List of the Best and Must Use WordPress Plugins

Categories: Blog Setup, Blogging Tips, Featured, Wordpress Plugin

This page has a list of some of the best WordPress Plugins out there. Check out this list of top WordPress plugins and find out which plugins you should be using to improve your blogging efficiency.

Must Use Plugins

Akismet – best guard against comment spam for WordPress blog!
WordPress Database Backup – This plugin is a life saver when things go wrong! It allows on-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress SEO by Yoast – Yoast’s all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. If you are using the “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin then don’t install this one.
Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Blog Statistics Related

Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.
WordPress.com Stats – Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. This plugin requires a WordPress.com API key to function.

Caching Plugin

W3 Total Cache - The fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. After you use the w3 total cache plugin you won’t go back to using WP Super Cache.
WP Super Cache - WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

Blog Security

WP Blog Security Tips – This is not a plugin but all the tips mentioned here should help you securing your WordPress blog.
All In One WP Security & Firewall - The All In One WordPress Security and Firewall is the ultimate security plugin that will take your WordPress site’s security to a whole new level.

RSS Subscription Related

FeedBurner FeedSmith – This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
Add to Any: Subscribe Button – Helps readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader.
Category Specific RSS Menu – A simple WordPress plugin to add category specific RSS subscription menu into your posts, pages, sidebars. Very handy when your blog covers multiple topic from non related subjects. This plugin was developed by me.

Contact Forms Related

Contact Form 7 - Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
cforms – cforms II is the most customizable, flexible & powerful ajax supporting contact form plugin.
WP Contact form – WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you.
Gravity Forms - Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No drudgery, just quick and easy form-building.

Social Networking

Sociable – Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed.
Share This – This is a very useful plugin that allows your visitors to share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
Fat Free WordPress Social Share Buttons Plugin - This is a very simple and FAT FREE share button plugin that adds Google plus one, Facebook and Twitter share buttons to your blog posts.

For Google Adsense

Google Adsense Plugin - Google AdSense Plugin allows you to set parameters of the ads displaying, such as format (text ad, image, text with an image or link), size, color of the elements in the ad block, rounded corners and the ad block position on the website.
Simple Google Adsense insertion – Easy to use WordPress plugin to insert Google Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar.
Adsense-Deluxe – Place Google AdSense ads in your WordPress Posts. Capable of handling complex adsense management.

Photo Gallery Plugin

NextGen Gallery - The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most popular plugins of all time. I use it whenever I need a photo gallery plugin.

E-commerce, Paypal Donation and Payment

WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart – is a very easy to use plugin that allows you to sell products or services online in one click from your WordPress blog. Very useful when you want to sell eBooks or digital products from various posts and pages and need a WordPress Shopping Cart solution.
WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept – This is a very easy to use WordPress plugin to Accept donation or Paypal payment for a service or a product in one click. Handy when you are trying to put a customized donation option in the sidebar of your blog.
WordPress eStore – This plugin provides a complete solution to sell digital products securely from your wordpress blog.
WordPress Donations Plugin - The WordPress Donations Plugin allows you to collect donation for a cause from your WordPress powered site.

Membership Plugin

WordPress eMember – WordPress eMember is a membership plugin that can turn your existing or new WordPress site into a membership site easily.

Affiliate Related

WP Affiliate Platform – WordPress plugin for affiliate recruitment, management and tracking. This plugin lets you run your own affiliate campaign/program and allows you to reward (pay commission) your affiliates for referred sales.
WordPress Affiliate Link Manager - Allows you to automatically convert specific keywords from your blog posts and pages into your affiliate links. It also cloaks the affiliate links and gives it a prettier and shorter alias (good for affiliate marketers).

Other Very Useful Plugins

Simple Tags – This is one of my most favorite plugins. It makes my WordPress Tagging life so much easier. It helps with Auto completion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags.
Executable PHP Widget – Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Very handy for inserting custom ‘php’, ‘html’, ‘javascript’ in the sidebar.
SyntaxHighlighter Plus – A plugin to highlight any code in your posts or pages. very handy if you use example codes in your Blog.
Wysija Newsletters - Send newsletters, post notifications or autoresponders from WordPress easily, and beautifully.
WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. Allows you to easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page.
Exclude Pages – This plugin lets you manually exclude WordPress pages from the navigation menu. Comes in handy when you are trying to create hidden pages.
WP Smush.it – This WordPress plugin reduces image file size and improve performance using the Smush.it API within WordPress. Everytime you upload an image to your media uploader this plugin will automatically compress the image without losing quality!
WP Video Lightbox - The WordPress Video Lightbox plugin allows you to embed videos on a page using lightbox overlay display. This plugin can be used to display images, flash, YouTube, Vimeo, iFrame etc in a nice lightbox overlay.

