In my years as a WordPress user and developer, I have tried and used many Free WordPress Plugins and I can say that not all the plugins in the official WordPress Plugin repository are of good quality, because the process of uploading plugins by developers is not strictly controlled for the purpose of checking the quality of the code or The like… The process of accepting plugins is done automatically by bots, which makes the quality of a very large percentage of free WordPress Plugins available on the official repository very mediocre… That is why finding the right plugins requires trying many of them.
In this post, I will share with you a group of the Best WordPress Plugins that I have used in my career, as I have divided them into groups so that you can easily access the plugin you are looking for.
The post will be constantly updated in order to put new additions and delete additions that are no longer of the required level or have been abandoned by the developer.
Best Free WordPress security plugins
- Akismet.
- Anti-spam.
- BackWPup.
- UpdraftPlus.
- Duplicator.
- Limit Login Attempts.
- iThemes Security.
- Wordfence.
Akismet: is a free add-on for personal sites and paid for commercial (income-generating) sites. necessary.
Anti-spam: An elegant and powerful plugin that uses hidden fields with CSS as a trap for spam spiders. It works very well and may be an excellent alternative to Akismet.
BackWPup: A fancy free add-on for creating automatic backups, the best I've tried (and I've tried a lot…), I like its flexibility in terms of settings, reliability and integration with cloud services (in my case, I store a copy in a SugarSync account) essential.
UpdraftPlus: Backup and Restoration for WordPress is a great free plugin whose task is to create periodic site backups with the possibility of restoring or importing them to another server, this plugin could be a great alternative to BackWPup.
Duplicator: A huge addition by all accounts, with it and in just a few minutes you can create and install a replica of your blog on another hosting which makes it very easy to move your blog to another web host. Not for everyday use, but in case you want to move your blog to another hosting or want to create replicas (for testing, etc.) it is necessary.
Limit Login Attempts: This plugin limits the number of attempts to access your blog or site. After a number of failed attempts, you block the IP from accessing your site, making the hackers' task impossible, a very useful, simple and 100% free add-on. necessary.
iThemes Security: For me, it is the perfect add-on to protect your WordPress site from attacks and attempted hacking. It includes many features such as: making a database backup and sending it to your email (or saving it in the site’s main folder), changing the login link to hide the site from hackers…etc. very necessary.
Wordfence: This add-on gives high protection in several aspects, including firewall, file scanning to detect ransoms or malicious files and other important functions such as Limit Login Attempts. The paid version has more advanced features, which is definitely a great addition.
Best Free WordPress SEO plugins
- Easy Twitter Links.
- Google Analytics for WordPress.
- WP Keyword Suggest.
- Jetpack.
- Jetpack Lite.
- SEO Smart Links.
- Revive Old Post.
- Evergreen Post Tweeter.
- WordPress SEO.
- Google XML Sitemaps.
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP).
- WP Robots Txt.
Easy Twitter Links: Automatically generates links when it detects a Twitter tag (#labelname) or a Twitter username (@username) anywhere in a post, pages, and comments.
Google Analytics for WordPress: This plugin automatically inserts the code that Google Analytics needs in order to collect site statistics.
WP Keyword Suggest: This plugin inserts a box inside the WordPress editor page that enables you to find the right keyword for your articles using autocomplete for google, yahoo, bing… This way you can try out many keywords in a short time, a mandatory addition for archiving geeks .
Jetpack: Jetpack is actually a set of 24 plugins (in the trend of growth…) with all sorts of functionality from the WordPress creator Automattic: statistics, automatic posting of posts to social networks, photo gallery optimizations, social buttons, contact form, spelling correction ( Does not support Arabic language) etc., etc., etc. absolutely necessary. I advise you to try these add-ons before installing other add-ons with similar functionality.
Jetpack Lite: This add-on is the unofficial reduced and watered-down version of “Jetpack”.
SEO Smart Links: This extension creates automatic links based on titles or custom keywords, it is a necessary and useful addition, as it links the pages and blogs of the site to each other in order to facilitate the access of the visitor and search engines to them.
