Today many of us develop websites on WordPress and maintain our blog on the same. This is one of the best platforms today to build your business online and create content resources for your customers or community. Here are 8 reasons why I absolutely love WordPress:
- It is Free of cost, we don’t have to pay for registration 🙂
- Quick installation, you can setup your blog in 5 to 10 minutes!
- Wide range of free WordPress themes and templates available for customization which makes it easier for customization and develop a website.
- WordPress allows multiple authors to contribute.
- Search Engine Friendly Content Management System.
- Ultimate blogging platform for sharing on Social Networks
- Great communities and forum support
- Tons of Plugins that can make your blogging and Internet marketing journey a lot easier.
We have seen great progress in WordPress themes and Plugins that are helpful for both bloggers and developers. Although there are tons of Plugins available, many are poorly coded and can slow down a site drastically. You need to carefully pick these plugins.
Here we have 75 most important WordPress Plugins that worked well in 2015, I am sure they have a long way to go in 2016!
WordPress Plugins for Bloggers
Tinder – Every blogger require some kind of content editing capability to save time and efforts while updating the blog. Well, Tinder allows you to easily edit content, upload images, add links etc directly on front end of WP so you can view the page directly while editing.
Tinder Rating – 5 out of 5
Envira gallery – Envira Gallery is the most important plugin for bloggers often using images/videos to their post. It is a responsive WordPress gallery plugin that let you create beautiful and powerful photo and video galleries to the site in minutes without troubling the page loading speed. You can choose from the pre-made template or customize by adding effects to improve the appearance of your gallery. Envira gallery life has a free version and the lifetime plan costs $249!
Envira Gallery Rating – 4.4 out of 5
Display Widgets – Display Widgets gives you complete control over changing your sidebar content for different pages, categories and others. Also allows creating multiple sidebars without any extra coding and you just have to click on checkbox on and off for the widget you want to display or hide.
Display Widgets Rating – 4.8 out of 5
Custom Field Suite – Image generally upload as a full size image if you don’t have custom size setting for the same. Now with Custom Field Suite plugin you can easily set a specific size for images uploaded on WordPress blog post based on your preference. CFS includes over 12 field types including text, date, WYSIWYG, file upload, relationship, user, and loop (repeatable fields).
Custom Field Suite Rating – 4.9 out of 5
Edit Flow – Edit flow is a unique way to collaborate with your editorial team inside WordPress. This plugin is best for any multi-author site that allows viewing the editorial calendar, moving content between the team, managing authors, leave comments/post and much more.
Edit Flow Rating – 4.5 out of 5
Black Studio TinyMCE – Black Studio TinyMCE is a simple visual editor widget for WordPress. It let you insert rich text and other media objects directly to the site’s sidebar without any HTML coding. However, you are still allowed to switch between visual mode and HTML mode (including Quicktags toolbar).
Black Studio TinyMCE Rating – 4.7 out of 5
Duplicator – Blogger generally need help while transferring a site from one place to other or at least have a backup of the same. Duplicator helps to move, migrate, copy or clone a site from one location to another. If you are an administrator looking to backup your site for testing and validation then Duplicator can do the needful.
Duplicator Rating – 4.9 out of 5
Members – For bloggers who have members contributing to posts and page this plugin can help you take control over your blog in terms of permission, restrict content, and assigning roles to users. You can make your site and its feed completely private if you want by installing Members Plugin.
Members Rating – 4.8 out of 5
Viper’s Video Quicktags – Viper’s video quicktags is an excellent plugin for bloggers who loves to post videos from various websites like YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo and many others sites. You no more have to copy and paste the embedded HTML code from video sites, with Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin the process can be done in just one click that too with total control over how the videos should be displayed.
Viper’s Video Quicktags Rating – 5 out of 5
Edituswp – Lately bloggers are adapting front-end editing idea on WordPress, where the technology allows you to write a post directly on the front end of the site without entering the admin panel. Editus is one such useful plugin that save your editing/previewing time, allows adding components (image, video, chapters etc), and is also compatible with most available WP themes. Edituswp cost varies from $129 to $249 for premium solution.
