How do you decide on the best plugins to use, with over 55,000 free plugins listed in WordPress?
Well, I’ve come across a great post over at Kinsta that targets the best plugins for wordpress to help you decide what will work for you.
I’m happy to say that I already use a number of these hand picked plugins. Some of them are new to me, as I haven’t had a need for them.
They’re all organized into categories such as:
- SEO
- Security
- Performance
- Page Builders
- Social Media
- Photo Galleries
- Contact Forms
- etc.
The list of categories is extensive.
I love that some of my favorite plugins are included, such as:
- Yoast for SEO
- WP Rocket
- Beaver Builder
- Social Warfare
- Ninja Forms
- just to name a few
Some of the plugins surprised me, such as WPS Hide Login, which allows you to easily move your login page to a different spot to prevent bot traffic.
It’s not that hard to change your login page without a plugin – at least for me, so I wouldn’t find a need to add an extra plugin load on my site.
That’s the thing to remember here; there are SO many plugins to choose from that it’s easy to just start installing a plugin for every little task.
Sometimes, if you can do it yourself, it’s far less of a load on your site to do what you need done without a plugin.
Only use the plugins you really need, as they can slow down your site.
However, some plugins, like Ninja Forms – I couldn’t imagine doing without. And of course, you’re going to need an anti-spam plugin like Akismet.
Plugins that I wasn’t familiar with, such as Perfmatters, which helps you to easily make some performance improvements on your site to reduce page size – I’m going to check that one out to see if it’s worth the space it takes up.
As well, there’s Instagram Feed, which I should probably be using, and am not – at least yet :).
This list of the best plugins is definitely worth checking out. You might decide one of the ones on the list works better than what you’re using now.
Check out the whole list here at Kinsta.
I’d love to know what some of your favorite plugins are. Let me know!