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Backup and Optimize
W3 Total Cache
The ultimate swiss-army knife of caching, from the basic page caching (keeping a static copy of the page), to CSS/JS/HTML minification (making your files smaller), as well as handling uploads to a Content Delivery Network. | WP-SuperCache
If W3TC is too much for you, SuperCache is the answer. Very simply, it makes static HTML files to serve users, and much fewer settings to break. |
Backup Buddy Premium
Expensive, but the only plugin that can truly handle both file and database backups easily. Only for pro-bloggers though at that price, but a license lasts a lifetime. ($75 for 2 site license) | WP-DB Backup
Does what it says on the tin – backs up your database. However, certainly not an easy solution and only works with core tables – so plugin data is lost. |
Vaultpress Premium
Another premium backup service from the guys that created WordPress, so you know it’s rock solid. ($15 per month per site) | CloudFlare Caching Service
Though not really a plugin, this is a free service that works fantastically with WordPress to reduce the amount of spam requests for your page and cache certain resources in local CDNs around the world. Results in significant speed increases. Well worth it but requires you to adjust the name servers for your domain so can be a little tricky to set up. |
WP-Optimize
Optimizes the database by running the optimize SQL command, removing post revisions, spam and unapproved comments. It’s essential if you don’t manually manage your database or run your own optimization scripts. Also includes functionality to rename users, useful for changing the default admin user. | Secure WP
From the WebSite Defender guys, this gives you a thorough security check and make a number of small adjustments to harden your Wp install, such as hiding the version number. Also available as an online service. |
Redirection
| Wassup
Wassup gives you a full stats dashboard and even real-time monitoring of visitor activity, without needing an external service like WordPress Stats or Google Analytics. |
Broken Link Checker
Dealing with broken links can be pain if you’re waiting for readers to report them – get ahead of the game with this plugin and automatically check all the sites you’ve linked to before they become a problem. | BackWPup
This won’t work for everyone’s setup, but it’s a fairly comprehensive free solution if you are lucky enough to get it working; includes email backups, Amazon s3, dropbox; and does a full file and DB backup, not just post export. |
StatSurfer
StatSurfer is an elaborate yet attractive stats counter that runs locally on your install; if you don’t like Analytics, and WordPress stats are a little too simple for you, this is a nice middle ground that doesn’t need additional accounts anywhere. |
Search Engine Optimisation
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Widely regarded as the SEO plugin for WordPress. It has an extensive feature set and rave reviews. Give it a whirl, there are alternatives though. Includes XML sitemap features. | SEO Ultimate
Another extensive feature set – this one has a 404 error tracker and well as link cloaking for your affiliate links, as well as the standard features. Each module can be disabled as required, so scales with your needs. Quite heavy when fully enabled though. |
All-In-One SEO
A basic set of features, but still a very popular choice for handling SEO concerns. | Google XML Sitemaps
Creates a site map for you to submit to Google and automatically updates it when you post new content. Essential for getting indexed quickly and accurately. |
SEO Friendly Images
Adds ALT and TITLE meta tags to your images so you can start getting valuable Google Images traffic. | SEO Slugs
Makes your permalinks shorter by removing unnecessary common words such as a/the/or, resulting in shorter URLs and a better rank. This functionality is built into SEO Ultimate but not WordPress SEO, so get an SEO plugin first then see if you need this one too. |
Robots Meta
The only easy way to add robots meta tags to specific pages, search results or feeds. Includes options for deindexing from directories and search engine specific tags. Also lets you edit htaccess and robots.txt from within the WordPress admin. |
Social and Commenting
Thank Me Later
Automatically sends a follow-up email to anyone who leaves a comment at your blog, thanking them for taking the time to comment and encouraging follow up visits. | Disqus Commenting
A full replacement comment system for WordPress offering a range of login options, share buttons, and serious spam protection. Syncs with your WordPress database to ensure you don’t lose any should you decide it’s not for you. Restricts your ability to add other commenting functionality and plugins though, beyond what Disqus provides. |
CommentLuv
Automatically inserts a link to the commenter’s latest blog post when they enter a comment (if they provide a website address of course). Superb way to encourage more comments, though also liable to encourage worthless comments posted just for the link. | Digg Digg