This page will be regularly updated to keep the plugin list up to date and relevant. Please suggest your favorite plugins through the comment area below so I can check them out and possibly add them to this useful plugins list. Don’t forget to checkout the Plugins to Speed Up Your WordPress Site article too.

#1 by Damian Baker on June 12, 2013 - 6:27 am

Hi Tips & Tricks HQ,

This is a really awesome list of plugin essentials.
Nicely formatted too.

Regards,
Damian

#2 by Joana on June 1, 2013 - 7:15 pm

Hey thanks a lot for this list, looking for something like this to setup my upcoming wordpress site!

#3 by Wallace R on April 24, 2013 - 8:45 pm

Great plugin list. I use about 80% of those plugins on most of my WP sites. There is one plugin that I think does deserve some credit and was not on this list.

Broken Link Checker – This plugin checks for any broken links on your entire site and it is very handy.

Thanks.

#4 by Fouad on April 8, 2013 - 12:35 am

Great Site! It contains a great collection of plugins. Keep up the fantastic work! Congratulations.

#5 by Andreea Leau on March 27, 2013 - 8:48 am

I like to use Squirrly SEO Plugin

#6 by Carlos Ricaño on March 20, 2013 - 9:45 pm

Great tip! Thanks for sharing

#7 by umarali1981 on March 13, 2013 - 11:35 am

It is always good to have list like this for newbie like me to learn different categories of wordpress plugins and install them appropriately.

Thanks for your share.

#8 by Cath on March 8, 2013 - 2:23 pm

Outstanding sort out from the thousands of plugins, love it.

#9 by Mildred on February 11, 2013 - 5:01 pm

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!! I’m totally new with this web thing but with your detail instruction was able to place the WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart and it works.

#10 by wordpressentials on January 14, 2013 - 12:10 pm

thank you for this list.i have searched alot before but haven’t seen such a good list of plugins to use.

#11 by kibria on January 14, 2013 - 6:39 am

Thank You For Good Suggetion. I use some of them like Yaost SEO, Share This, Google XML sitemap etc and those are really amazing.

#12 by Judith on January 3, 2013 - 5:44 am

Very solid and great list! You have put a Lot of work on this list. I will use some of the pluigns that you listed… Thanks

#13 by RMK on November 29, 2012 - 4:53 pm

We have recently updated our web site to Word Press (from cold fusion). The web site designer installed the Yoast Plug-in. But our SEO consultant wants to use the All in One SEO Pack. I am clueless and heretofore had not even heard of an SEO plug-in, though I am somewhat familiar with SEO best practices. But now I find myself having to referee between the designer and the person who will be responsible for our day to day SEO. Who’s right? And how do I resolve? Thanks so much for your help. rmk

#14 by Mike on November 19, 2012 - 6:34 pm

Wow! Thank you so much. Starting blogger and I needed the info.

#15 by John on November 13, 2012 - 8:15 am

Hi let me add one more plugin to your WordPress plugins collection .
This plugin is for adding form in your pages or posts .
WordPress Form Maker allows you To add contact form with Google map and File upload (with other functionality of standard contact forms).
It’s very helpful and easy tool specially for beginners.
Here is the website where you can download the plugin – http://web-dorado.com/products/wordpress-form.html.

#16 by Arka Mukherjee on November 8, 2012 - 4:41 am

Very helpull for beginners in WordPress……..thank you

#17 by Mark Davies on November 2, 2012 - 4:16 pm

Thanks for sharing this . Currently looking at the best technique for a members site so very useful for me.

#18 by Andy on October 29, 2012 - 12:50 pm

Thank you very much for the nice overview, information like this is hard to find on the web – you should add a Donation Button like ‘Buy me a beer’ somewhere to enable us to say thank you with more than just words !

#19 by Nali@dogs on October 27, 2012 - 5:23 am

thanks for this great article.I was searching in google from the

last couple of days about wordpress plugins.But unfortunately i

din’t find any great way.But now my journey comes to an end.Thanks

a lot for your great and informative article.If you post some more

interested articles like this in future.Please suggest me.
I will surely gonna read it
Nali

#20 by Curtis on October 23, 2012 - 2:07 am

If you want to use a spam prevention plugin that is amazingly good, then don’t look beyond Akismet. It has the best guard that removes spam comments. I have personally been using it for quite some time now.

