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.

Jul 142014
 

For scanning of themes, I recommend for extra security, Theme Authenticity Checker plugin, which can find suspicious or malicious code and embedded outgoings links. TAC plugin found code which Wordfence security didn’t. Use WordPress Health Check for an overview of update and security issues. Read up on other WordPress security related plugins and strategies.

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Jun 262014
 

Spam comments are attracted to the same posts over and over again, if they are not moderated. One site attracted 17,000 spam comments before I stepped in disabled comments and deleted them with ease using this plugin. By removing the comments, the database was reduced from 5mb to 100kb.

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Jun 252014
 

This plugin helps when moving or converting a page in to a category with posts. WordPress can help redirect old URL, when changed but won’t know you have moved a page to a category or post, and vice versa. Besides manual input of source and destination, the plugin logs 404 (missing page) visits and provides a redirection (301 permanent) option.

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May 282014
 

This plugin has been superseded by Popup Maker. The free version takes a little bit of effort to create theme and create first modal layout, but then it’s easy to duplicate.

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May 272014
 

I’ll apply my affiliate commission to support you, if you use my Meta Slider affiliate link to upgrade to Meta Slider Pro – Single Site License which adds support for YouTube & Vimeo slides, HTML slides, Layer slides with CSS3 animations, Dynamic Post Feed/Featured Image Slides (content slider), Custom Themes, Thumbnail Navigation, Premium Support.

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Mar 032014
 

Plugin removed from WordPress plugin repository. WARNING: Plugin was sold and then compromised and has been removed from the plugin repository. Solution: If you have the plugin, please update it to latest version 2.7 which brings the code back to version 2.0.5. There are few plugins offering the same thing, “widget logic” requires filters, “widget logic visual” has not been updated in two years – so I have changed to this one which seems to work well and is supported: Widget Options plugin.

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Jan 072014
 

You can set up and manage one vote per person (Vote permissions) using the built in filter cookie and IP address, but it’s not bullet proof, without burdening the user to register, and then filtering vote permission with username.

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Nov 142013
 

*** PLUGIN NOT UPDATED (see below) *** Useful if your theme does not have their own widget for displaying single category posts as a widget. If you only want to display a list of posts in that same category then combine with Display Widgets plugin, to control where to show. Alternative plugin: Category Posts Widget

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