The Ultimate List Of WordPress Plugins
Wordpress Is a wonderfully extenable CMS and here is a list of some of the best active free & paid plugins avaliable to make it flex to your creative will without hours of custom PHP coding getting in the way first.
The plugins are ordered by how good they are with the best option highlighted. Plus some great function snippets are also included when they are a better option than a full plugin.
The plugins are ordered by how good they are with the best option highlighted. Plus some great function snippets are also included when they are a better option than a full plugin.
Plugin Catagory | Purpose | Free Plugin Option | Better Paid Plugin Option | Best Lightweight Snippet | Alternatives / Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cache | Improve Website Page Speed Server CPU Reduction Bandwidth Saving | W3 Total Cache | |||
Host | Managed Hosting Live Staging Area | Wordpress.com Theme Test Drive | WP-Engine WP-Engine Plugin Good 1. One click staging area with push to Live intergration. 2. WP optimised server using Nginx and inbuilt cache settings. 3. Excellent WP support & managed updates. 4. Automatic backups & one click rollbacks. 5. Inbuilt handling of HTTPS for WP. Bad 1. Collection of blacklisted plugins unavaible on host. Which includes the much loved WP Smush It Plugin to optimise image file size. 2. Backup system uses Git which makes plugins using Git incompatable. These arn't listed in the block list but will break your backup system WP Document Revisions Hammy Isotopes | Fastest WP HOST ZippyKid Doesn't block plugins like WP-Engine. Once it has a staging area it will be a better option than WP-Engine Fastest Unmanaged UK Host TSOHOST Fastest Global Host Cheapest Host site5.com |
|
Images | Automatic Adaptive Images Improve Mobile Page Speed Bandwidth Saving | Hammy | |||
Images | Automatic Responsive Images | WP Fluid Images Bad 1. Clashes with other image Plugins | CSS Class | ||
Forms | Drag & Drop Form Creation Data Management | Contact Form 7 | Formidable Good 1. Data to database 2. Data to Email 3. Automatic Display of Data on front end. 4. Third Party Plugin for inline addtion of fields. Native coming V1.8 5. Drag & drop form builder. | Gravity Forms Good 1. Most extendable form manger. 2. Most widly supported form manger. Bad 1. Subscription based 2. Doen't have have Formidable Pro's data publishing/handling functionality |
|
Slider | Create Interactive Animated Content Showcase Content | jLayer Slider Good 1. Admin drag & drop builder. | LayerSlider WP $15 Good 1. Any Html element can be added and animated 2. Custom CSS transition maker. 3. Add content with [shortcodes] 4. Customise Skin. 5. Admin drag & drop slide builder. 6. Autoplay Media. 7. Responsive. Bad 1. Doesn't work with WP Fluid Images plugin. | WP Layer Slider is a must for any creative wanting to make engaging content. | |
Slider | CPU Efficiant Mobile Freindly Basic Slider | vSlider Good 1. Uses built in Wordpress Core so only 20kb to load. 2. Mobile Touch Support 3. | Royal Slider $20 Good 1. Populate with Post data automatically 2. Autoplay Media. 3. Lightweight | ||
Menu | Multi Column Menu | JQuery Mega Menu Widget | Uber Menu | ||
Admin | |||||
Custom Fields | Advanced Custom Fields | ||||
Images | Image Lightbox | Lightbox | |||
Social | |||||
Tables | Tablepress Good 1. Lightweight. 2. Searchable. 3. Filterable. 4. Responsive. 5. Cell data avaliable via [shortcode] Bad 1. Modular nature means lots of add-ons needed to build desired fuctionality. AZ display sort ect. | ||||
Tools | Jetpack | ||||
Theme Development | |||||
Plugin Development | |||||
Content Layout | Aqua Page Builder Good ? Bad 1. Its a start at a free option | Column-Matic Good 1. You create the grid system in your CSS 2. You can create you own column class system. Bad 1. You create the grid system 2. It doen't do nested columns. Grid-Columns Good |
|||
Shortcodes | Shortcodes Pro | ||||
Tools | Theme Compatibilty Check | ||||
Tools | Debug Bar | ||||
Security | |||||
Spam | Bad Behavour | ||||
Usabilty | WP last updated | [raw] Add to your Footer "" Add to functions.php "function site_last_updated($d = '') { $recent = new WP_Query("showposts=1&orderby=modified&post_status=publish"); if ( $recent->have_posts() ) { while ( $recent->have_posts() ) { $recent->the_post(); $last_update = get_the_modified_date($d); } echo $last_update; } else echo 'No posts.'; }"[/raw] | |||
Newsletter | |||||
Live Chat | Chats | ||||
Management | Adminiamize | ||||
Search | Daves Wordpress Live Search | If you dont need featured images in your search results this is a little faster. | |||
SEO | Yoost WP SEO | ||||
Security | Stealth Login Page | ||||
SEO | Automatic Image SEO | ||||
Content | Timed Content | ||||
Content | Tooltips | ||||
Content | |||||
Usabilty | Add HTML to the Site Description | html_entity_decode(get_bloginfo('description')) | |||
Usabilty | Add excerpts to pages | add_action( 'init', 'my_add_excerpts_to_pages' ); 2 function my_add_excerpts_to_pages() { 3 add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' ); 4 } | |||
Development | Auto replace URLs when moving from development to LIVE | Velvet Blues Update URLs | |||
SEO | 404 Redirection | Redirection Bad 1. Hasn't been updated in over a year, Could likley break with WP Core update. | |||
User Management | Disable user accounts | User Control | |||
User Management | Customise user role level rights | Adminamize | |||
Content UI | Lightweight Tabs | http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tabs-shortcode/ | |||
Content UI | Tabs Accordions Dialoge Boxs Spoilers | WP UI | |||
Layout | Column-Matic |