10 Highly Recommended WordPress Plugins
These are plugins that I’ve used over the years and think that they are great additions to your WordPress website.
BackupBuddy
This is a great plugin for backing up websites. You can set it up on a schedule to have your website backed up by database, themes, plugins, media or a complete backup. These backups can be saved off-location to Google Drive or DropBox. iThemes also provides its own backup storage.
The pricing is between $80-$199.
Gravity Forms
There are many other form plugins you can use for building forms such as Ninja Forms and Contact Form 7. Here’s the deal. While Ninja Forms is free they charge for extensions. I find that premium Gravity Forms includes many of those plugins for a much cheaper price. ($200). Contact Form 7 is free but lacks all of the features of the premium form plugins.
I love Gravity Forms because it has everything I need. There are plenty of extensions that support integrations like MailChimp, User Creation, Collecting Form Data and Contact Forms.
WP Bakery Page Builder
I’ve tried many page builders but I always find myself coming back to WP Bakery Page Builder. This plugin, formerly known as Visual Composer is hands down the best. It has support for building multi-column pages, 50+ built-in content elements, and there are add-ons. This tool makes managing content on websites easy.
WPLOY
This is the best tool on the market. It allows for complete management of websites and monitoring.
Advanced Custom Fields (PRO)
Advanced Custom Fields allows you to create custom fields that you can use in your WordPress template files. This gives the developer the ability to add custom fields to a page, post, Custom Post Type (CPT) and then map those values into the template. This makes creating custom templates for Custom Post Types very easy.
Facebook Widget by Milap Patel
This is certainly the one plugin I use on every single website I build and manage. This is an easy integration with Facebook to display the website’s Facebook page on the website. This comes as a widget so it’s typically placed in the footer. This is a very useful social media plugin.
OptinMonster
This is one of Thomas Griffin’s masterpieces that he started years ago. It has since exploded into a very popular plugin that allows popups to capture users e-mail address. This is a great marketing tool because it allows the website to convert visitors to followers by allowing them to opt-into a newsletter.
Reveal Template
A simple plugin for developers. This will display a drop down that shows all of the templates that are being loaded. This is great for helping trouble shoot or figuring out which WordPress template you need to customize to get get the desired customization.
Stream
This is an interesting plugin that tracks everything that happens within WordPress. You can easily track every change that happens by using Stream. It’s great for seeing if users logged in and what they did. This helps track down when configuration has changed.
Theme Check
Great plugin to verify that your custom WordPress theme is set up correctly. Theme Check will verify your theme with the same checks that WordPress.org will do. This will help you get your theme correct before submitting it to WordPress.com.