Full set of social sharing buttons in a variety of styles – a vertical floating box is usually quite popular. |
ShareBar
Fewer options, but simpler and very attractive alternative for adding a set of vertical sharing buttons which moves when the user scrolls. | Sexy Bookmarks
A unique style and customisable set of social bookmarking buttons with a huge range of services included. Quite recognizable by readers who are fans of bookmark services. |
Akismet
Comes with WordPress, but if you haven’t activated and added an API key yet, you’re missing out. It really does stop the hordes of spam comments that come every hour. | Follow me
Creates a persistent slide-on sidebar widget you can fill with links to all your social profiles. Essential if you have a lot of accounts, but for one or two, just paste them onto a regular text sidebar widget. |
LiveFyre
A revolutionary real-time commenting system with added social login features, CommentLuv-like links to users latest blog posts, user profiles that encourage interaction and more. Definately worth considering to replace your standard WordPress comments! | Pay With a Like – $39
A premium plugin, but if you’re looking to introduce a Like/Tweet/+1 to view content system, this is the simplest and best way to do it. Part of the WPMU dev site (member $79/month), or you can download just this plugin for a one-off payment of $39. |
Core Functionality
WP-PageNavi
Replaces the next/previous buttons with good looking paginated buttons. Customizable, and absolutely essential. | Revision Control
If you edit your post a lot, each autosave will result in a new “revision” stored in the database. Keep those under control by limiting them with this plugin. |
No Revisions
Doesn’t delete previous revisions but does prevent any future ones being made. Install with any new blog. (Note: you can also achieve the same effect by editing the wp-config.php yourself). | FD Feedburner
Redirects your main feed to the Feedburner site. This reduces the load on your server as well as adding a host of additional features. |
What Would Seth Godin Do
Odd name for a plugin, but it creates a “welcome box” for new users visiting the site. Disappears by default after the 5th visit. Use the box to encourage signup with the newsletter, or RSS feed, or just a personal greeting. | WP GreetBox
Creates a greet box at the start or end of posts, which you can customize specific messages for different traffic sources – so if they came from Google, get them to subscribe; or if they came from Digg then show a Digg button. etc. |
nRelate (Related Posts Plugin)
A superbly customizable related posts plugin that doesn’t stress your database, and can even earn you money displaying sponsored content. Essential; lots of cool styles to choose from. | JetPack
Loads of additional features that usually come with a WordPress.com blog – significantly, stats, gravatar hover cards, a grammar checker, and recent tweets widget. Download | Plugin Site | Howto and Overview |
Popular Posts
(Requires Jetpack with Stats enabled) Uses the stats gathered with the JetPack plugin to figure out the most popular posts over X number of days and display them as a widget. | SimplePress
Creates an entire forum functionality to your site. Simple, customisable, fully integrated. |
Event Calendar Pro – Premium
A gorgeous events plugin with calendar view or event list, iCal and GCal import buttons. Perfect for club or society meet-ups. ($40 per site) | GD Star Ratings
An incredibly rich ratings plugin, perhaps overwhelming for most users but well worth the time investment to learn it. A full templating system and a variety of rating types make this the ultimate rating system around. |
Fast Secure Contact Form
With built in Captcha functionality and no need to mess around with templates, FSCF is a simple way to add a fantastic contact form. The options page is a little uninviting, but it hides a wealth of settings to customize functionality, including a meeting scheduler. | WP-Touch
Creates a complete mobile version of your site with ease. Premium version also available that removes branding and allows you to embed ads. |
Linktrackr Premium
Essential for anyone using affiliate marketing or conversion pages, this plugin performs link cloaking and A/B testing for various conversion page designs. Also includes a viral makreting (sharebar type) module. Full stats and dashboard, various plans available from $9/month. | Gravity Forms Premium – $39
Expensive if you just need a form, but the feature set is incredible and the name deceiving. Multi-step, logic, limiting entries for competitions, even a full ordering system. |
TinyMCE Advanced
An enhanced version of the built-in WYSIWYG editor that gives you a customizable array of extra features, such as being able to add HTML tables. Essential if you use the standard editor but find it a little frustrating. | Widget Logic
