On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Twelve plugins plugging!
Here’s my top twelve plugins I recommend considering for your website, in alphabetical order. Note, I said “consider”, and don’t recommend installing ALL of them. That being said, I’m barely scratching the surface on what each of these plugins can do, and each one deserves a future individual review.
SiteOrigin’s Page Builder & Widgets Bundle
These plugins will give you drag and drop capability and more visual control over your pages and posts, with the ability to create call-to-action buttons, landing pages, features, etc.
Yoast SEO
Okay, I’ll be honest here. I don’t pay enough attention to SEO, but I do like Yoast SEO because of a nice preview that shows how your page will appear in a search engine like Google.
WooCommerce
This e-commerce plugin is so easy to setup, a hen could sell her eggs online. I don’t know too many chickens selling things online, but they could with the simplicity of WooCommerce.
NinjaForms
Of the many form plugins out there, I like NinjaForms the most because it can record entries to the WordPress database, instead of having to rely solely on email notifications.
Event Espresso Decaf
I started using Event Espresso this year because we needed something with a more robust registration process. Decaf is the free version that’s missing a few bells and whistles.
Events Manager
Although I prefer Event Espresso’s handling of event registrations, I love Events Managers out-of-the-box presentation better and the short codes you can use to customize the look of your event pages.
JetPack
This plugin comes packed with so many features, I really need to write a post just on it. One huge benefit is you can use the WordPress.com CDN for delivering your images to speed up your site.
Regenerate Thumbnails
If you change themes and discover images are appearing at the wrong size, install this plugin to regenerate your thumbnail images. This humble plugin does exactly what it says it does. Nothing more, nothing less.
Advanced Custom Fields
With this plugin, you can create more types of content instead of the default posts and pages. I honestly haven’t used this plugin to it’s full potential, but with it you can turn WordPress into a true content management system.
WordFence Security
Provides ways of improving backend security to your blog to keep bad guys out.
MailChimp for WordPress
If you’ve got a MailChimp account, this simple plugin allow you to easily integrate signup forms on your site.
BackWPUp
This plugin will allow you to routinely backup your WordPress site to your server, cloud storage (e.g., Dropbox, Amazon). It’s saved my bacon a few times when a site went down for some reason.
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