Edituswp Rating – NA
Liveblog – These days readers love to receive live update on any exciting events such as product releases, sports events, TV shows, etc. For blogger who do live blogging, Liveblog Plugin for WP can be most effective that helps to update posts right from front-end of the blog. There are more features like drag n drop images, separate space for top posts etc makes any live event interesting and easy to blog.
Liveblog Rating – 2.5 out of 5
WP Notification Bar – Notification tool bars are extremely popular these days that let you capture high quality leads and guide your visitor to their preferred destination on your blog. WP Notification Bar is a sleek, easy to set-up plugin that show notifications to relevant users instantly to increase conversions, promote a blog post or, a new product with lot of other build-in features.
WP Notification Bar Rating – 4 out of 5
upPrev – – upPrev is the really useful plugin that helps to keep your visitor stay tuned to your site. The plugin pops up a related article, post or news at the end of article your visitor is already reading. The pop up can be of any type animated flyout or a fade box with related content. Also allows the visitor to the select from previous or random available post for further reading.
upPrev Rating – 4.6 out of 5
WordPress Plugins for Search Engine Optimization
Yoast SEO – Yoast SEO is a highly recommended and best solution for complete website optimization. It helps to improve your WordPress SEO by letting you write optimized content, add titles and descriptions to articles, add open meta data, publish xml sitemap and much more.
Rating – 4.2 out of 5
Google XML Sitemaps – Having an organized XML sitemap is extremely important for search engines to better index your website/blog. This plugin automatically generates an XML sitemap for your website so that major search engines can easily see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently when crawled.
Google XML Sitemaps Rating – 4.9 out of 5
Google XML Sitemap for Videos – While XML sitemaps are important for web crawlers, video sitemap is also a requirement as video sites are gaining high traffic. Google XML Sitemap for videos plugin will generate an XML Sitemap for your WordPress blog using all YouTube videos that you may have embedded in your blog posts.
Google XML Sitemap for Videos Rating – 4.5 out of 5
Google XML Sitemap for Images – Just the above plugins for web pages and videos, here is Google XML sitemap for Images that will generate a sitemap for your WordPress blog with all the image URLs that are attached to your blog posts and WordPress pages.
Google XML Sitemap for Images Rating – 3.8 out of 5
All in One SEO Pack – – All in One SEO Pack is another WP plugin that will automatically optimize your site for Search Engines and web crawlers. It also offers various supports such as XML Sitemaps, Google Analytics, CMS-Style WP Installations etc. Chose any one Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack, they work similar so you don’t need both.
All in One SEO Pack Rating – 4.4 out of 5
All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets – -The idea of Rich Snippets was developed basically to make your page interactive, gain higher rand and more CTR. All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets helps to develop short summary of your WP page in the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing and sometimes in the News feed of Facebook in nice format with star ratings, author photo, image, etc so that it boost CTR, improves SEO and Rankings.
All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets Rating – 4.3 out of 5
Smush.it – Reducing an image file size is often a timtime-consumingsk, but here is the solution. Smush.it helps to strip down unnecessary bulky information from the uploaded image to reduce the file size without impacting the quality of the image. It also helps to improve performance and boost your SEO of your site.
Smush.it Rating – 4.7 out of 5
SEO Rank Reporter – -SEO Rank Reporter is a must-have plugin for people that are seriously concerned about SEO rankings. Based on keywords you choose, the SEO Rank Reporter plugin will track your Google rankings every 3 days and report the data in an easy-to-read graph.
SEO Rank Reporter Rating – NA
SEO Friendly Images – Image optimization play a vital role in entire SEO Process, yet many forget the same. Get SEO Friendly Images Plugin that will automatically add ALT and Titles attributes to all your images (according to the options you set) improving traffic from search engines.
SEO Friendly Images Rating – 3.1 out of 5
Scribe SEO – -Scribe was developed by Copyblogger to make your content marketing simple. Scribe makes it easy to conduct in-depth research that helping writers and content producers to quickly identify content marketing opportunities for search and social media traffic and leads.
