One of the most powerful elements to WordPress is its large collection of user-built plugins. As of the time writing this article, there are over 24,700 plugins that are downloadable on wordpress.org. Add to that, the additional plugins not listed in the official repository and you have a ton of additional functionality you can add to your site. The issue is, what plugins are good, trusted, and used by others?
We wanted to make a list of plugins that the Buffalo WordPress Users group has used and recommend. While we do recommend these plugins, as we always state–use plugins sparingly and only for features you’d really benefit from.
Common Plugins:
- WordPress SEO by Yoast Generally considered the best SEO plugin freely available for WordPress.
- Gravity Forms ($) A powerful Form Builder with its own set of add-ons and custom functions.
- Backup Buddy ($) A simple-to-use and powerful backup plugin.
Advanced Plugins:
- Advanced Custom Fields Very powerful plugin to help add custom fields to posts, custom post types, pages, etc…
- WooCommerce eCommerce Store functionality.
- BuddyPress Adds a social aspect (members, sharing, groups, etc…) to your WordPress site.
Other Useful Plugins
- Conditional Menus Allows you to put different menus on different pages
- File Manager Lets you upload files to your server, if you don’t have FTP credentials this is very handy
- Redirection If you change the slug of your pages, or remove pages, this will prevent a broken link from existing links to the page
- Pretty Links helps you to shrink, cloak, track, organize, and share short links using your domain name and brand.