#21 by John on October 13, 2012 - 12:19 pm

Great list and some good examples – these along with your paid plugins will really cover most options – using many of your plugins i must say it makes wordpress so powerful and easy to build sites …thanks again.

#22 by Srini on September 21, 2012 - 8:04 am

Nice list This list was one of the guides that helped me choose the best plugins

#23 by Arafin Shaon on September 14, 2012 - 2:37 pm

Being a newbie the list is very essential for me tnx mate for your effort…

#24 by Angela on September 14, 2012 - 3:00 am

All plugins are very good. But this list is too big, if all installed , the website may not afford the heavy load. youre not supposed to install ALL of them. Many offer duplicate functionality anyway. The point is to use this list to find the best plugins suitable to your site.

#25 by Esin on September 13, 2012 - 7:53 am

Awesome list here. Thanks a lot.

#26 by Michelle Drew on September 10, 2012 - 7:12 am

Such a great list, productivity is a goner now – I am going pour over these names for the next day

My personal favorites are Akismet, All-in-one SEO and ClickDesk for chat.

#27 by Brett on August 20, 2012 - 7:31 pm

Thanks for the list! I been looking for some good plugins to add to my site.
Thanks again.

#28 by admin on August 6, 2012 - 9:04 pm

You can try Gravity Forms plugin:
http://www.gravityforms.com/

#29 by Adam on August 6, 2012 - 8:05 pm

What’s a good contact form plugin that also has an auto-responder? I’ve downloaded a few but they seem to be outdated and glitchy. Do you know of any up-to-date plugins that are capable of doing this?

#30 by Joshua on July 23, 2012 - 11:44 am

Thank you so much! It helps a lot. Is there a need for firewall at all?

#31 by Harold on July 13, 2012 - 7:31 am

These were very helpful for me, just wanted to thank you.

#32 by admin on July 3, 2012 - 9:38 pm

@Ronald, This might be a possible solution for you:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-video-lightbox-plugin-display-videos-in-a-fancy-lightbox-overlay-2700

#33 by Ronald on July 3, 2012 - 9:36 pm

Any recommendation for video?

#34 by Nathan on June 27, 2012 - 2:49 am

Great list of plugins have some of them but will now add some of the ones I’ve seen here, just added the ShareThis plugin love it

#35 by Brett on June 20, 2012 - 5:16 pm

In the process of converting my website to wordpress and these are great tips!. thanks

#36 by kevin redman on June 19, 2012 - 6:35 pm

Great article use most of them already although will try W3 Total Cache -

#37 by SEO Bristol on June 19, 2012 - 9:39 am

Great list of plugins .. nice work

#38 by Tony Payne on June 15, 2012 - 7:35 am

Very comprehensive list, I have used or do use many of these.

I highly recommend BulletProofSecurity as a plugin that helps keep your WordPress site secure. Having been hacked a while back I have installed this and feel a lot happier. It has a lot of functionality that enables you to lock down your site, and can notify you if your core files have changed.

#39 by Jason on June 4, 2012 - 10:09 pm

Thanks for the great list of plugins. I knew about most of them but there were certinaly some very useful ones I hadn’t heard if before that I am now useing. Thanks for the effort you pot into collating this list. Jason

#40 by Adnan on May 25, 2012 - 8:14 am

thanks for share this great list of plugin

#41 by Melissa on May 22, 2012 - 5:15 am

That’s really brilliant. Almost all of the much needed plugins in one post. I must say that some of the plugins mentioned here are very essential. Specially W3-total cache plugin, which I initially did not installed on my site. It helped to improve my site.

#42 by James Coulombe on May 9, 2012 - 7:38 am

Best plugin list, I am totally with Barbara on Yoast SEO. It has my voite for favorite SEO plugin

#43 by mybloggerzone on May 3, 2012 - 6:40 am

I think this is the best plugin list I ever found, divided in categories so that I could scan the plugins easily according to my needs, thanks a lot. I found some and ready to install them.

#44 by TechCreak on April 28, 2012 - 10:33 pm

Nice and complete list. Any body don’t need to search more on internet to search more plugins. You have provided almost all the must have plugins to run a wordpress blog. Thanks a lot for such a nice article.

#45 by Alan on March 24, 2012 - 9:56 pm