WordPress turns 19: our 19 favourite plugins

WordPress is the most popular content man­age­ment system worldwide and is used by over 40 percent of all websites. There are plenty of good reasons for its success. The free CMS has a huge community of users and numerous ex­ten­sions in the form of plugins. To celebrate its 19th birthday, here are our 19 favourite WordPress plugins.

Updated: May 2022

The WordPress security plugin Two-Factor lets you implement two-factor au­then­tic­a­tion on your website. The tool ensures that user iden­tit­ies are verified in two in­de­pend­ent ways when logging in which increases the security of your website.

For this purpose, users of the plugin have various au­then­tic­a­tion options at their disposal, such as au­then­tic­a­tion via email codes or timed one-use passwords, so-called Time-Based One-Time Passwords or TOTP for short. With over 40,000 in­stall­a­tions, the plugin is a popular extension to enhance security and is a so-called 'Featured Project'. The latter are plugins that could be in­teg­rated into the WordPress core.

Ad­vant­ages of Two-Factor:

• Different options for two-factor au­then­tic­a­tion
• Special methods for testing the plugin
• Simple setup

Avatars from Gravatar are popular among WordPress users. Un­for­tu­nately, the use and in­teg­ra­tion of avatars are often prob­lem­at­ic in terms of GDPR com­pli­ance and data pro­tec­tion. The Avatar Privacy plugin has the solution. The extension ensures that avatars are hosted on your server and user consent is obtained.

Ad­vant­ages of Avatar Privacy:

• GDPR-compliant
• Changes to the theme are not necessary
• Com­pat­ible with Gravatar

Embed Privacy is worth con­sid­er­a­tion when embedding external content such as YouTube videos on your WordPress site. It ensures that users ex­pli­citly agree to content being loaded. Not only does it protect the privacy of users but also boosts the per­form­ance of your WordPress site, because less content is loaded at the same time.

Ad­vant­ages of Embed Privacy:

• Custom place­hold­ers using CSS
• Shorter loading time
• Supports embeds from default providers on WordPress

The Password Protected plugin is used to password-protect your WordPress website. This way, only people with the password can access your WordPress site (unless they know the specific URL for files or images). For ad­min­is­trat­or use, the password prompt can be turned off.

Ad­vant­ages of Password Protected:

• Simple password pro­tec­tion
• Ad­justable
• Simple to use

Web­men­tion refers to a protocol that informs URLs of links to see who links or comments on your posts. To get started, add the plugin of the same name – Web­men­tion – to your WordPress page. It also supports the sending of web­men­tions and as­sign­ment of likes, making it easier for two blogs to com­mu­nic­ate.

Ad­vant­ages of Web­men­tion:

• Ease of use
• Receipt of Web­men­tions
• Al­loc­a­tion of likes and other inter-blog actions

WordPress needs a database. However, when using WP Migrate Lite you will no longer need a database architect to this end. The free version of the simple-to-use developer plugin can be used to export data and import the resulting SQL code into a DBMS such as phpMy­Ad­min. Moving websites has never been easier.

Want to export media or themes of your WordPress site alongside data? Use the Pro version of the plugin available from around £40.

Ad­vant­ages of WP Migrate:

• Simple to use
• Flexible use
• Migrate WordPress page without losing data

Although creating a WordPress website is easy enough, even for beginners, de­velopers or advanced users may need to add features that are beyond the scope of the CMS. Thanks to developer plugins such as Query Monitor adding developer tools is quick and simple. Query Monitor supports debugging of databases and the eval­u­ation of PHP error messages or REST API requests.

Ad­vant­ages of Query Monitor:

• Detailed debugging en­vir­on­ment
• Versatile use
• Cus­tom­is­able

The Open Graph Protocol, short OGP, was developed by Facebook to improve dis­play­ing websites in social networks. The Open Graph plugin ap­peal­ingly displays your WordPress site on social media, instant messaging services, and search engines. Open Graph does not require ad­di­tion­al setup and works straight after download.

Ad­vant­ages of Open Graph:

• Simple to use
• For appealing present­a­tion of your WordPress site

A Pro­gress­ive Web App roughly refers to the ability to display websites as web apps. These apps run in a browser and therefore do not require separate download and in­stall­a­tion. Web apps sig­ni­fic­antly improve the user ex­per­i­ence on mobile devices. The plugin The plugin PWA is a promising way to provide a WordPress website as a pro­gress­ive web app through ap­pro­pri­ate code modules.

