My original post from 2012 is pretty much obsolete, so I think it’s about time that I update it. My recommendation is still the same: a) I believe that you should use as few plugins as you can to keep your site lightweight and fast. b) The plugins that you use should be well written and lightweight as well. While I try to program my custom theme to offer enough functionality, there are plugins which offer functionality that are otherwise too hard to implement and maintain. Below is the list of them that I use almost all the time when I develop a WordPress website.

Comparing this list to my original list of plugins: there are fewer plugins because some have a lot more functionality. Also, plugins I used to use to augment or fix some issues with WordPress are not needed anymore, and some plugins have ceased to exist. So hopefully this list will be good for at least a while, and be useful to some people out there.

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Site Functionality

Yoast SEO

Yoast had come onto the scene and quickly became the best SEO plugin in my opinion. All in One SEO Pack is very good too, but Yoast plugin covers more ground, including all social media tags, breadcrumbs, post navigation, XML sitemaps, and more. It’s quick to update to keep up with the ever changing internet search and social media landscape. The plugin is very well coded, well documented, and offers a lot of flexibility to fine tune and customize using theme codes, which is awesome for developers.

Contact Form 7 & Really Simple CAPTCHA

Still very much the best free contact form plugin, I think. It lets you create a form easily, and Really Simple CAPTCHA adds simple CAPTCHA functionality that is still effective. You do need to use good amount of HTML, but that means it will give you good flexibility in design and presentation.

ACF / Advanced Custom Fields

I use this plugin on pretty much all of the websites that I develop – it lets you easily create and customize custom fields with great flexibility. If you are doing anything custom with your theme, you will want to create custom fields for your template to adjust accordingly, or add fields to your custom post types to display exactly what you need. Free version will suffice most of the time, but you may need to upgrade to Pro version for additional functionality. e.g. I was asked to develop a website which let the client create sales pages from back end of WordPress, and Pro version of this plugin was absolutely essential.

Duplicate Post

Not sure why this wasn’t in my original list, but duplicating post/page is a functionality that doesn’t come standard on WordPress – and this plugin will give you just that.

Display Widgets

Adds functionality to widgets where you can choose which pages/posts to show/hide a widget on. It’s a super useful plugin.

W3 Total Cache

This is my go to plugin for enabling memory cache of your website, to increase site performance and reducing page load times. There are ton of options with this plugin, but I usually keep the settings near default, and it seems to work out fine. I have had trouble sometimes with minify scripts option, so you will need to experiment to make sure that it doesn’t actually mess up your site. Of course, if you have a very big website with hundreds of posts/pages, then you will want to explore all the options of this plugin.

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Security

Wordfence Security

This plugin has proved itself to be my go to security plugin. Its settings cover a lot of ground, it will scan your server for issues, it will send notifications, it’s fairly easy to use, and they have very helpful and detailed documentations on their website. You can also upgrade to a Premium version, and some of my clients have opted to, which will give you even more control and options for securing your website.

Block Bad Queries (BBQ)

Not sure if this plugin is even needed if you have Wordfence, but I usually install it anyways – as a backup option. You just need to install it, so it’s a good backup.

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Premium Plugins

WordPress Social Sharing Plugin – Social Warfare

I wrote before that I used to program social share buttons directly to the theme code, because there were no plugins that had the functionality and the design flexibility. Well… this plugin actually is that plugin. It’s a free-mium plugin, but it’s better to subscribe for the Pro version, as that will give you more social networks as an option, and more options for customization including different design and placement.

Gravity Forms

If you need more functionality and flexibility than what Contact Form 7 can offer, then this is the premium plugin that you will want. There are few things that stand out. You can really customize your form: e.g. you can hide & show fields, and create multi-page form with animations. You can customize Thank You message, or set a redirect to a Thank You page. There are add-ons to easily integrate to most email marketing and e-commerce platforms. There are ton of options, and developing with it it not an easy task, but I think it’s well worth the price and effort, if you are serious about email marketing.