If you’ve ever wanted to dynamically change what’s on your sidebar using standard WordPress conditionals (is_single(), is_page(), is_archive() etc), this is the plugin for you. |
Syntax Highlighter Evolved
Essential for anyone who blogs about code, programming or web development – this plugin gives you an attractive and functional highlighted code block with optional line numbers. You might prefer Google Syntax Highlighter though, so check that out too – both are good. | Members
|
WPML - $80
| WP Insert
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QuForms – $25
|
E-Commerce
WP e-Commerce
The basic package is completely free with additional upgrades for a premium. The most popular WordPress free e-commerce around, there’s a vast list of showcase sites. A good selection of free features, SEO-friendly, highly customisable and works well with other plugins; but perhaps aimed more to web developers who don’t mind editing templates and writing CSS – there are slicker options out there. | JigoShop
Works great out of the box with the default WP theme, and a very slick style. Built-in payment processors, inventory management and full stats dashboard make this a very attractive and FREE e-commerce solution to rival the best. |
Shopp Premium
$55 for a basic license, plus upgrade costs for payments modules and other plugin functionality; but with rock solid support and a much cleaner backend interface than the free solutions. If you’re serious about eCommerce on WordPress, it should be a negligible expense for the peace of mind and support offered with a premium plugin. |
Photography and Galleries
NextGen Gallery
The built-in gallery and photo management in WordPress isn’t ideal – this plugin creates a whole new gallery section to manage your photos, disassociating them from posts. You can then embed albums or galleries in posts or collect all your images on a single page. An extensive plugin in and of itself, you can also download plugins for NextGen Gallery to extend functionality further. | Smush.it
Smush.it is an image optimizer service from Yahoo that can reduce the size of your images by around 10-40% without any loss in quality, and with this plugin your images will automatically be run through the service (they’re still hosted on your server though). There’s also a bulk option to do all your previously uploaded images too. If your site is image heavy, this is absolute must and pretty amazing stuff really. (Note: it doesn’t work on images over 1mb). |
Random
Get Me Cooking
A rich-markup compatible recipe plugin; you can also submit your recipes to feature on the getmecooking.com recipe directory! |
Disclaimer: All plugins listed were thoroughly reviewed. MakeUseOf is not responsible for any damage and/or data loss
that might result from use of any of the above mentioned plugins.
Hide 122 Comments
great list – use many of them and love them
Hey! I was wondering when a best wordpress plugin page would happen! Thanks a bunch. Really narrows down what to go with, since there are so many out there, and confirms a few that I already use!
Thank you for the great list – use many of them and love them
Sorry, but BackupBuddy, albeit an excellent plugin, does not give you a lifetime license for $75. That license is good for only one year, and has to be renewed in order to get support, or more importantly, to get updates. I have looked elsewhere because of that repeating expense.
It lasts a lifetime in that once you purchase you can use it forever – it does not require annual payments in order to use it, unlike managed services such as vaultpress. This is what I meant. Support and updates are limited to one year, but that isn’t unusual. You wouldn’t expect to get Windows 8 for free if you bought Windows 7.
Very good collection!
Gravity Forms
Very nice collection but missing some very important plugins:
1. Gravity Forms. The best drag & drop forms creator for your wp site period. Bang for the buck.
2. Robots Meta and KB Robots.txt are a must for a perfect robots.txt file.
3. Secure WP. You need this, right ?
4. Maintenance Mode. Exactly what the name implies.
5. Wassup and VStats. Visitor statistics.
6. TinyMCE Advanced. We all spend a lot of time in that nifty editor so why not make it better ?
Thanks for the nice collection !
MKP
thanks for recommendations, we’ll go over them along with others recommended in comments here and possibly add some to the list.
Aibek
Interesting additions, I’ll take a look and consider adding them to the page, thanks for suggesting them.
This is awesome! Really helpful for someone new to WordPress like me! Thanks!
Why is Widget Logic missing from this list? And what about Redirection? Great list, aside from the 2 glaring omissions!
For SEO you missed Headspace 2.
Avoid Shopp is my advice.
For a contact form’ ‘Fast Secure Contact from’ is probably the best of the free ones. Gravity Forms is worth a look at (paid).
What’s your experience with Shopp? Why do you say avoid it?
Nice list, thanks!
