Which WordPress plugins really help you on every website?
With plugins expand your WordPress website around a specific Functionality, without itself Code to have to write.As great as plugins are, my tip: use as many as necessary, but as few as possible.
Plugins are wonderful, but the more they are used, the more they affect the performance and security of your website. That's why my motto is always first: implement everything without a plugin as far as possible and sensible.
But you probably chose WordPress for precisely this reason, because it is so Flexibly expandable is and also without coding knowledge is possible to create a great website.
Here I can reassure youPerformance is influenced at least as much by many other factors. With "correct" creation and a good host, it is also possible to have a great loading time even though 30 plugins are installed. Therefore, use plugins for all important functions that you cannot implement yourself with reasonable effort (in terms of cost-benefit).
But now to the presentation of the plugins.
What are plugins anyway?
With plugins expand your WordPress website around a specific Functionality, without itself Code to have to write.
Use as many as necessary, but as few as possible!
Plugins are wonderful, but the more they are used, the more they affect the performance and security of your website. That's why my motto is always first: implement everything without a plugin as far as possible and sensible.
But you probably chose WordPress for precisely this reason, because it is so Flexibly expandable is and also without coding knowledge is possible to create a great website.
Here I can reassure youPerformance is influenced at least as much by many other factors. With "correct" creation and a good host, it is also possible to have a great loading time even though 30 plugins are installed. Therefore, use plugins for all important functions that you cannot implement yourself with reasonable effort (in terms of cost-benefit).
But now to the presentation of the plugins.
1. development
1.1 Duplicate page
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 2+ million
- Rating: 5 stars
With Duplicate Page can be set with one click Pages, posts, categories and more on your WordPress website duplicate. I personally use it in every project because it saves me a lot of work and time.
Many websites basically consist of 2-4 different types of pages that have the same or very similar structure. Usually you have a homepage with an individual structure, subpages with the same layout and perhaps landing pages. This means I create a layout of each type and duplicate them for new pages and change the content.
1.2 SeedProd
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 1+ million
- Rating: 5 stars
SeedProd is a popular WordPress plugin to create a Coming Soon or Maintenance Page for your website while you are still working on it.
With the Coming Soon mode, you can inform your website visitors that the page will be available soon. At the same time, you prevent search engines from indexing your website. The builder is relatively simple, but has weaknesses in responsive design.
SeedProd would actually be a complete website builder. But I don't use the plugin for that.
1.3 WP Maintenance Mode
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 800,000+
- Rating: 4.5 stars
With WP Maintenance Mode you can add your WordPress website to the Maintenance mode move. A little simpler than SeeProd, but with fewer design options.
My recommendation: Duplicate Page and development in a development environment with a domain that nobody knows, deactivated SEO indexing and, if necessary, password protection.
2. backups and migration (relocation)
Ideally, your host should carry out regular backups - e.g. daily and at least 7-10 days in the past. If this is not included in your hosting plan, there are reliable, simple and free plugins for this.
2.1 WPvivid
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 200,000+
- Rating: 5 stars
WPvivid is a Backup and migration plugin for WordPress, which I now use on some websites as an alternative to UpdraftPlus.
I use it for regular and incremental (e.g. before each update) backups and migration from my development server to the customer server. The fast and helpful support should also be emphasized.
2.2 WP All-In-One Migration
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 7.5M+
- Rating: 5 stars
For Simple removals I also like to use smaller pages WP All-In-One Migration.
Works reliably, just don't forget to use it directly. after the move the permalink settings again (even if there is no change) to save. Otherwise, the images may no longer be displayed due to incorrect URLs.
2.3 UpdraftPlus
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 3M+
- Rating: 5 stars
UpdraftPlus is probably the best known plugin for Automatic and regular backups. I use it for this purpose with most of my customers. The Migration function On the other hand, I now use no longer. In my experience, the plugin is too prone to errors. As a result, I often had to start moves a second time via a different route.
WPvivid or WP All-in-One Migration, for example, can do this much better.
My recommendation in the Backup and Migration category: UpdraftPlus for regular backups, WPvivid for migrations.
3. search engine optimization
3.1 Rank Math SEO
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 1M+
- Rating: 5 stars
Rank Math SEO is one of the top dogs of WordPress SEO plugins.
It takes over and offers a variety of functions to improve your search engine optimization. These include, for example, keyword optimization, sitemap generation, readability monitoring, redirects, automatic setting of ALT for images and much more.
The greatest strength of Rank Math is the Simplicity and extreme Good user-friendliness. That's why it's my first choice, which I use on almost every website.
3.2 YOAST SEO
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 3M+
- Rating: 5 stars
Rank Math's biggest competitor is the probably even better known plugin Yoast SEO.
By and large, both plugins have the same SEO functions. In my opinion, Rank Math is easier to use. Yoast SEO is better known for this and has a large community (although Rank Math has also grown a lot in recent years).
My recommendation: Due to the better usability and very good support, I prefer to work with Rank Math.
4. image optimization
4.1 EWWW Image Optimizer
- Price: Free of charge
- Active installations: 1M+
- Rating: 4.5 stars
EWWW Image Optimizer I use on almost every website for the Automatic (lossless) compression of images after the upload.
Compression reduces the file size of your images without affecting the quality (hence "lossless"). This means you don't unnecessarily bloat your website with images, but keep it as slim as possible. This is essential for consistently good performance.
