Are you looking for the must have WordPress plugins used by WordPress experts? Well, then you’re in the right place. In this article, our expert team has hand-picked the best WordPress plugins for 2015.
Choosing the best plugin for your WordPress site will help make your day-to-day life easier and deliver a better experience for your users as well.
Having that said, let’s take a look at the top WordPress plugins for 2015.
1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress SEO is not just an SEO plugin, it is the complete website optimization package. Apart from adding titls and descriptions to your articles, it also allows you to add open graph meta data, do page analysis, publish xml sitemap, and so much more. It is easy to install and setup and that’s why we use it on all our websites.
2. BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is the easiest and most beginner friendly WordPress backupand migration plugin. It allows you to quickly setup automatic backup schedule for your website. You can store your backups on the cloud and sleep easily, knowing all your content is backed up. See how to keep your WordPress content safe with BackupBuddy.
3. W3 Total Cache
Your site’s speed plays an important role in search engine rankings. W3 Total Cache helps you optimize your WordPress site for speed and performance. It allows you to easily setup page and browser caching, compress pages for quicker downloads, and setup a content delivery network for your static files. See our guide on how to install and setup W3 total Cache for beginners.
4. WPForms
WPForms is the most beginner friendly contact form plugin for WordPress. This drag & drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, order forms, payment forms, and other type of online forms with just a few clicks. We use it on WPBeginner and all of our other sites.
There’s a free WPForms Lite version available for those who are looking for a simple solution.
If you want more advanced features, then get the Pro version. Use this WPForms coupon to get 10% off your purchase.
5. OptinMonster
Email marketing is the most effective marketing tool for business websites. If you are not already doing it, then see our guide on why you should start building your email list right away.
OptinMonster is the best lead generation plugin for WordPress (See how it helped us increase our email subscribers by 600%). It allows you to create beautiful optin forms and popups for your WordPress website and convert your users into subscribers. It comes packed with features like page-level targetting, analytics, split testing, and exit-intent technology which allows you to display optin form when a user is about to leave your site. It works out of the box with all popular email marketing services.
6. Edit Flow
Edit Flow provides an efficient editorial workflow management system for WordPress. It allows you to see your editorial calendar, manage authors, assign posts, leave editorial comments, and much more. You can create your own custom post status and plan your content strategy with in your WordPress dashboard.
7. Soliloquy
Soliloquy is the best responsive WordPress slider on the market. Most slider plugins will slow down your website which would hurt your SEO. Soliloquy, on the other hand, is the fastest slider plugin which loads your sliders at blazing fast speeds. It comes packed with features and even has a free version that you can try on right away.
8. Sucuri
We use Sucuri to monitor the security of our websites. Any website on the internet can get hacked or attacked by malicious denial of service attacks. It is better to be prepared than sorry. Sucuri offers real time alerts, website security scanner, and even offers malware removal service. Take a look at the 5 reasons why we use Sucuri to improve our WordPress security.
9. Floating Social Bar
Most social media plugins for WordPress come with a lot of bloat. With countless social networks that no body wants, and unnecessary scripts that slow down your website. Floating Social Bar is the best social media plugin for WordPress, it allows you to add only a handful of social networks that really matter. It is highly optimized for speed so that your social buttons don’t slow down your website.
10. Disqus
The default WordPress commenting system works well for websites with fewer visitors. However, for larger sites with lots of user comments you are better off with Disqus commenting system. It is a third party commenting system, which means comments will not affect your server. It does not affect your site’s page speed and comes equipped with anti-spam filters. See our guide on how to add Disqus comment system in WordPress.
Update: We no longer recommend using Disqus. Read how switching away from Disqus increased our engagement by 304%.
11. AdSanity
AdSanity is a WordPress ad management plugin focused on ease-of-use. Adding new ads in Adsanity is very similar to adding a post. It comes with with widgets and shortcodes support to display ads, so you can display ads in sidebars, posts and pages. You can create either time-based ads (that run for a specific time) or infinite ads (that would keep running unless you remove them). It also has graphs and stats for ad views and clicks. If you’re looking to display advertisement in WordPress, then you should be using this plugin.
12. Envira Gallery
If you run a photography site or post a lot of images, then Envira Gallery is a must have plugin for you. Enivra Gallery is a responsive WordPress gallery plugin which allows you to create beautiful image galleries with lots of powerful effects, easy navigation, and responsive design. It loads brilliantly fast and looks pretty on all devices. There is also a free version called Envira Gallery Lite which you can try right away. See our guide on how to easily create responsive WordPress image galleries with Envira.
13. Login Lockdown
By default, a user can try to login into your site with as many incorrect attempts as they want. Most hack attempts usually rely on breaking into your site’s admin area by using password lists. Limit Login Attempts simply puts a limit on how many times a user can try to login. After a given number of login attempts it locks down the admin area for a limited time. Take a look at this tutorial on how to limit login attempts in WordPress.
14. Term Management Tools
Categories and tags, along with custom taxonomies play an important role in how you sort content on your website. However, many beginners don’t know the difference between categories and tags and the SEO best practices on using them. This is where term management tools come in handy. It allows you to merge and bulk edit categories, tags, and custom taxonomies.
15. TablePress
WordPress post editor does not come with a button to create tables. If you need to insert tables in WordPress, then you would need TablePress plugin for that. It allows you to easily create tables with in WordPress, add them to your posts, pages, and even widgets. You can also export your table data if you need. Check out this tutorial on how to add tables in WordPress posts and pages without writing any HTML or CSS.
16. WPtouch
WPtouch offers a mobile suite for WordPress that gives your website the powerful features and capabilities that responsive themes simply cannot match. If you want to create a mobile version of your website, then WPtouch is your answer. It has built-in support for eCommerce, mobile-advertising, custom content, and most importantly it allows you offer an app for your site without the App Store. See our tutorial on how to use WPtouch.
17. Compact Archives
By default WordPress creates a long bulleted list of your monthly archives. If you have been blogging for a while, adding monthly archives would make users scroll a lot. Compact Archives solves this problem by displaying your monthly archives in a compact block. Checkout this tutorial on how to create compact archives in WordPress.
18. ThirstyAffiliates
If you want to make affiliate marketing one of the main source of income for your site, then you need an affiliate link management tool. ThirstyAffiliates is the best affiliate link management tool for WordPress. It allows you to easily add affiliate links, cloak links, auto insert on certain keywords, and even export your links. See our guide on how to add affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates.
19. Display Widgets
Sometimes you need to display or hide a widget on certain pages. Display Widgets allows you to easily show or hide widgets on selected pages and posts. You can even show widgets only to logged in users and hide for everyone else. Take a look at this tutorial on how to show or hide widgets on specific WordPress pages.
20. WP Mail SMTP
Due to configuration settings on some WordPress hosting providers, your WordPress emails may not get delivered. To solve this problem you would need WP Mail SMTP plugin. It allows you to use an SMTP server to send your WordPress emails instead of PHP’s mail() function. You can even use Gmail’s SMTP server to send your WordPress emails.
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