Have you been wondering which must-have WordPress plugins you need to run your blog and which ones to avoid? I’ve got you covered!
WordPress plugins are like things you buy for your house, over time you accumulate so much of them that it will clutter your space, and in this case, your web hosting server.
Every plugin will take up space and the more of these you have, the more risks of getting hacked so in this article I show you exactly which plugins I’m using on every site I built, the reason I use them, as well as some plugins to completely avoid.
By the way, if you have an established blog but feel like you have too many plugins on your site, this will be a great resource for you to learn what to look for and do a massive cleanup of your current blog.
As I’ve built many WordPress sites over the years, I’ve learned quite a lot about which themes and plugins to use to keep sites organized, fast-loading, and safe, without them taking up a ton of space
If you’re struggling with this, feel free to pin this to your Pinterest board with the image below.
This article may contain Affiliate Links, meaning if you click on a link and purchase my recommended product, I may receive a small commission. Read my full disclaimer here
1. WordFence Security
When you have a Website, even a brand new one, you’d be surprised on how often people will try to hack into it. I’ve purchased many domains over the years and I got hundreds of attempts from hackers worldwide trying to brute-force their way into my WordPress backend of even try to log into my site by guessing passwords and usernames.
This is why you want to install WordFence Security.
WordFence will block people who attempt to log into your site and it will notify you when you have bad files on your site.
Personally, I’ve never paid for their pro version, since it comes with a Free as well as a paid version.
But I have it running in the background and it will send me a weekly email with threats as well as important security information that we as bloggers, all should be aware of.
the top 3 benefits of Wordfence
- Wordfence will block hackers who attempt to log in multiple times.
- It’s a one-time setup and it will run in the background.
- It’s FREE. It does have a paid version, but the free version will do everything you’ll need.
I’ve used Wordfence now for many years and I never got hacked. In the screenshot, you can see an overview of a typical day where people try to brute force themselves into my website.
And this is from the emails you’ll receive from Wordfence once you start using it. Super helpful to know.
Where to get WordFence Security
Once you’re logged into your WordPress dashboard, simply go to Plugins -> add new.
Here you can type in Wordfence and it will pop up as one of the first plugins to install.
Once installed, simply activate it and it will guide you through the one-time setup process.
If you have any questions about this or need help setting this up, simply reach out to me and I’ll help you out.
2. ShortPixel
Your images are one of the main things that can slow down your site. Every time one of your pages has to load, it will load all of your images as well and you really need to keep your image file size to a minimum
there are lots of ways to make your images smaller. You can use Photoshop or another image tool, there are plugins for this as well, but from my experience, the ShortPixel plugin is the best on the market.
And you don’t have to minimize any of your images manually. All you do is upload your image to your site, and Shortpixel will take care of the rest.
This plugin will optimize your images the moment you upload them. And it offers lots of other good features like showing your images in WebP format. WebP is one of the newer file extensions that internet browsers can use to show your images while at the same time, load up your pages fast.
top 3 benefits of the ShortPixel plugin
- When using Shortpixel, you don’t have to do anything to your images beforehand.
- It’s cheap. Shortpixel has a free account which gives you 100 credits per month, but if you need to upgrade, it is super affordable.
- It comes with a bulk feature. So even if you have an established site, it gives you the option to bulk optimize previously uploaded images.
Pros of using ShortPixel
- Once you installed Shortpixel, all you need to do is run a bulk optimization process once and it will do all of the work for you.
- You don’t need to do anything to your images beforehand. ShortPixel will do all of the optimizations on upload.
- If you decide to remove the plugin later, your optimization will remain on the images you’ve used this on.
Cons of using ShortPixel
- The only con I can think of is that it’s free for 100 credits per month. and each image optimization will cost about. 3 credits. After that, If you have more images than that, you would need to purchase a bundle of credits or you can sign up for a monthly subscription.
I bought a bundle of 100K credits a few years ago and I still have about 70K credits left, which will never expire.
I install ShortPixel every time I start a new website and used this plugin for many years. I can even upload images straight from my iPhone, which has the HEIC image format. And Shortpixel literally can handle every image file extension without any issues.