Thanks for the post … very much appreciated. You guys consistently do great work
Great list, thanks for sharing! Totally agree with 1 comment on the ‘Fast Secure Contact form.’
cool plugins… love it…
I really love these plungins… these are my favorites…
Thanks for great list of wordpress plugin
wooOOhooo!! nice one.. loved the collection, definitely wanna try it! BOOKMARKED! for later use!!
Thank you.
Wow, This is a great collection. I’ll give it a try to several of them.
Thank you!. You guys rock
thank you )
thanks a lot, very helpful for my blog.
Very helpful. Many of the list above I already use.
That looks great. Downloading a couple now.
Nice list.
Have used Cloudflare since Beta & recommend you give it a try.
I’ve started using a new backup plugin, (EZPZ One Click Backup,) aka EZ PZ OCB. Handles DB & all content.
nice~
I appreciate the screenshots. Thanks for the attention to detail.
tks a lot
Great summary of the top plugins. Thanks.
Excellent and inspiring list. These set a very high standard for any of us building plugins.
Thanks! Excellent list.
feed redirect is good . thanks .
i recommend BackWPup plugin for complete backup to dropbox .
Thank you for this valuable information.
Nice sharing, I really liked that!!!!
Thanks!!
Excellent compilation, though you missed many, it was a good list for a clean wordpress
It’s SUPER Great ! There are a lot of plugins I have never used before, this post is really really useful for me. Thank you very much
One of the best collections I have seen! Thanks.
I started today WordPress -blog and searched 10 important plugins I should use.
Thanks for posting! Very useful- at least i won’t have to go through the millions of plugins anymore!
Very comprehensive list .. just what i have been looking for. thanks use some of them on my blogs
Great list!
Great summary
Wow.! It is a collection of the best plugins.
this is a great list and useful for new bloggers like me
Awesome collection. Installing few plugins right now
Nice WordPress plugins collection.
This is really fantastic. Helped me a lot to set up my blogs. Thanks
Great work!! Can you make the same list of Joomla plugins and modules?
It’s a good idea, but no one on the staff is a heavy user of Joomla so it’s unlikely we’d able to do this.
might be a bit difficult at the time being as we dont have anyone in the team with extensive Joomla experience.
This is a great post! I use several of these plugins myself.
Just launched a Twitter-to-WordPress plugin that is pretty handy if you need to add a Twitter feed to your site. Unlike other plugins it pulls the display URL from Twitter into the feed (no t.co links).
Download Twitter Wings from the WordPress repository.
Thank you! It’s helpful, but it’s not enough! If you add “the best wordpress themes”, Great!
I dont think that would work, because is no such as “best themes”. That depends on the intended purpose, the level of skill of the developer making the site, personal preferences to graphics etc…
Yes, you are right! But I think everyone has his/her the best themes in their mind!
excellent wordpress plugins info…thank you
Let us know if you have any other suggestions.
Quite a few of these plugins are out of date currently and haven’t been updated to work with WordPress 3.2. You might want to revise your list. It is a decent one, but outdated just a bit.
Thanks for the heads-up, Mike!
Hi Mike. I’m a WordPress developer myself, and can say that in my experience very few plugins are broken with minor upgrades to wordpress – it’s only the major revisions that cause issues. As such, I usually check the changelogs to see what kind of chnages occur with each upgrade and if they’ll have any impact on plugins. Obviously, I’m unable to check every single plugin listed here though. However, just because the plugin page says it has no information on compatiblity doesnt mean it *isnt* compatible, simply that no one has reported it to be compatible yet.
If you know of aspecific plugin is actually *broken* (not listed simply as incompatible), I can look into removing them and finding a suitable replacement.
Normally you would be right, but from WordPress 3.1.4 to WordPress 3.2.+ there have been significant changes in a lot of areas. So if a plugin has not made the jump to WordPress 3.2 yet, I would instantly be wary of installing it if it is supposed to bring any kind of advanced functionality. If it is a basic plugin you may be OK. Either way, with WordPress 3.3 about to be released, this can bring even more problems (potentially).
wonderful collection of WordPress plugins.I am using at least one plugin out of mentioned in each category however not using image and e-commerce plugin.
Thanks for this. It was really helpful. Keep up the brilliant work!!!
