Recommended Plugins

Some of the best free WordPress plugins from the official open source wordpress.org plugin library.

These are my personal recommendations from experience, all installed, tried & tested. I keep an eye on them and remove any plugins if they are not updated for over two years, as they lack sufficient support, as software needs to be kept up to date. Full plugin details are pulled in automatically from the official library, including: Last updated, Compatibility (latest version), Tested up to (WP version), Download count and Rating.

See “Jason’s comments” after plugin details, for tips & suggestions related to the plugin.

I’ve listed about 50 recommended plugins here, for various solutions. I usually install about a dozen WordPress plugins by default.

Read more about WordPress website security, protection, prevention, where I list a few good plugins to assist.

I’ve expanded my recommendations to the Premium WordPress market which has exploded over the last few years to provide some quality standalone products and worthwhile upgrades.

Read more about WordPress installation service

Please contact me for further assistance.

May 282012
 
Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security is my preferred solution. It has an easy and automated scanner that check for malicious code and can compare the WordPress, Theme and Plugins files with the original WordPress library, allow you to view the differences and revert to original version of file or delete it. Wordfence has a firewall preventing malicious scripts from operating, a built in traffic log which allows you to block bad IP addresses, a method to automatically limit fake crawlers and limit and block login attempts by hackers.

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May 172012
 

CFDB has been removed from wordpress.org, but is hosted on github.com Version 2.10.36 was released Apr 18. This was a great solution to retrieve form results from several form plugins including Contact Form 7 plugin. However, Flamingo plugin was released by the author of CF7, and I use Flamingo with CF7.

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Sep 042011
 

This is an easier option than installing a full cart system. If you don’t need catalog, stock control and sales reporting. If you only need PayPal payment gateway with these options: – Currency and language settings – add to cart buttons (transfers to PayPal website) – product name – product sku – product extra info (customer input field) – product weight – product price – shipping cost – additional item shipping cost – check out / view cart button (transfers to PayPal website). Note: this plugin has not been updated in a while (see above). I also recommend WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart plugin which includes an on site cart.

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Aug 122011
 

WordPress Plugin Name: Plugin Author: WordPress profile: Contributors: Version: Last updated: () Compatibility (latest version): (of votes) Tested up to (WP version): WP Download count: Rating: (out of 5) Description | Screenshots | Other notes | Latest Change | Tags | Jason’s comments Description Screenshots: Other notes: Latest Change log entry: Tags: Jason’s Comments: I have installed the plugin in order to allow comments on this site.

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Aug 122011
 

Useful for re-using template components in similar posts with editing all in one place. Works well with titled expandable content boxes, see Collapse-O-Matic NOTE: August 2016 – This plugin has been removed from the WordPress repository for security reasons. An alternative plugin is Reusable Content Text blocks by Loomisoft. Another alternative is using a page builder such as from SiteOrigin or Divi by Elegant themes and saving the re-usable sections to the library.

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Jul 262011
 

Very popular, it is kept up-to-date and is easy to manage. I add Flamingo plugin to record submits to database and Really Simple CAPTCHA or WP ReCaptcha and Contact Form 7 Honeypot for bot and spam blocking. To keep the recaptcha version 2 checkbox use Contact Form 7 – reCaptcha v2 plugin

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Jul 262011
 

If you just need an XML site map – use Google XML Sitemaps. If you just need to insert Google Analytics tracking code – use Google Analytics by MonsterInsights or Local Google Analytics for WordPress – caches external requests.

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Jul 262011
 

Having Analytics in WordPress Dashboard saves time. An alternative plugin is Google Analytics by MonsterInsights or Local Google Analytics for WordPress – caches external requests.

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