Revive Old Post: (Formerly Tweet Old Post) This is without a doubt one of the most used plugins. You are constantly scrolling through all pages and posts to automatically re-publish them on Twitter to generate permanent movement in the blog. You can direct it as you want and it is very necessary. (Since changing the name of this add-on, complaints from users have increased due to the significant decline in the level of its bid).
Evergreen Post Tweeter: An alternative addition to Revive Old Post.
WordPress SEO: One of the best SEO plugins out there. It has several important functions that help you put the necessary data to make it easier for search engines to read your site and easily identify its content. It also has many functions, including generating a site map. very necessary.
Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin is specialized in generating sitemaps. It generates very simple and effective maps that, according to some experts, perform better than WordPress SEO.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP): This plugin generates a bar at the bottom of the articles to automatically suggest similar articles. Contribute to keeping the visitor in the blog and improve the appearance. necessary.
WP Robots Txt: Allows you to create and edit a robots.txt file. (Currently the WordPress Seo By Yoast plugin gives this feature, so this plugin is not needed for us if we are using the first plugin)
Best Free WordPress Community Plugins
- Contact Form 7
- Knews
- Comment Notifier
- bbPress
- Search Meter
- WooCommerce
Contact Form 7: A contact form is an essential component of any website. This add-on allows you to easily design a contact form with the fields you want. You can do without it if you have Jetpack installed as it comes with a similar functionality.
Knews: A great addition that enables you to create and manage newsletters in a professional way that is similar to paid services like MailChimp. In its free version, it allows you to create a list of up to 2000 subscribers, I have been using it for some time in managing newsletters and frankly, I can say that it is powerful and effective according to my own experience.
Comment Notifier: This plugin sends notifications about new comments to people who have already commented. Very useful to strengthen the relationship with your readers and your community.
bbPress: The forum system built into WordPress. Forums are the "secret weapon" to encourage the blog community, but it takes a lot of work to get the desired results. Highly recommended.
Search Meter: With Search Meter you can get information for your blog: what visitors or users are searching in your blog, what are their aspirations, is valuable information if you know how to exploit it.
WooCommerce: If you want to create an online store on your blog, this is the plugin you need. It gives you everything you need: product list, sales management, payment methods… very integrated in its free version.
Best Free WordPress Maintenance Mode Plugins
- Broken Link Checker.
- WP-Optimize.
Broken Link Checker: Detects broken links in the blog and informs you about it. In the broken links list you can edit the URL directly, remove the links, etc. All without having to go to the blog. very helpful.
WP-Optimize: This plugin helps you to keep the database clean by removing old reviews, drafts, annoying comments, etc.
Best Free WordPress Widget Plugins
- Crayon Syntax Highlighter.
- Lightbox Plus.
- Thank Me Later.
- Redirection.
Crayon Syntax Highlighter: This add-on allows you to write code in the blog (for example, HTML or PHP code), it gives a beautiful look with colors that you can change according to your taste.
Lightbox Plus: A very necessary addition, when you click on an image instead of opening a window with a large image, a beautiful box with the image opens on the same page. It also allows browsing all article images from the same box. Gives a more elegant look than the default WordPress behavior. necessary.
Thank Me Later: With this add-on you can automatically send an email to people who left a comment on your blog, you can set it up as you like. Very important to strengthen the relationship with readers and followers. You can use it, for example, to invite them to sign up for your blog's newsletter.
Redirection: With this extension you can manage 301, 302 and 307 redirects (redirect one URL to another), as well as track 404 errors (page not found) for the blog in order to modify them.
Best Free WordPress Social Media Plugins
- Shareaholic.
- Twitter Liked Box.
- Flare plugin.
- Metro Social Style Widget.
- Social Metrics.
- NextScripts.
Shareaholic: With this add-on a very interesting bar is installed to share your articles in social networks and send them via e-mail. It also gives other things like showing related articles at the end of posts or pages.
Twitter Liked Box: This add-on displays the list of your Twitter followers in the side column.
Flare plugin: Another content sharing plugin, it has a special design that is different from what people are used to seeing.
Metro Social Style Widget: A widget for social networks based on an elegant and light modern style.
Social Metrics: This add-on allows you to do a very simple monitoring of your level of success in social networks.
