UPDATE!: I found wpfavs.com! Check out my post about it. It makes adding a set of plugins to any site much easier!
This is a list of my favorite plugins that I use on WordPress websites. I don’t use all of them all of the time. I used to maintain a folder on my computer with the code for these plugins but when WordPress introduced the Favorites tab to the Add New Plugin screen I added them to my favorites on WordPress.org (after I created an account and signed in.) Now I can add them to any site very easily.
As always, hope this is helpful!
Plug-in Name |
Developer’s Description |
Why I like it |
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Easily add a Post Categories to WordPress Pages |
A good way to organize static content pages like how-to pages. |
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Lets you edit the WordPress admin menu. You can re-order, hide or rename menus, add custom menus and more. |
Great for client sites to hide, change or reorganize the Admin section to work better for non-WordPress |
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Get a tree view of all your pages directly in the admin menu. Search, edit, view, re-order/sort and add pages – all is just one click away! |
A simple way to view and access your website pages without having to use the All Pages page. |
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Booking Calendar plugin – it’s |
Adds reservation functionality for website clients who take appointments. |
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This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found. |
Keeps your website working for your visitors. |
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Add some useful fields to registration and user’s info |
Best for a site with many authors or many subscribers. Allows you to add additional, useful information to a User Profile. |
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Import and export users from/to |
A fast and simple way to add many new users to a site, for example a site with many authors or many subscribers or members. |
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Adds a tree view of all pages |
View a tree-view or outline-view of your pages on the All Pages page, and drag and drop to rearrange, add multiple pages, etc. Too bad this isn’t combined with Admin Menu Tree Page View. |
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Quickly find the perfect Creative Commons licensed photo for your posts every time. |
If content is king then images are the crown. Great way to find usable images for posts. |
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An easy to use directory plugin to create an address book, business directory, member directory, staff directory or church directory. |
When a client needs a directory of some kind. |
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Integrate Constant Contact into |
Connect to the popular Constant Contact email management service. |
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Helps you publish your content under the terms of Creative Commons and other licenses. |
Add and display Creative Commons licensing for your site content. |
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Clone posts and pages. |
…because WordPress doesn’t do this out of the box…yet. |
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Redefining your editorial workflow. |
Good when you have many |
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Site Kit is the official WordPress plugin from Google for insights about how people find and use your site. Site Kit is the one-stop solution to deploy, manage, and get insights from critical Google tools to make the site successful on the web. It provides authoritative, up-to-date insights from multiple Google products directly on the WordPress dashboard for easy access, all for free. |
You can’t plan it if you can’t |
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Embed Any Document WordPress plugin lets you embed your PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents easily in your WordPress website. The plugin integrates Google Docs Viewer and Microsoft Office Online to display your documents on your website. |
Super easy. Automagically places a document in a scrollable frame for viewing. Also, allows permission to download a document. |
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Imports well-formed HTML files into WordPress pages. |
When you have an existing website and you want to save time adding the content to WordPress. If the content has Header tags and other good HTML the content migration task can be much simpler. |
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Protect your WordPress site by hiding vital areas of your site, protecting access to important files, preventing brute-force login attempts, detecting |
One of the best security plugins out there. Use it in conjunction with Wordfence |
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List Category Posts allows you to list posts by category in a post/page using the shortcode. This shortcode accepts a category name or id, t |
This is an easy way to create a page with a list of Posts (and Pages if you use Add Category to Pages) instead of using a Category Archive page that uses the title “Archive of BlahBlah Category.” |
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You can make changes on login screen of your WordPress site. It can detect your logo image size automatically. You can add logo to your login screen, change the color of the other elements of login page. It has a color picker so you don’t |
It makes a the log in screen look like it belongs to your client and their site instead of some web thing called “WordPress.” Like they say: First impressions mean a lot! |
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MailChimp for WordPress, the absolute best. Subscribe your WordPress site visitors to your MailChimp lists, with ease. |
Connect to the popular MailChimp email management service. |
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Maintenance – easy configure and customize coming soon, under construction page when site have updates or changes. |
When your site needs to take a break. |
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MapPress is the most popular and easiest way to create great-looking Google Maps and driving directions in your blog. |
