integrations. |
| 💎 BuddyBoss | A social networking plugin for creating community-driven websites, offering features like user profiles, activity feeds, groups, and forums. |
| 💎 GiveWP | A donation plugin that enables you to accept donations online, with advanced reporting, donor management, and customizable donation forms. |
| NextGen Gallery | A powerful gallery plugin that offers advanced image management, display options, and customization, ideal for photographers and artists. |
| PublishPress Authors | Allows multiple authors to be assigned to a post, providing better author management for sites with collaborative content creation. |
| PublishPress Capabilities | Provides detailed role management, allowing you to create, modify, and assign capabilities to different user roles within WordPress. |
| PublishPress Posts Series | Organizes posts into series, making it easier for readers to follow multi-part content, and improving navigation within related posts. |
| PublishPress Permissions | Offers advanced control over content permissions, allowing you to manage who can view, edit, and publish specific content. |
| Post Expirator | Automatically expires and removes posts after a set time, useful for time-sensitive content like promotions or events. |
| Multiple Themes | Allows you to use different themes on different pages or sections of your site, providing flexibility in design and layout. |
| Shortcoder | Lets you create custom shortcodes for embedding HTML, JavaScript, and other code snippets into posts and pages, enhancing content flexibility. |
| Missed Scheduled Posts Publisher | Ensures that scheduled posts are published even if the regular publishing process fails, solving issues with missed scheduled posts. |
| WP Search with Algolia | Integrates Algolia's powerful search service with WordPress, providing instant search results and a superior |
| Password Protect Pages | Allows you to password-protect individual pages and posts, offering a simple way to restrict access to certain content. |
| Admin Columns and Filtering | Adds custom columns and filtering options to WordPress admin lists, making it easier to manage and organize content within the dashboard. |
| Media Replace | Replaces old media files with new ones without changing the URL, simplifying media management and updates. |
Administration Tools
The following plugins are recommended administration tools that should be only installed and activated when needed.
| Plugin | Notes |
|---|---|
| 💎 Admin Menu Editor Pro | Allows customization of the WordPress admin menu, enabling you to rename, reorder, or hide menu items, and create custom menus for different user roles. |
| HTML Editor Syntax Highlighter | Adds syntax highlighting and line numbers to the WordPress HTML editor, making it easier to write and debug code. |
| Export Media with Content | Enables exporting of media files along with their associated content, useful for site migrations or backups. |
| Crontrol | Provides a user interface for managing WordPress cron jobs, allowing you to view, edit, delete, and add custom cron events. |
| User Switching | Allows administrators to switch between user accounts quickly without logging out, useful for testing user roles and permissions. |
| Bulk Remove Posts from Category | Enables bulk removal of posts from specific categories, simplifying content management. |
| Bulk Move Posts | Allows you to bulk move posts from one category to another, helping with content reorganization. |
| Show IDs | Displays IDs for posts, pages, categories, tags, and custom post types in the WordPress admin area, useful for development and management tasks. |
Plugins Under Consideration
These plugins are being tested. They may or may not be added to the lists above.
| Plugin | Notes |
|---|---|
| Administration | |
| ACF Quick Edit | Adds quick edit support for ACF fields in the WordPress admin, allowing you to modify custom fields directly from the post list screen. |
| Analytics | |
| Independent Analytics | A privacy-friendly analytics plugin that provides visitor data without using cookies, offering insights into site traffic and user behavior. |
| Performance | |
| Imagify | Optimizes images for faster loading times, compressing them without losing quality, and supports WebP conversion. |
| 💎 WPRocket | A premium caching plugin that improves site speed with features like page caching, lazy loading, and database optimization. |
| Autoptimize | Optimizes your site's performance by minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and concatenating scripts and styles for faster loading. |
| LiteSpeed Cache | A comprehensive caching plugin with server-level caching, image optimization, and database cleaning, designed for LiteSpeed servers but usable on other environments. |
| Asset CleanUp | Improves performance by selectively disabling unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files on specific pages, reducing page load times. |
| 💎 FlyingPress | A performance optimization plugin that combines caching, image optimization, lazy loading, and more to improve site speed and user experience. |
| Critical CSS For WP | Generates and loads critical path CSS for your pages, improving load times by prioritizing above-the-fold content. |
| Security | |
| iThemes Security | Strengthens site security by adding features like two-factor authentication, brute force protection, and database backups. |
| All-In-One Security | A comprehensive security plugin that includes firewall protection, login lockdown, and file integrity monitoring to secure your site. |
Configuration
Once you have installed the necessary plugins, please continue to the WordPress Configuration guide.