Scribe SEO Rating – 1.1 out of 5
Broken Link Checker – -Landing to a 404/redirect page is extremely discouraging for visitors, so it becomes important to keep all your links updated. Broken Link Checker easily checks your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notifies you if any are found.
Broken Link Checker Rating – 4.2 out of 5
SearchWP – -SearchWP is much better than the default WordPress search engine as it allows the user to find your site more accurately than ever. There is lot more features that improves your site visibility like creating multiple search engines, index PDF content automatically, search statistics etc. SearchWP would cost you $49 for 1 site license and $249 for unlimited sites license.
SearchWP Rating – NA
Better Internal Link Search – -For a blog/website that features lot of informative posts and pages, it becomes important yet laborious process to inter-link them. With Better Internal Link Search plugin the process becomes easier; the algorithm of this plugin displays the keyword contained in the title of posts not from the entire post or page. This greatly reduces the number of results on sites with a lot of content and also improves accuracy.
Better Internal Link Search Rating – 5 out of 5
SEO Smart Link – -SEO Smark Link helps to interlink the keywords and phrases of your blog posts automatically with lot of SEO benefits. You are free to set your own keywords and set of matching URLs. Further you can set nofollow attribute, open links in new window and also add affiliate links to other sites.
SEO Smart Link Rating – 3 out of 5
Simple URLs – – Long URls of any blog post looks unprofessional and disturbing, Simple URLs plugin is a complete URL management system that allows you create, manage, and track outbound links from your site. It does much more than any URL Shortner service, you can add affiliate links, download link counter, link up to your social networks, links to other blog or website and also add banner, button or text links advertisement.
Simple URLs Rating – 4.6 out of 5
Use Google Libraries – -Those who are concerned about page loading speed, Use Google Libraries is a must-have plugin. This is easy to install and use, where the plugin changes the location of many locally used scripts to Google’s AJAX Libraries CND, so that your server is off the load.
Use Google Libraries Rating – 5 out of 5
Ultimate Video SEO Plugin – Ultimate Video SEO Plugin automatically optimizes videos on your site, which includes videos from major hosting sites and also self hosted videos that are compatible to WordPress. It automatically fetches video SEO details from videos of all major video hosting providers and submits it to video sitemap. This plugin is best to gain traffic from Google through your videos.
Ultimate Video SEO Plugin Rating – 3.8 out of 5
Simple 301 Redirects – Every web developer will require some sort of redirect solution when the site is migrated or when the content is moved to new location. Here, Simple 301 Redirect plugin provides an easy method of redirecting requests to another page on your site or elsewhere on the web. It also passes the incoming links and their PageRank of old page to new one.
Simple 301 Redirects Rating – 4.4 out of 5
Yoast Breadcrumbs – Having Breadcrumbs added to your site can help easy navigation for pages, improve the relevancy of keywords used in terms of SEO and let user better browsing experience on your site. This plugin easily adds breadcrumbs to your template that are not only attractive but are also compact for easier navigation.
Yoast Breadcrumbs Rating – 4.7 out of 5
WordPress Plugins for Social Networks
Floating Social Bar – Floating Social Bar is simple yet effective plugin for Social Networks that creates a floating social bar to WordPress sites without impacting a site’s speed. This bar can be horizontally added to any blog post, pages and other post type to attract visitors and get maximum shares.
Floating Social Bar Rating – 4.2 out of 5
NextScript Auto Poster – NextScript Auto Poster helps to re-publish blogposts automatically to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Blogger, Tumblr, Delicious, Plurk, etc profiles and/or pages. This is a time-saving way to reach most of your audiences and tell all your friends, readers and followers about your new post.
NextScript Auto Poster Rating – 4.2 out of 5
DiggDigg – DiggDigg is a commonly used social sharing button plugin that adds floating social bar on the left side of a webpage. It displays all popular social sharing buttons such as Twitter, Buffer, Facebook Share, Facebook Like, Digg, LinkedIn, Google +1, Reddit and many more; the choice is yours to add them.