Location, location, location; it’s all about the maps. |
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Enhances the Media Library; |
Excellent for image heavy sites for photographers and others. |
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The most powerful user, role, and capability management plugin for WordPress. |
An excellent way to control who can do what and when on a website. Especially good for multi author sites or sites where you want to provide special access to content. Very useful when used in conjunction with Cimy User Manager. |
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mTouch Quiz lets you add quizzes to your site. This plugin was designed with learning, touch friendliness and versatility in mind. |
Good for fun quizzes an |
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The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most popular plugins of all time with over 13 million downloads. |
This is THE gallery plugin for WordPress. This is a plugin that has plugins to extend its already great functionality. |
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Create forms and manage |
Jetpack has a Contact Form plugin built in but this takes form building to a new level. And this is another plugin that has plugins to extend it. |
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Create and manage Polldaddy polls and ratings from within WordPress. |
Polls are a good way to maintain user engagement on a site. |
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Regenerate Thumbnails allows you to regenerate the thumbnails for your image attachments. This is very handy if you’ve changed any of your thumbnail dimensions (via Settings |
A great utility. |
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Revision Control allows finer |
When you make an “oops” it’s nice to know that someone’s got your back. |
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The Events Calendar is a carefully crafted, extensible plugin that lets you easily share your events. Beautiful. Solid. Awesome. |
When your site needs to post events on a very regular basis. Another plugin with plugins to |
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Enables the advanced features of TinyMCE, the WordPress WYSIWYG editor. |
Makes it the edit box easier to use for word processing users. |
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Backup and restoration made easy. Complete backups; manual or scheduled (backup to S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, FTP, SFTP, email + others). |
It is never too soon to backup your site. You can be too late but then, well, you’re too late. |
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Instant switching between user accounts in WordPress. |
Why would you want to use this plugin? It’s great to test out what other admin or front end users |
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Version:1.5.6 Allows complete customization of dashboard panels and logos, removal of menus, giving editors access to widgets and menus plus lots more. |
When a client wants their admin to be THEIR admin and look just so. |
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The Wordfence WordPress security plugin provides free enterprise-class WordPress security, protecting your website from hacks and malware. |
One of the best security plugins out there. A great one-two punch when used with iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security). |
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WP Accessibility fixes common accessibility issues in your WordPress site. |
Because your site should be for everyone not just for people who can see, hear and touch just like you. |
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Create and import your favorites plugins lists from wpfavs.com. |
It doesn’t import your WordPress.org Favorites AND you do need to sign up for a free wpfavs.com account. But so worth it to speed up adding your favorite plugins to a site. Works like buttah. |
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The WP Google Fonts plugin allows you to easily add fonts from the Google Font Directory to your WordPress theme. |
Great if your theme doesn’t give you all the fonts you feel you deserve. |
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Site operators can create detailed, hierarchical documentation for the site’s authors, editors, and contributors, viewable in the WordPress admin |
Another good plugin for client websites when you want to avoid “support” calls. |
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Very easy to use WordPress lightbox plugin to display YouTube and Vimeo videos in an elegant lightbox overlay. |
Not quite NextGEN Gallery for video. But a good way to present video on your site. |
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WP-Members™ is a free membership management framework for WordPress® that restricts content to registered users. |
The highest rated plugin for sites that want to host “premium” content. |
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Easy management of 125×125 ads on your blog. Ads can be run for a specified number of days, and will automatically be taken down. Track clicks too. |
Simple ad management. |
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Make your WordPress website |
The free version of WPTouch Pro. It creates a version of your site that is more “mobile-like” than just a responsive theme. |
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Edit widget content using the default WordPress visual editor and media uploading functionality. Create widgets like you would create posts or pages. |
A way to add more interesting widgets to your sidebars. |
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Display a list of related posts on your site based on a powerful unique algorithm. Earn money by including sponsored content! |
Related content adds a “sticky” factor to your website. This is best for sites with more than just a few pieces of content. |
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Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using Yoast SEO plugin. |
THE WordPress SEO plugin. Get it, install it, configure it, use it, fuggedaboutit. |