This plugin is great for new bloggers as you can use it for free for up to 100 credits per month but also for those who have a bigger site with lots of images. In that case, you can install the plugin and run the bulk optimiser and it will run through every image on your site.
How Much Does ShortPixel Cost?
| Monthly (Unlimited credits) | $9.99 |
| Yearly (Unlimited credits) | $99.90 |
| 30K Credits (for life) | $19.99 |
| 50K Credits (for life) | $29.99 |
| 100K Credits (for life) | $49.99 |
As I’ve mentioned. I purchased the one-time package with 100K credits for $49.99, which I still have tons of left, even after many years.
3. W3 Total Cache
When you’re having a WordPress blog, you need to make sure it loads as fast as possible. And it’s up to you to do the things that YOU have control over.
Caching is one of the main things that help speed up your site.
Depending on your hosting provider, you might already have a good caching plugin.
I’m hosting my websites with Cloudways, which comes with their own caching plugin, called Breeze.
Other hosts like Bluehost have their own caching features as well. When you start a blog on Bluehost, the caching will be enabled through the Bluehost plugin.
In case you don’t have a caching tool on your blog yet, I would recommend to install the plugin W3 Total Cache.
A caching plugin will create a stored copy of your page when someone visits it. And the next time they will come back to that same page, instead of loading the page with every visit, it will show your visitor the stored page and that will speed up the loading time massively.
4. Rankmath
When you’re starting your blog, SEO is one of the most important things to work on.
Tools like Rankmath and Yoast SEO are the 2 most popular SEO plugins to use for WordPress websites. I used to love Yoast, but since Rankmath offers the same features as Yoast, and more, I switched over to Rankmath.
Just to be clear, an SEO tool isn’t going to magically bring your blog to the top of Google, but it’s just a tool to give you some best-practices for when it comes to optimizing your blog posts and pages.
For starters, Rankmath will give you a checklist on things to work on, while writing your post, it allows you to fill in the meta title and description, which are the text that will show up in the Google search results, but it also allows you to create schema.
Schema markup is code that will tell webcrawlers like Google, Bing, etc what your page is about.
Yes, search engines can read your page, but when you add schema to your pages, you no longer let search engines guess, but you can confirm exactly what is also written on the page.
Beyond schema for your articles, you can also add things like organisation schema. This is code that will be in the code of your page that tells search engines your company name, contact information, and much more.
This is important in terms of EEAT. EEAT stands for Experience, Expertis, Authority, and Trust and this you will build up overtime by implementing these SEO strategies throughout your content, contact page, about page, etc.
But that is too complicated to just put into a paragraph here, so I’ll create a seperate article on that soon.
The reason I prefer Rankmath over Yoast is that with Rankmath you’ll get options for free, that with Yoast, you would have to pay for.
Rankmath also comes with a redirection tool. That means, if you decide to move an article to a new page and it gets a new link, you can set a redirect from the old url, to the new one.
Rankmath also gives you some basic data from your Google Analytics and Google Search Console, although I prefer to use the direct tools for that.
Although I have the Pro version of Rankmath, I would recommend to just install the free version, which you can find under the plugins tab of your WordPress dashboard. It will give you all of the options you’ll need.
5. WPCode
When you’re setting up things like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or even verify your website with Pinterest, you often need to place specific verification codes within your header.
And although there are tools out there like Google Tag Manager, you can install your analytics within Rankmath and in some cases, themes will have a dedicated section to place codes in the header, I personally prefer to use a plugin to keep all of these codes together.
WPCode Lite is a super lightweight WordPress plugin that will do just this. It has 3 different sections where you can place any of your codes within the header, footer, or body section.
I prefer to do these things within this plugin to keep it all organized and in 1 place.
If you add codes to the header section of your theme, you need to remember this if you ever decide to switch to another theme.
If you do this within Rankmath, if you decide to move to a different SEO tool, you need to remember to move these codes over.
So if you install the WPCode Lite plugin and keep all of your codes within this section, no matter what you change lateron, it will remain within this plugin.
