Every developer should be familiar with the practise of avoiding “Reinventing the wheel”.
Hence, I try to avoid writing any custom code when extending or modifying WordPress’s core functionalities if there’s already a reputable plugin out there.
This is a constantly updated list of my must have WordPress plugins.
Functional
TinyMCE Advanced and WP User Avatar extends the default rich text editor and avatar’s functionalities respectively.
MetaSlider provides an interface to create and manage carousel / sliders which can be inserted into posts via shortcode or php function.
Ninja Forms allows creation and management of forms through a drag and drop interface that supports many form types. Submitted form data can be viewed through its cms.
Redirection allows me to manage all my 301 / 302 redirection needs.
Yoast SEO helps in SEO by providing an SEO grade score and list of things which can be improved on every page / post.
Speed
Redis Object Cache caches database records into redis for fast subsequent in-memory reads. Ensure your server has sufficient memory to support its use or by supplying a shorter ttl.
WP Super Cache creates static html pages so requests bypasses php. I use this together with Nginx which required some additional tweaks to its configuration. Find out more about it in my previous post on site optimisations.
EWWW Image Optimizer optimises any image uploaded to save space and bandwidth. Also, helps in getting a better Google pagespeed score. Nothing beats manually saving for web in Photoshop though.
Autoptimize minifies and combines scripts and styles.
Maintenance
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions helps in housekeeping by deleting drafts, posts, comments etc.
Wordfence Security helps a lot in locking down your WordPress site. It has too many features for me to list down here.
Others
- WordPress phpinfo()
- SSH SFTP Updater Support
- Instagram Feed WD
- Remove Yoast SEO Comments
- WP Mail SMTP