4.2 Enable Media Replace
- Price: Free of charge
- Active installations: 600,000+
- Rating: 4.5 stars
With Enable Media Replace you can replace media files without losing the links. This means that the new images or documents are used directly on the entire website.
If you only upload new images to the media library, you still have to insert them on the corresponding page on the website. You can save yourself this effort with this plugin.
My recommendation: Both are great valuable. EWWW Image Optimizer I almost always use it. Enable Media Replace I often install it for my customers if I know that files or images are regularly exchanged.
5. performance and caching
5.1 WP Fastest Cache
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 1M+
- Rating: 5 stars
WP Fastest Cache is a powerful plugin for optimizing website speed, which I use when a free cache plugin must be sufficient. The plugin is very easy to set up in less than 2 minutes and immediately brings about improvements.
5.2 WP Rocket
- Price: Chargeable (59 € / year)
- Active installations: 3M+
- Rating: 5 stars
WP Rocket is my personal favorite of all caching plugins. There is a charge, but I think it's a good investment at €40 a year.
It offers a range of functions such as the minimization of CSS and JavaScript files, the use of browser caching and lazy loading for images, separates the cache for mobile and desktop devices and is easy to configure.
My performance & cache recommendation: First choice, if budget is available, is WP Rocket. If not WP Fastest Cache a worthy replacement.
6 GDPR compliance
6.1 Borlabs Cookie
- Price: Chargeable (39 € / year)
- Active installations: 1M+
- Rating: 5 stars
Borlabs Cookie is the best-known cookie consent manager plugin in the German-speaking world. It takes a little time to get used to, but is then quite easy to understand and works extremely reliably (which is not entirely unimportant for this topic). I use it on almost every website, but am considering switching to the next plugin for future projects.
6.2 CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent & Compliance Notice (CCPA Ready)
- Price: Freemium
- Active installations: 1M+
- Rating: 5 stars
CookieYes I only recently discovered and tried it out for myself. In my opinion, it is particularly impressive because of the Simple operation and the automatic scan of all cookies usedwhich it usually configures correctly, depending on the category.
It is also for Up to 25,000 clicks per month completely free of charge.
6.3 Google Fonts Blocker
- Price: Free of charge
- Active installations: n.a.
- Rating: 5 stars
I have already covered the special topic of "GDPR-compliant use of Google Fonts" in detail in my article Use Google Fonts in Divi in compliance with GDPR reported. There you will find some plugins for the local use of Google fonts. Among others the one mentioned here Google Fonts Blocker from Borlabs.
My cookie consent management recommendation: Due to the scan, the simple setup and the fact that it is free of charge, I now even tend to recommend CookieYesthan Borlabs.
7. safety
For the security of your website other things are much more important than installing a plugin.
My tips that I give to every customer:
Use of strong passwords. This is the most effective protection against hacker attacks. It is best to use a password generator such as the one from LastPass.
Regular updates. It sounds so trivial, but it is so often neglected. Updates are extremely important for security, performance and functions.
Hosting selection. When choosing your hoster, make sure that it is well-known and places value on security. I personally also prefer hosting providers that are based on WordPress specialized are. Here I can WP Space*, Dogado* or Raidboxes from experience.
7.1 WPS Hide Login
- Price: Free of charge
- Active installations: 1M+
- Rating: 5 stars
With the simple and slim WPS Hide Login you can change the URL for the login page (/wp-admin) of your website with just a few clicks. This way you can protect your website from Brute force attacks protect. I actually put it on each side in.
7.2 Limit Logins Attempts Reloaded
- Price: Free of charge
- Active installations: 2M+
- Rating: 5 stars
Limit logins helps you to restrict access to your website by restricting the Number of permitted login attempts per IP address limited. This means that visitors or bots that try to log into your website are blocked, after 3 attempts, for example for a certain period of time locked.
Comes with me depending on the hosting provider (often the hosts already have this as a security feature).
8. reliable spam control
8.1 WP Armour - Honeypot Anti Spam
- Price: Free of charge
- Active installations: 100,000+
- Rating: 5 stars
WP Armor protects, among other things, your contact forms, registration forms, comment fields with the so-called Honeypot system before Spam. And unlike Google ReCaptcha, the whole thing is completely GDPR-compliant.
The honeypot system consists of invisible fields into your contact form. Humans can't fill these in because they logically can't see them, whereas bots fill in all the fields that are technically available. This means that as soon as one of these Honeypot fields filled in is, the Message identified as spam and blocked. In the meantime, I have set it to every website in use.
8.2 Antispam Bee
- Price: Free of charge
- Active installations: 800,000+
- Rating: 5 stars
Antispam Bee is slimmer than the aforementioned plugin, but also only filters and blocks Spam comments on a WordPress website. This is also very effective and uses the honeypot method.
Further partial contributions on plugins planned
This was my first overview of plugin tips that can be used on almost any website. In further posts, I will go into more detail on certain special areas, such as online stores with WooCommerce, memberships, marketing, multilingualism and much more.
If you have any special requests, please let me know in the comments!
Conclusion
- Use as many plugins as necessary and as few as possible.
- Every plugin affects the performance and security of your website.
- Always use plugins if you cannot implement it yourself with simple effort.
- My must-have plugins for every site: Duplicate Page, WPvivid, Rank Math SEO, EWWW Image Optimizer, WP Rocket, WPS Hide Login and WP Armour
* The links provided are affiliate links. This means that if you buy something on the linked website, I will receive a small commission. There are no additional costs or similar for you. My recommendations always come from professional and personal conviction, which I have made myself.
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