NextScripts Social Networks Auto-Poster: This plugin enables you to automatically publish your articles to social networks, (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Tumblr, LiveJournal, FriendFeed, DreamWidth, Delicious, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Plurk, VKontakte) VK.com (YouTube, WordPress…) I use it on all my sites and the results are good for me.
Best Free WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins
- Lazy Load.
- WP Smush.it.
- W3 Total Cache.
- Cloudflare.
Lazy Load: This extension uses a clever trick to delay the loading of images until they reach the visible area of the page. With this you not only speed up the site, but also give a beautiful and elegant effect when viewing the image. absolutely necessary.
WP Smush.it: This plugin is very classic. It optimizes images uploaded to WordPress media library by reducing its size without losing quality based on WP Smush.it. Necessary.
W3 Total Cache: This plugin works in a nutshell: it makes a cache copy of your site and saves it inside the CACHE file so that the blog pages are called faster than they are called from the server itself. Its control panel has a lot of options that help speed up browsing your blog, and you should know what these options are and how they work. necessary.
Cloudflare: A CDN (Content Delivery Network) service that helps improve the speed of your site (or blog) by reducing server load. In this case, the burden of some content is delegated to this service. I'm using Cloudflare in W3 Total Cache and the results are great.
Best Free WordPress Design and Widgets Plugins
- Google Typography.
- Theme Checker.
- Sticky Header.
- Popular Bar Posts Widget.
- AdRotate.
- WPtouch.
Google Typography: Adds more than 600 types of Google fonts to use with any WordPress theme.
Theme Checker: This plugin allows you to easily check if your WordPress theme meets the latest recommended standards or not. Very useful for developers and for any WordPress user who wants to check the quality of the theme they are using.
Sticky Header: This is a little widget that creates a sticky column that stays in the pinned position of the post's header (“sticky”). You can link it to the list in order to create your desired links and also you can add a logo.
Popular Bar Posts Widget: This add-on gives you a neat widget to display the most popular articles.
AdRotate: A very integrated add-on for managing ads, banners and all HTML elements on the site. You have integrated settings that allow you to make tracking statistics to report on the clicks you receive, where they came from, etc.
WPtouch: If your theme is not responsive, this plugin is mandatory to make your site compatible with most tablets and smartphones.
WordPress Advanced Plugins (short codes, programming…)
- Code Snippets.
- Shortcoder.
- Loco Translate.
Code Snippets: From a simple interface you can add code snippets, edit existing functions, activate, disable and even delete existing functions, all as if you are in the place of managing plugins, so you can add functions without activating them, only they will run if you activate them, as is the case with plugins.
Shortcoder: With this simple plugin, you can create shortcodes and place them anywhere you want.
Loco Translate: a great add-on that allows you to translate plugins and templates in a very easy way, so you can edit existing translations or add new translations in any language you want.
Only install the plugins you need (20 or 30 max) and if you can do something manually it will be better than relying on plugins, because they negatively affect the speed of the site.
FAQ on WordPress Plugins
Can you get WordPress plugins for free?
Similar to themes, the plugins directory offers a huge selection of free WordPress plugins. They might be as tiny as a few lines of code added to your site or dashboard or as large and complicated as WooCommerce, which adds a fully functional store to your website.
Are most WordPress plugins free?
The most effective plugins do need payment. WordPress plugins are increasingly providing a lighter, more basic version of their complete, paid plugins. It is aggravating, but it is still better than nothing. So don't anticipate that all plugins will be free.
What are the top 5 plugins you typically use with WordPress?
Best WordPress Plugins:
- HubSpot.
- WooCommerce.
- WPForms.
- All in One SEO.
- Yoast SEO.
- Jetpack.
- Elementor.
- W3 Total Cache.
Which plugin is mostly used in WordPress?
One of the most widely used WordPress page building plugins is Elementor. Elementor's primary feature is a drag-and-drop tool that allows users to quickly edit their sites and articles. Additionally, the plugin provides more than 100 ready-made page layouts for any kind of website..
Is Yoast SEO free?
For our clients' websites, we always install the Yoast SEO plugin. It's a free and simple approach to improve your content so that search engines can find your business.