We love working with WordPress because it’s so versatile. Plugins give you the ability to do just about anything you could want to your website. Back in 2015, we wrote an article about some of our favorite free plugins. Since WordPress is constantly changing, we figured it was time to update the list with some new plugins that we currently use.
Like always, our recommendations when installing any plugins are:
- Check ratings – do people say the plugin works?
- Check installs – are only a few people using this?
- Compatibility – Is it compatible with the current WordPress version?
- Backup – Do you have a backup of your site just in case things go wrong?
1. Yoast SEO
The Yoast plugin allows you to easily optimize your site for SEO. It gives you real time page analysis and offers suggestions to help you optimize your content, images, meta descriptions and titles. The free version is great, but if you want more support, they offer a premium version.
2. Contact Form Submissions
We use the Contact Form 7 plugin to create forms on the websites we design. The Contact Form Submissions plugin works with Contact Form 7 to store all the submissions from your contact form in a spreadsheet that you can access via WordPress admin. It’s lightweight and requires little configuration. It’s a great backup in case you miss an email and gives you statistics on the contact forms that are getting the most traffic.
3. SVG Support
Scalable vector graphics (SVG) are becoming common in modern web design, but as it stands right now, WordPress does not support uploading of these types of files to your media folder. The SVG Support plugin changes that, allowing you to upload logos, icons and more in SVG format so your images scale without losing quality.
4. Bloom
Looking to build your email list? Bloom makes it easy. It allows you to configure calls to action or popups that help you get subscribers. This plugin is part of the Elegant Themes bundle. For $249, you’ll get lifetime access to all their great themes and plugins, including Bloom. Well worth the money.
5. WP Rocket
We think WP Rocket is one of the best caching plugins around. It requires very little configuration and can help speed up a slow website almost immediately. WP Rocket costs $39 for one website.