DiggDigg Rating – 3.6 out of 5
JetPack – JetPack is a full-featured plugin to get better security and improve site performance including varieties of social network management features. Jetpack simplifies managing WordPress sites by giving you visitor stats, security services, speeding up images, and helping you get more traffic.
JetPack Rating – 4 out of 5
ShareThis – ShareThis is the most popular WordPress plugin for social sharing. You can choose from host of small and large icons for sharing content on more than 100 social networks using ShareThis. Also gets you greater insights by creating a Social Analytics Dashboard account including CopyNShare feature.
ShareThis Rating – 2.8 out of 5
Ultimate Social Media Icons Plus – If you are already using Ultimate Social Media Icons plugin then upgrade your site with Plus, which allows you to display social media icons on your website and tailor them to your needs. It carries more functions, easy on customization and several bugs have been fixed on the Plus version.
Ultimate Social Media Icons Plus Rating – 4.9 out of 5
Social Media Feather – Social Media Feathers plugin is extremely lightweight and can be added effortlessly to any WordPress site. The plugin adds social media buttons/icons for sharing posts, pages or any other custom post types without troubling the loading speed of a site.
Social Media Feather Rating – 4.6 out of 5
Sharebar – Another popular social sharing plugin that helps your reader share your content on various social networks. Sharebar adds a dynamic and fully customizable vertical box to the left side of a blog post that contains links/buttons to popular social networking sites.
Sharebar Rating – 3.4 out of 5
Monarch – Don’t miss Monarch if you are serious about social sharing, this plugin not only adds social sharing buttons to various places but also encourage visitors to share the content. Interestingly it allows sharing images on social network and also works well on mobile sites.
Monarch Rating – NA
SocialFans – Make your WordPress site standout by displaying your fan following using SocialFans. Extremely effective and Retina Responsive WordPress plugin displaying your social accounts fans, subscribers and followers number with a lot of features coming with 30 social networks like facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, twitter and 26 other social networks.
SocialFans – 4.6 out of 5
Social Streams – Social Streams is a simple plugin that collect and display social media content from Instagram and Twitter directly on your WordPress website. Also allows collecting conversations and photos from your own social content or public conversations based on hashtags.
Social Streams Rating – 4.7 out of 5
AccessPress Social Counter – AccessPress is by far the best plugin to display your social accounts fans, subscribers and followers number on your website. You can activate the social media account followed by entering the details and selecting one out of 5 theme designs for display. Free version is available for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Youtube, Sound Cloud and Dribbble along with Posts and Comments count.
AccessPress Social Counter Rating – 5 out of 5
Social Metrics Tracker – Keeping track of social media metrics is important as well tiring, so using Social Metrics Tracker can make lot of sense. The plugin tracks the performance of your posts over Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Google+, XING, and Flattr. You can also export these data to a spreadsheet for easy analysis.
Social Metrics Tracker Rating – 5 out of 5
Pin It Button for Images – The plugin helps to add a “Pin It” button over your images, so users can add it to Pinterest easily. The “pin it” button neatly sits at the bottom or top of the image, encouraging users to pin it.
Pin It Button for Images Rating – 2.5 out of 5
WordPress Plugins for E-Commerce/ Payment/ Cart/ Advertising
WooComerce – Beyond doubts WooCommerce is the favorite eCommerce solution online for merchants around the world. With this plugin you can make your shopping cart highly capable and flexible to make your online selling experience beautiful.
WooCommerce Rating – 4.1 out of 5
MarketPress eCommerce – MarketPress eCommerce is another popular WordPress eCommerce solution providing an elegant shopping experience that supports all major payment gateways and allows you to easily manage distribution and shopping costs with custom shipping options.
MarketPress eCommerce Rating – 3.7 out of 5
WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart – Business owners that are looking for simple and quick solution to sell their product online, must look at this plugin. Simple Paypal Shopping Cart plugin allows you to add an ‘Add to Cart’ button for your product on any posts or pages. You can sell products and services directly from your own WordPress site and turn your WP blog into an eCommerce site.
WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart Rating – 4.5 out of 5
Cart66 Lite – Cart66 plugin is a simple and easy to use eCommerce for WordPress. It allows you to sell digital goods, physical products and services online along with multiple shipping options.