WPCode Lite is a free plugin, and although it has a premium version, for what you want to use this tool for, the free version is all you’ll ever need.
6. Hubbub
Now that Google is acting all weird on us, sharing your content on social media is more important than ever.
And although there are multiple social sharing tools on the market for WordPress, Hubbub is one of the better ones out there.
Especially when you want to grow your presence on Pinterest.
For this blog, I use the Hubbub Pro plugin and here’s why.
It will allow me to set a specific image as my Pinterest pin, as well as a pin description and title.
You can see it in action on the image above. The last thing you want if for people to share all kinds of random images from your page to go on Pinterest. You want to controle this as much as possible.
Hubbub Pro also allows me to embed multiple Pinterest images on a blog post and hide them on the page.
This way, when you try to pin my article to Pinterest, it will show you a couple of images to choose from, but all of them can be selected by me personally.
Hubbub also has a free version, which gives you the basic options for having share buttons above or below your content as well as a floating sidebar option.
Another social sharing plugin that does basically the same thing is Social Warfare, but I’ve experienced some issues a while back between Social Warfare and the Kadence theme, which is what I’m using.
I use Hubbub Pro now for just this website, but they have discounts in case you want to buy a license for multiple websites.
And for the cost of this tool per year for 1 website, you can’t go wrong here.
7. PrettyLinks
If your goal is to monetize your blog with affiliate marketing, Pretty Links is just a must-have plugin for your website.
Pretty Links does exactly what the names says. It allows you to turn links into your own, customized links that are easy to remember and it will also allow you to track clicks on those links.
How Pretty Link works:
When I receive my affiliate link for Bluehost for example, that affiliate link is a long, difficult link to remember. With my affiliate code inside of it, etc.
With the Pretty Links plugin I can create a branded link that will direct you to my actual affiliate link when you click on it.
So that weird link will turn into something like blogtechsupport.com/recommendations/bluehost.
Now, this is just for affiliate links, but you can do this with any link you can imagine.
Another example. Let’s say you go on someone’s podcast and you want to promote some sort of ebook or video training to their audience. Now you can create a link specifically for that podcast episode.
this also allows you to directly see how many people come to that free video training or download your ebook from the podcast.
Just keep in mind that when you’re using this for your affiliate links, that you clearly read the terms and services for each of the affiliate programs you participate in.
Amazon for example, won’t allow you to cloak their affiliate links. And if you do, you can get banned from their program.
Another great benefit of this is that when an affiliate link changes and you shared your affiliate link in many different blog posts, you only need to change the affiliate link in 1 place, which is in your Pretty Links dashboard.
And wherever that affiliate link is on your blog, it will immediately redirect your readers to the new affiliate link.
Pretty Links also comes with a free as well as a paid version. But personally, I only used the free version and it does everything I need it to do.
As you can see, this is a must-have tool for your blog
8. Akismet
I don’t know about you, but I love connecting with my audience. And by the way, if you have any questions about WordPress plugins or feedback, let me know in the comments below.
The only downside from running your blog is that you will also end up getting a lot of spam comments.
I’m not sure who teaches this strategy, but when I see some of the spam comments I get, it really makes me think.. Do they really think this works?
But I digress.
You can’t prevent getting spam comments, but you do want to make sure that at least, your spam comments get filtered out.
And that is where Akismet comes into play.
Akismet is a plugin that will go through your comments and it filters out almost all of the spam for you and put it in a seperate spam folder.
Keep in mind that it will still be in your comment section, but there’s a section called spam where you go through them.
Every now and then, genuine comments will be placed in your spam folder, so you still want to go through them here and there to make sure that you don’t miss out on any real comments.
In case you don’t want any comments on your site, you can go to the settings tab and writing and turn off comments completely and in that case, you don’t need Akismet at all.
But for me personally,building up my community is too important and I will just take the time to go through the comments I get and answer them. Even if that means spending some time with those BS comments.