Really dig your post and the format of the page. I would add two plugins that make my life much easier by linking my WP sites to my CRM’s: ZOHO and Big Contacts.
http://www.zohoforms.com
http://www.bcforms.com
What’s good about both is that they are less expensive than gravity forms, yet just as good with the added ability to link to your CRM. A no brainer.
thanks, we’ll check them out
and Quform http://www.quform.com
No security mentions at all? WebsiteDefender WordPress Security is a great plugin that also ties in to the great WebsiteDefender service.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/websitedefender-wordpress-security/
http://www.websitedefender.com
Uh, Secure WP is already listed, and is from Website Defender.
Akismet – nobody bothers to check this plugin? A plugin that sends all your commentators’ data to a third-party server, including their IP, email address and comment content (claiming, oh, that it’s in the name of good)?
Facebook monetizes from user’s info. Why WordPress wouldn’t do the same?
So I checked: on a personal blog, with moderate traffic, I was getting thousands of spam comments, as marked by Akismet. Wow! Wouldn’t you cling with teeth and claws to Akismet the Savior? Well, I thought I’d check. I disabled it, totally. And guess what. I get a maximum of 5 spam comments per month. So, where were all the thousands spam comments coming from? – most likely they were just scare tactics, to keep you hooked to Akismet while they’re combing through all your data which – they will claim – you willingly provided. Willingly but brainwashed, that is.
Jesus.
Paranoid much? Akismet is not affiliated with WordPress in any way, and it is not harvesting data beyond checking for known spam. Feel free to turn it off and do as you wish, but don’t throw around accusations like that.
the best donation would be to tell your friends aboue MakeUseOf.com)
This is a really comprehensive list. I like it. Would have liked to see comparisons between plugins in the same category
Some really good plugins out there. Thanks for sharing
Really nice collection! I’ve used some of them, but I’ll give a try for CloudFlare Caching Service… thanks for the post!
Great collection, just downloaded some of them. WordPress with these plugins made easy!
Nice collection, but need to update with time; there are better coming up everyday!
Any suggestion of specific plugins to check out?
They DO check IP addresses AND email AND content of comments posted – thats how spam detection works – along with gMail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, and every other email service and spam detection service ever existed. A score is given and above a certain rating, spam is determined. There’s no secret there, no conspiracy.
Your personal experience is neither a good indicator of a conspiracy nor independently verifiable. “I to my dead grandfather through a piece of toast last year” – can YOU explain that? No, nor is it verifiable. Without access to your site, I couldn’t possibly explain the behaviour you described.
One possible explanation may be… your site was recently deindexed by google. When posting spam comments, spammers will grab the top 1000 results for a certain keyword. Perhaps your site was listed before, now it isn’t. Simple.
How about you tell us your site address? Or are you not prepared to backup your accusations?
Hi Mr Blogger Savvy (is that the name your mother gave you?)
The password protection system used here is custom coded javascript/jQuery, though it’s not particularly complex. There is a plugin called Download Manager which can do a similar function, but I cannot recommend me and all we ever had were complaints. Ours also includes some custom code that checks if user has liked or tweeted the page. Feel free to check out the source code of this page – its all fairly basic if you know javascript and PHP.
Thanks WP-PageNavi is working great. Thanks
Can I suggest another plugin for the list? StatSurfer is great for analytics. http://searchwordpressplugins.com/plugin/statsurfer/
thanks for the input, we will check it out
I have most of em on my new wordpress blog! So happy with the collection. 2 thumbs up
Very useful. Hope to see this page up-to-date with newer plugins.
If you have any suggestions we would appreciate if you post them here in comments.
Aibek
I’ve been waiting for this great plugin collections!!! Cheers
Just what I’ve been looking for
I will be back.
Great list and some I will definitely use. Thanks Makeuseof. I love your site.
Thanks for sharing. I just realized that I miss some of them
Cool list! Some I’ve heard of, some need to be investigate further!
Thanks for this awesome plugins, I will make use of them right away
WOW! great collection. I have downloaded some of these plugins. Thanks you for sharing.
what about the .com version of wordpress?
The one you can’t add your own plugins to? Unfornately, no. It’s just too limiting.