Cart66 Lite Rating – 2.8 out of 5
Jigoshop – Jigoshop is highly popular open-source eCommerce plugin for WordPress that is trusted and used by worldwide merchants. You can start your online shop in minutes without knowing much of coding, also with wide range of payment gateways and shipping options available, you can turn your store to a dynamic one.
Jigoshop Rating – 4.4 out of 5
eShop – eShop is an accessible shopping cart plugin that allows you to create products using post, pages and custom post types. There are also various options to list your products and offers basic statistics of sales.
eShop Rating – 3.6 out of 5
Ecwid – – Ecwid is a full-featured shopping cart plugin that can be added to any WP site and sell products globally. There are more than 40 international payment gateways available and supports 45 languages that attract more customers. Ecwid amazingly offers unlimited data storage and backups of your site regardless of the hosting you use.
Ecwid Rating – 4.7 out of 5
Easy Digital Downloads – Many eCommerce solution fail to offer digital selling option on their platform, however if you sell digital goods, you need Easy Digital Downloads Plugin. This is a complete eCommerce for selling digital products globally with various options for payment gateways.
Easy Digital Downloads Rating – 4.9 out of 5
WPdeposit – The WPdeposit plugin will help you run a monetary system on your wordpress website. It allows your users to deposit money on their account and spend them out on advertisement, subscription and other.
WPdeposit Rating – 3.8 out of 5
WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept – If you are looking for an easy solution for accepting payment from PayPal via your site you should install Easy Paypal Payment Accept plugin. Payment can be of any type for a service, product or donation. The plugin can be placed on the sidebar, posts and pages of your site.
WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept Rating – 4.2 out of 5
WP Insert – WP Insert is probably the simplest way to add Adsense code to every WP post. It allows you to insert ads in middle of the content without any coding requirement. You can insert Ads above, below, left, and right on the page, also in the sidebar using Ad widgets.
WP Insert Rating – 4.5 out of 5
ThirstyAffiliates – ThirstyAffiliates is one of the prime tool for people looking to make money out of Affiliate Marketing. It allows to add affiliate links, cloak links, import links and also auto keyword inserting. Unlike other plugins that simply redirect URLs, ThirstyAffiliates gives you the control to create a link once, and reference it many times over.
Thirsty Affiliates Rating – 4.4 out of 5
Simple Ads Manager – People who run advertising on WP knows how complicated the process can be. However, getting fully-featured plugin can be expensive, so try your hands on Simple Ads Manager that provides you a flexible logic of displaying advertisements on a rotation basis.
Simple Ads Manager Rating – 3.7 out of 5
WordPress Plugins for Site Improvement
WP Rocket – Page Catches play an important role in improving the page loading time and SEO. People have been using W3 Total Cache for caching plugin, but if you are looking for a lighter version of cache, it’s time to install WP Rocket. This new plugin just need to be installed and enable to get your page load faster – just best. WP Rocket falls under the price bracket of $39 to $199/Year.
Rating – NA
WordPress Importer – For people who find it tiring to work on database tools to move posts and pages to another website, WordPress Importer is the best plugin. This one helps to easily import posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, tags and more from a WordPress export file.
WordPress Importer Rating – 3.2 out of 5
Gravity Forms – Gravity Forms is the great contact form plugin solution for WordPress. There are more features available with Gravity Forms than just adding online forms, it can create online surveys, multi-page forms, web directories, and also integrates with many third party services. Only problem with this Plugin is that it supports only self-hosted service; hosted site should look for other option. Gravity Forms will cost you $39-$199/Year.
Gravity Forms Rating – NA
Wordfence Security – You won’t need any other plugin for security if you have Wordfence Security. It provides free enterprise-class security, protecting your website from hacks, firewall and malware. It checks if your site is already infected by conducting deep server-side scan and enforces strong passwords for further protection. Also promises to make your site 50% faster.
