List of WordPress Plugins

WordPress is a flexible and powerful platform for blogging, content management system and regular websites. It is based on PHP+MySQL and lots of plugins are available to extend the functionalities.

However, like installing too many software on your smartphones, if you have too many plugins, that will slow down your website’s performance. The following is a list of currently used plugins for this blog.

All In One SEO Pack

This plugin provides many options to tune your posts regarding the keywords/tags. When you edit each post, there are more options for the SEO. In general, you can also improve the SEO score by setting canonical URLs, noindex/nofollow on search/category pages. It can be also integrated with google webmaster/analytics. It is a must for wordpress blogs.

Better WordPress Syntax

If you have code in your posts, then this is a nice plugin that can show colors/syntax highlight.

Comment Reply Notification

This plugin sends email notification for comments if reader leave comments. So it will increase the bouncing rate.

Contextual Related Posts

This plugin adds a list of related posts to the end of the posts, so readers stay longer at the site. The related posts are selected based on tags/categories and titles/keywords.

Easy Twitter Feed Widget

This simply shows the latest twits in the widget. It is very lightweight and does not require APIs.

Easy WP LaTeX

If you write math equations a lot, this plugin is made for you. It allows including latex code and shows equations in pictures.

GD Star Rating

It is highly recommended to include such a plugin that allows readers to rate each posts/pages and even comments. Later, you can then obtain statistics such as top popular posts. The second table on this page is based on the statistics from this plugin.

Google Analytics by Yoast

This plugin adds Google Analytics track code to the pages/posts. However, it is a duplicate plugin which I think I may remove later. On [All in one SEO], you can also include the track code. If your site is on Content Delivery Networks such as CloudFlare, the track code can be inserted into every page (even 404) once you activate the Google Analytics App on CloudFlare.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin generates sitemaps so that you can easily include it in the robots.txt.

# Full URL
Sitemap: https://helloacm.com/sitemap.xml

Include HTML and PHP

This plugin allows you to include PHP/HTML code in your posts/pages. So instead of adding too many plugins that will slow down your wordpress, you can just create pages and write your own code. It is a must if you want to develop some statistics pages such as popular pages or archive.

Limit Login Attempts

This plugin limits the login attempts, so that your blog will be greatly protected. If 4 attempts are recorded, then the IP is banned for 24 hours. This prevents bruteforce hacking the password.

ZenCache (Quick Cache) Use [WP Super Cache] instead (Comment section)

WordPress is based on PHP and MySQL. Accessing database is expensive and should be avoided whenever possible. This plugin generates static HTML pages and use them as cache files so the database won’t need to be accessed every time. It saves time and speeds up page loading. There are some other similar plugins but I personally think this is the best, because it is light-weight and powerful, it does what it says and it also supports HTTPS. Quick Cache is later renamed to ZenCache.

Update: now I use the paid WordPress Plugin – WP Rocket Cache Plugin, in WordPress, you can only activate one cache plugin at a time, so I disable others.

Better Click to Tweet

Like this?

A handy plugin that allows you to highlight text in a post/page for Tweet. Click To Tweet

bbPress Forum

A lightweight plugin to set up a forum in WordPress.

AMP Plugin for WordPress

There are many, but IMHO, the one from the official WordPress site is the best. Read here for more information. AMP Plugin allows you quickly turning your blog into Accerelated Mobile Pages.

SSL Insecure Content Fixer

If you are using SSL, like this blog, you must have noticed the partial secured pages (Chrome shows grey lock), this plugin quickly fixes some insecure contents.

You might want to check out the ‘Automatic HTTPS Rewrite‘ provided by CloudFlare.

Stop Spam Comments

This plugin filters spam comments, no tricks or questions. You just install it and it does the job behind the scene.

Cloudflare

Some of my sites are hosted on Cloudflare CDN so it is recommended to install this tiny plugin that ensures correct IPs of the visitors are recorded. CDN works like a proxy server and that is why from the WordPress, the IPs are incorrect. This is important if you have some contextual advs shown on the pages such as adsense.

iThemes Security

This plugin allows you to change login admin name, the login page (default is /wp-admin) and other folders as well (e.g. /wp-content). It also allows to backup and send them to your email box, which makes really simple. It also monitors and identify potential security hacks/problems. However, as experimented, when options like [file changes monitoring] and [schedule file/database backups] are enabled, the CPU usage tends to be increasing a lot. So, it is suggested to keep these options disabled. You can always try different options to suit your needs. There is always a balance/trade between performance and security.

Do you recommend any wordpress plugins? Comment below

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