Can you consider adding my plugin to the list? It’s an auto google backlink index checker, multi site keyword rank checker with project management features. http://www.seoagencyplugin.com
I think you should also consider WP App Maker: it is a recently released plugin which automatically handles the creation and distribution on a native Android App (no HTML) for any WordPress blog. It provides some interesting features like layout customization, offline caching, social sharing and QR code based distribution.
wonderful list!
Absolutely superb list – ta
This is one of the biggest and best list of useful plugins for WordPress!!!
You should add WPML Multilingual Plugin. It allows you to create and manage your site in multiple language, using the original English pages as templates
Truly great list of WP plugins. But I would like to add one more: Gallery plugin created by Beswebsoft. Really simple in use and if you have any questions they will provide you stepping instructions (even if you a new one in programming))
This is a great and very helpful list here! Would anyone know of a WordPress Plugin to assist in displaying a writing portfolio? I don’t want the entire website to be a portfolio, just a page. If you have any questions or need a clarification let me know.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Not sure what a writing portfolio is to be honest..
It would just be a page that displays a collaboration of all your writing work. For example, if you did an article for Wall Street Journal, you might link to that article from your page. If you have the writing sample, you could upload it somehow for your visitors to read directly on your website too.
These are just what I envision one being. Many people have their whole site dedicated to displaying their work and have a home page with a “slide show” going from one popular sample to the next. That’s not really what I’m looking for though. I would just like to have a specific page. If you want to see how my site looks, I can share it with you.
Hmm, I dont think that needs a plugin though, really. Unless you want images displayed with it, but then you’ve said you don’t want a slideshow. Just make a new ‘page’ and write about your work, linking to the documents?
Yeah and that’s what I’m currently doing. I was just curious if there was anything else that might make it unique or more attractive. I’m fairly new to WordPress as well, although I’m catching on pretty quick I think.
Have been using some of the Plugins and those with Premium Options are worth considering especially if you intend to sell items online. Overall the Free Plugins are worth downloading too. Thank you Make Use Of for the good selection!
Hi!
I would recommend these plugins:
qTranslate (2.5.28 for WP 3.3.1) enable multilanguage WP pages/posts.
WordPress Backup to Dropbox – explains itself
All in One Favicon : simple, for favicons
Sharedaddy : adds tons of “share with…”
Thank you for sharing, Marco!
I have added them to the list of apps to review for the next revision of this page.
Does anyone have a recommendation for the best SEM (not SEO) plugin?
Bridget
Bridget,
I recommend asking this question on MakeUseOf Answers: http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/ask
hi you left one out lol wp-insert a great plugin covers lot of things and it replaces a number of other plugin which then you don’t need pretty cool i would say i use myself and it work very nicely
thanks for informational post it was great
Thank you for this page. Is ‘s so usefull for me
I think I may just love you more than anything. What an excellent resource! Thanks for taking the time to put such a complete list together for the rest of us. Later – J
Just released the new LAX Slider – A Parallax Post Slider For WordPress.
A Post/Page/Product etc Slider with content preview.
Implement with simple shortcode.
Download: http://codecanyon.net/item/lax-slider-wordpress-parallax-slider/2295339
Demo: http://nuvuthemes.com/lax-slider-demo/
It’s very pretty, but runs ridiculously slow, even on my 12gb memory beast. Given that there are loads of free jquery sliders, I simply can’t recommend this.
It runs smooth on my 8gb machine – you might want to clear up some resources in your browser. It is animating 5 backgrounds/the slide image and title all at once, thus the need for resources. You will not find another WordPress slider that gives this effect.
Thanks,
-Nolan
one great list of plugins, was very useful to me.
thanks…
Wow amazing list of most usefull wordpress plugins. I am using WordPress for over 10 years but l never tought and saw a list like this till now. very usefull and helpfull list includes most powerfull wordpress plugins…
thanks for many times…
I’m a wordpress newbie and have found the Ultimate TinyMCE plugin a life-saver. It gives you many easy to use formatting tools, from basics to advanced. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without it.
Thanks for the input Carol, will put it on the list for consideration
I use the Backuper plugin to backup my wordpress site.
It’s free and backup your entire hosting account (not just your plugins, themes, database etc).
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/backuper/