Akismet is already installed in your plugin section when you install WordPress, but you do need to activate it and it will prompt you to sign up for a license key. It’s very straightforward. Just follow the instructions and you’ll be good to go in no-time.
9. Contact Form 7
Besides getting comments on your articles, you also want to make sure to have a way for your readers to contact you directly.
The easiest way to do this is by creating a Contact page and setting up a contact form on there.
You don’t even need to list down your email address directly if you don’t want, but having a contact form installed, your audience have at least a way to get in touch with you.
Keep in mind that you also want to make it super easy for brands to reach out to you and having a contact form on your site is the easiest way for brands to reach out to you.
Unfortunately, you will end up getting spam emails, but by not having this, you will miss out on genuine business opportunities.
For my Thailand blog, I do receive my fair share of spam emails, but every now and then I do have real people reach out to me, asking for travel recommendations, which I’m more than happy to help them out with.
Contact Form 7 is contact form plugin that’s been around for many years and has a very good reputation.
Now that I’m using the Kadence theme (I do have the Pro version) it comes with its own Contact form module.
But if you’re not using Kadence for your WordPress theme, Contact Form 7 is the easiest plugin to use.
Once it’s installed and activated, you can create a simple contact form with just a few clicks and place it on your contact page and you’ll be ready for those first sponsorship deals.
And just FYI, if you want to ask me anything, just go to my contact page and reach out. I’m always willing and quick to respond back.
I even have a Whatsapp number if you prefer that. It’s all listed on. my Contact page.
10. UpdraftPlus / Manage WP
Whether you’re building up your blog right now or if you have a huge blog already, the last thing you want is to lose it all after installing a bad plugin, theme, or anything else for that matter.
This is the nightmare of every blogger.
So one of those crucial tools that will save your life is a backup plugin.
Yes, I know. Your host will make backups for you, But guess what? Hosting companies get hacked too.
and I don’t like to put my entire livelyhood in the hands of my hosting company. Yes, it’s cool they make backups for me, but I prefer to have my own backups as well.
In my opinion, there are 2 ways to do this.
- Backup plugin. Updrafplus is a plugin that will allow you to make manual backups of your entire site, or you set up a schedule to do this automatically.
- ManageWP, which is what I’m using for the last year.
I used to use Updraftplus and it’s a very popular tool for WordPress, but I’ve had an issue once where I needed to restore my backup and there were missing files and then I discovered ManageWP.
ManageWP is a full site management tool that allows you to make backups, update plugins, themes, etc, monitor your website uptime, and much more.
All you have to do is go to ManageWP, setup an account and connect your blog to it and you can manage your entire site through this website.
The free version will make a backup monthly, but I pay about $1.80 per month per website to have daily backups.
Once you’ve set up your account, it will install a small plugin on your site that directly connects to your ManageWP dashboard and after you’ve connected the 2, either by logging into your site or copying the connection key, it will keep track of everything for you.
This is especially handy in case you have multiple websites to keep track off.
The paid backup feature also allows you to move entire websites over to new domains.
But in case you prefer to go with UpdraftPlus, this plugin will allow you to manually create backups of your website as well as connect it to cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and many more.
In case you want to use UpdraftPlus for free, you have to connect it to your Google Drive or other services, with the paid version, you can store backups on the UpdraftPlus server.
And of course, you can also download backups to your computer.
Bonus Plugins I recommend
Here are some other plugins I personally use on my websites.
1. Kadence blocks
As I mentioned before, I use the Kadence theme on my websites and Kadence also has a plugin called Kadence Blocks, which is an expansion of the WordPress blocks.
As WordPress blocks (Gutenberg Blocks) have got you covered for the most part, Kadence Blocks come with tons more functionality. Think of Forms, Table of Contents, Sliders, and more.
Although this plugin is from Kadence, it does work on other WordPress themes and is just a good library of blocks to have in your back pocket.
2. Kadence Conversions
Another cool plugin from Kadence is called Kadence Conversions, that allows you create all sorts of popups, banners, signup boxes, and more.
I’ve been playing around with it, but only now I’m going to build up my email list.
