Our Standard and Commonly Used WordPress Plugins
By PaperStreet on June 7, 2013 in WordPress Tips
One of the positive aspects of WordPress is the thousands of user-created plugins that are readily available to help users accomplish almost any function imaginable. Rather than waiting on a new feature to be added to WordPress, users can quickly search the WordPress Plugin Directory for current plug-ins, or even code their own. Granted, some plugins are better than others, so I urge users to exercise some discretion when sifting through the directory. Many a hacked site has been the result of a poorly coded plugin. Rather than having dozens of plugins installed of various levels of quality, I find it’s best to use as few plugins as possible, creating less potential points of failure.
Over time, PaperStreet has compiled a list of reliable plugins that we install for many of our custom WordPress themes:
SEO – “Wordpress SEO ”
We install this plugin by default on all sites. It allows you to set all SEO-related options, and preview how your page’s title/description will look on a Google search result page.You can also get a quick professional design, with a support driven interface by hiring WooCommerce Vendors and Customers Conversation. Keep Yourself notified in real-time with them.
Backup – “BackWPUp”
All of your WordPress site’s data is stored in a database, that should be backed up on a regular basis. The best available plugin we have found is BackWPUp, which provides many different storage options, including sending the backup by email, uploading by FTP, uploading to Dropbox, uploading to RS Cloud Files, etc.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/
Preventing Spam – “Akismet”
Akismet detects spam comments and files them as spam automatically, so you have much less work involved with approving or denying comments. We highly recommend that all WordPress sites with blog comments enabled sign up for an Akismet API key. It is installed by default on all sites, but requires registration for a monthly fee if you are making money off of your site.
Custom Fields – “Advanced Custom Fields”
Most sites have extra information beyond the body text and headline that should be editable. We often use the “Advanced Custom Fields” plugin, which makes it easy to add things like more text areas to a home page, or photos and aside text to bios.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/
301 Redirects – “Quick Page/Post Redirect”
Usually when you want to redirect a page, it involves some manual (and technical) editing of an htaccess file. Using a redirect plugin such as this one, it is as simple as entering the old URL, and new URL, and clicking add.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/quick-pagepost-redirect-plugin/
HTML Sitemap
For sites that have an HTML sitemap (usually linked in the footer), this can be easily created using a shortcode that generates the page list automatically. The following plugin has the option to exclude pages (such as confirmation and error pages). There are a few other plugins accomplishing the same task that work just as well:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/html-sitemap/
Drag n’ Drop Page Re-Ordering – “Simple Page Ordering”
Page re-ordering is cumbersome by default, requiring you to manually enter an order number. There are a few decent plugins available that allow you to drag-n-drop to re-order. This one works well:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-page-ordering/
Table Editing Tools
If your site’s content requires editing or adding tables, there are buttons available in the TinyMCE editor that are not shown by default in WordPress.
- MCE Table Buttons – This is lightweight, and has high ratings.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/mce-table-buttons/ - TinyMCE Advanced – Allows you to drag’n’drop additional available HTML editing tools to the toolbar:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/tinymce-advanced/