Wordfence Security Rating – 4.9 out of 5
Akismet – Bloggers and site owners generally have tough time sorting out spam comments on WordPress sites, Akismet plugin automatically fight against spam comment and keep your site safe. You can pull out existing spam comments as well with Akismet, simple awesome!
Akismet Rating – 4.8 out 5
Google Analytics+ – Just like the analytical job that google does for each site, Google Analytics + helps to track your WordPress site easily with the latest tracking codes and lots added data for search result pages and error pages. The plugin bring the require stats data to your dashboard without logging into your Google Analytics account.
Google Analytics+ Rating – 4 out of 5
All in one WP Security and Firewall – All WordPress powered sites requires extra security and firewall plugin to empower secure practice. All in one WP Security and Firewall is the most advanced, extensive and user-friendly plugin to take care of all possible security issues. You can pick from the available categories – Basic, Intermediate or Advance based on your site’s requirements.
All in one WP Security and Firewall Rating – 4.8 out 5
BJ Lazy Load – WordPress sites that are loaded with images and iframes can take real long time to load. For such site BJ Lazy Load plugin is a must that significantly speed-up the site and save your bandwidth. It uses no external JS libraries and degrades gracefully for non-js as well.
BJ Lazy Load Rating – 4.1 out of 5
Theme Check – It is a must have plugin for developers who often creates WordPress themes. Theme Check verifies your theme and ensures that it meets the standards and practices of WordPress.org themes directory. It is not only handy for developers but also for users that are concerned about up-to-date themes.
Theme Check Rating – 4.8 out of 5
Disable Comments – Disable Comments Plugin helps the administrators to globally disable comments on any post type (posts, pages, attachments, etc.) so that these settings cannot be overridden for individual posts. The plugin is helpful for users that want to disable on certain post or entire site, not on selective individual posts.
Disable Comments Rating – 4.9 out of 5
VaultPress – Every WordPress blog requires a backup plan to prevent it from those unwanted hacks. For a premium solution, you can try VaultPrress which is subscription service offering real-time backup, automated security scanning, and support from WordPress experts. You can backup and synchronize every post, comment, media file, revision and dashboard settings on VaultPress servers. It works with WP managed hosting and gives complete assistance on site migration and restoration.
VaultPress Rating – 4.7 out of 5
P3 – P3 is probably the most important plugin you will need to manage all installed Plugins. This plugin creates a profile of your WordPress site’s plugins’ performance by measuring their impact on your site’s load time. You can easily figure out which plugin is causing slowness on site and which one needs to be uninstalled.
P3 Rating – 4.4 out of 5
W3 Total Cache – W3 Total Cache is believed to be a great addition to any WP powering site. W3 Total Cache plugin improves the user experience of your site by increasing server performance, compressing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. With W3 Total Cache you can save up to 80% bandwidth via minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and feeds.
W3 Total Cache Rating – 4.3 out of 5
WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is another cache solution for simple caching needs on WordPress. This plugin generates static HTML files and your web server will further serve that file, instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. Yet, W3 Total Cache does a better job!
WP Super Cache Rating – 4.2 out of 5
ZenCache – Renamed from “Quick Cache” to ZenCache is an advanced WP cache plugin that promises “Speed without Compromise”. ZenCache takes a real-time snapshot (building a cache) of every Page, Post, Category, Link, etc for future reference. However, the basic version does not serve cached pages to logged users or one who recently left a comment.
ZenCache Rating – 4.7 out of 5
WP-Optimize – WP-Optimize does maintenance work on WP database by removing unnecessary things that we used to do manually earlier. It can clean up spam, unapproved comments, trash posts, trackbacks, pingbacks, etc and also optimize the database in many other ways.
WP-Optimize Rating – 4.9 out of 5
EWWW Image Optimizer – One of the best ways to speed up your WordPress site is to reduce the file size of images and that’s what EWWW Image Optimizer does. The plugin automatically optimizes your images when you upload a blog. It supports many formats including NextGEN, GRAND FlAGallery and more using lossless/lossy methods and image format conversion.
EWWW Image Optimizer Rating – 4.5 out of 5
Did we miss your favorite WordPress plugin? Let us know which plugin works best for your WP site.