You can set all kinds of different conditions for these boxes to show. Think of specific pages, in between specific posts, and even set timers. This is great for example if you run timely promotions or days like Black Friday.
3. Link Whisper
Link whisper is another tool I’ve been playing around with and is very handy when it comes to building internal links between your content.
What it basically does is, it will run a scan of your entire website and shows you exactly which pages and posts don’t have links coming in, or going out yet. And it can show you linking opportunities that can help grow your traffic.
This can be a lifesaver, especially if you have a massive blog and have never worked on your internal linking thus far.
Although it does give automatic link suggestions, I prefer to go through them but still internal link myself. But it’s always good to see which pages need some extra love.
4. WP Rocket
If you happen to use a slower hosting company, run ads on your blog, or a theme that will slow down your site, one of the best caching tools for WordPress is called WP Rocket.
WP Rocket has all kinds of features build in that will make your site speed increase. I’ve used this plugin on a Bluehost website, running the Divi theme and it was really cool to see that you can still fast loading websites.
And what I like the most about it is that it works right out of the box. this means, you install it and activate it and most of the important factors are optimized right away. Without you needing to go through tons of settings.
I would recommend this plugin primarily to you if you use a shared hosting like Bluehost, use plugins like Elementor, or themes like Divi.
Those often slow down your site and a tool like WP Rocket can give you some of that speed back.
Keep in mind that WP Rocket will cost a bit of money, around $50 per year for 1 website, so just to be transparent about that.
WordPress Plugins to Avoid
The WordPress plugins shown above are the most important ones and each of them have their own functionality that will help run your blog.
Here are a couple of plugins that are often used, but I would delete rightaway
1. JetPack
JetPack is a plugin that covers a whole lot of different things and because of that, it will slow down your site a lot.
Usually, this is installed when you run your blog with Bluehost for example. I would just delete the entire plugin and use the plugins I mentioned above instead.
Jetpack has options for social sharing, analytics, and more, but it’s best to use more lightweight plugins for these things.
2. Hello Dolly
When you start a brand new WordPress blog, the plugin Hello Dolly is automatically installed and has no function whatsoever.
And with plugins, it adds up quickly, so if you don’t use something, delete it and when you’ve installed a plugin, make sure it’s activated and maintained. This way you will avoid risks of getting hacked.
3. WordPress Classic Editor
I know that as humans, we find it difficult sometimes to get used to new things. And Gutenberg blocks was one of them.
A lot of people installed a plugin to get back the old WordPress editor and although I understand it, it’s best to get used to the new way of working and embrace the WordPress blocks.
I’ve been a Microsoft Windows user since I was a little kid and only about 2 years ago, I bought my very first Macbook Pro.
The first 2 weeks, I switched between my Windows laptop and my Mac about 50/50 of my time but I noticed I really learned and enjoyed my Mac when I put away my Windows laptop for good and forced myself to only work on my Mac. That’s the best way to really immerse yourself into something new.
And I promise you, there are so many different things you can do with the WordPress blocks editor.
How many plugins should you have on WordPress?
You should use as little plugins as possible. Every plugin will affect site speed and the potential risk of getting hacked. Only use the plugins you really need.
Should I always update WordPress plugins?
WordPress plugin and theme updates are there to fix bugs within them. That’s why it’s important to always keep WordPress, themes, as well as plugins up to date.
Should I delete inactive WordPress plugins?
A WordPress plugin only works when it’s active, so if you have inactive plugins, there’s no reason to keep them. So it’s best practice to delete inactive plugins.
How do I clean up plugins in WordPress?
The best way to clean up your WordPress plugins is by going through them one by one and first deleting all inactive plugins, then seeing which plugins you’re not using and cleaning those up as well.
Final Thoughts
This list gives you a headstart for building up your blog, which will not only be clean, but also fast loading as well as secure.
If you start with the above plugins and move from there, you’re good to go. I’m not saying you shouldn’t add any other plugins, but just be careful to not overload your site with unnecassary plugins, which will cause security and speed issues.
And again, if you have any doubts or need feedback on a plugin, let me know and I’ll make sure to help you out.