Ad­vant­ages of PWA:

• Display WordPress page as PWA
• Extensive range of functions

As the name suggests, News­let­ter Glue is useful to automate the sending of email news­let­ters. News­let­ter campaigns can be created directly from the plugin editor. The WordPress news­let­ter plugin makes a news­let­ter readable online and helps users design SEO-friendly news­let­ters. From May 2022, however, the free version of the WordPress extension will no longer be extended. Users will need to opt for the paid version to access the full range of functions in the future.

Ad­vant­ages of News­let­ter Glue:

• Simple creation of news­let­ters
• SEO support
• Intuitive workflow

BackWPup is useful to back up a WordPress in­stall­a­tion ex­tern­ally. Once set up, the plugin can be used for regular automatic backups. To this end, cloud service providers are useful. The free version of the WordPress backup plugin lets users back up databases and files, and supports Dropbox as well as FTP servers. The Pro version (from around £59 per year) of the plugin is needed to back up data to OneDrive, HiDrive, or Google Drive.

Ad­vant­ages of BackWPup:

• Backup of databases and files
• Video tutorials
• Supports various data formats

The Statify plugin counts page views of your WordPress site. Unlike other analytics tools, it does not collect users’ IP addresses. Instead, Statify stores page visits without col­lect­ing personal data, making the plugin GDPR-compliant. Choose from different settings and define the storage period of collected data from the menu.

Ad­vant­ages of Statify:

• Spam comments can be removed from analytics
• Optional tracking with JavaS­cript
• GDPR-compliant

As of WordPress version 4.2, loading emojis has been possible in older browsers too. But this can increase loading times of your WordPress page. Emojis loaded from external files may also violate the GDPR if personal data such as IP addresses are collected. Disable Emojis is designed to work around the issue. In browsers that support the display of emojis, nothing much changes, while in older browsers, emoji func­tion­al­ity is simply disabled.

Ad­vant­ages of Disable Emojis:

• Improved website per­form­ance
• Supports GDPR com­pli­ance
• Focused on dis­play­ing emojis in older browsers

The Antispam Bee plugin gets rid of those annoying spam comments. Users can adjust the settings to allow comments according to different language or time settings. Antispam Bee is com­pat­ible with the GDPR and is ad-free.

Ad­vant­ages of Antispam Bee:

• 100% GDPR-compliant
• Works without captchas
• Email in­form­a­tion in case of suspected spam

The User Switching plugin is worth a look if you want to switch between several WordPress accounts with different per­mis­sions, which is useful for testing, for example. The WordPress extension lets users store different accounts and switch between them in just a few clicks. This saves a lot of time, es­pe­cially in WordPress test en­vir­on­ments.

Ad­vant­ages of User Switching:

• Time-saving switching between user accounts
• Easy to use

Thanks to various language packs, WordPress websites can be displayed in many languages. However, where a trans­la­tion to a target language is not available, WordPress auto­mat­ic­ally selects English as the display language. Preferred Language lets WordPress site users specify multiple language pref­er­ences to fall back on when needed.

Ad­vant­ages of Preferred Languages:

• Easy to use
• Improved user ex­per­i­ence
• Barrier-free

With Yoast Duplicate Post, users of the CMS can easily copy and edit posts of all kinds in just one click. The popular plugin speeds up your workflow.

Ad­vant­ages of Yoast Duplicate Post:

• Multiple language versions
• Support
• Simple to use

To share draft posts with those without access to your WordPress site, the Public Post Review plugin is just what you need. The WordPress plugin creates a temporary URL that allows people to access post drafts before they are published. It is a useful tool for editing and teamwork.

Ad­vant­ages of Public Post Preview:

• Posts are readable without WordPress access
• URL validity can be timed

Save SVG makes it easy to upload SVG files to the WordPress library. SVG are scalable vector graphics mainly used for logos or icon images. Since SVG files are XML files and thus prone to being targeted by XML attacks, there are some security concerns when in­teg­rat­ing SVG. A plugin like Save SVG monitors for such security vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies.

Ad­vant­ages of Save SVG:

• Easy to use
• Secure SVG upload

Deciding on the right WordPress plugins for your website ul­ti­mately depends on your needs. From pro­fes­sion­al web de­vel­op­ment to spicing up a personal blog by adding useful features – there are plenty of plugins for almost any scenario.