Once you have setup WordPress theme in your website now comes to add essential free WordPress plugins in blog and website. WordPress is renowned for its versatility and user-friendliness, making it a popular choice for bloggers and website owners worldwide. One of the reasons behind its popularity is the vast library of plugins that enhance functionality and streamline various tasks.

Free WordPress plugins are the software components that are added in the WordPress CMS to enhance features and functionality of WordPress website or blog. They range from small tools to large scale extensions that also boosts on page SEO. There are around 50000 free plugins in WordPress[dot]org and thousands of custom plugins written by third party developers. Though they all can not be used in WordPress site but in this article I’ll explore a selection of must-have free WordPress plugins that can take your blog website to the next level.

1. Yoast SEO and All In One SEO

Yoast SEO, All In One SEO, and Rank Math SEO are all free WordPress plugins that optimize your blog for Search Engines, it is a comprehensive SEO plugin that helps improve your blog’s search engine rankings. It assists in optimizing on-page content, meta tags, and XML sitemaps, making it easier for search engines to understand and rank your content.

2. Akismet Anti-Spam

Akismet anti spam free WordPress plugin combats comment and contact form spam, It keeps spam comments and form submissions at bay which is crucial for a clean and user-friendly blog. Akismet automatically detects and filters out spam, ensuring that your blog’s comments section remains clutter-free.

3. Jetpack Free WordPress Plugins

Jetpack free WordPress plugin supercharges your website’s performance, it is a multifunctional plugin that offers a range of features, including website statistics, visitor statistics, downtime monitoring, security enhancements, and image optimization. It’s like having a Swiss Army knife for your WordPress site.

4. Wordfence Security Free WordPress Plugins

Wordfence Security plugin enhances your blog’s security, security is paramount for any website. Wordfence Security free WordPress plugin provides robust protection against malware, malicious attacks, and unauthorized logins. It also offers a firewall and login attempt monitoring.

5. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin

UpdraftPlus safeguards your blog’s data, regular backups are a safety net for your blog. UpdraftPlus simplifies the backup process, allowing you to schedule automatic backups and store them in cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3.

6. W3 Total Cache Free WordPress Plugins

W3 Total Cache optimizes website speed, a fast-loading website is crucial for retaining visitors. W3 Total Cache is a free WordPress plugin that improves your blog’s performance by caching pages and reducing load times. This can lead to better user experiences and improved SEO rankings.

7. Smush – Lazy Load Images, Optimize & Compress Images

Smush is used to optimize images for faster loading, large image files can slow down your website. Smush optimizes and compresses images automatically, reducing their size without compromising quality. It also supports lazy loading for images, which enhances performance.

8. WPForms Lite Free WordPress Plugins

WPForms Lite is used to create user-friendly contact forms, building contact forms should be hassle-free. WPForms Lite is a user-friendly plugin that enables you to create custom forms with a drag-and-drop interface. It’s perfect for contact forms, surveys, and more.

9. Classic Editor

Classic Editor is used to retain the classic WordPress editing experience, if you prefer the classic WordPress editor over the block editor (Gutenberg), the Classic Editor plugin lets you revert to the familiar interface. It’s especially useful if you have an established workflow with the old editor.

10. Editorial Calendar Free WordPress Plugins

Editorial Calendar is used to manage your content, it gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.

11. Social Icons Widgets and Block By WPZoom

Social Icons Widgets and Block By WPZoom is a free WordPress plugin which is used to add quickly social icons with links to your profiles from different social networks. It has several icon sets, which gives you the possibility to use the widget for more than just linking to your social media profiles.

12. Broken Link Checker Free WordPress Plugins

Broken link checker is used to find the broken links in your website at the super fast speed, it runs automatically in the background to check broken links in your site and it is limitless. Broken links kill your SEO, site health and user experience so it is a must use plugin in your WordPress site.

13. Easy Table of Contents and Tables of Content Plus

Easy table to contents and Tables of content plus are free WordPress plugins enables in your article to generate table of content based on the headings tags. The later one table of contents are similar to Wikipedia.

14. WP Super Cache Free WordPress Plugins

WP super cache is caching plugin which is used to generate static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. These static HTML files are used by plugins webserver to serve to users instead of processing the heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

15. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

Shortpixel image optimizer is used to boost SEO by optimizing images and PDF documents. It compresses the images and PDF documents to serve them faster.

Apart from above free WordPress plugins, there is a short list of important plugins you can use in your WordPress blog if needed-

16. Contact Form 7: A versatile contact form plugin.

17. Elementor Page Builder: A powerful page builder with a live preview.

18. WooCommerce: Transforms your WordPress site into an online store.

19. Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin for WordPress by MonsterInsights: Integrates Google Analytics into your site.

20. Redirection: Helps manage URL redirects and 404 errors.

21. Regenerate Thumbnails: Regenerates image thumbnails when you change your theme.

22. WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache: Cleans up your database and optimizes performance.

23. Black Studio TinyMCE Widget: Adds a visual editor widget to your site.

24. TablePress: Allows you to create and manage tables easily.

25. Google XML Sitemaps: Generates a sitemap to improve SEO.

26. WP Mail SMTP by WPForms: Ensures reliable email delivery.

27. TinyMCE Advanced: Enhances the WordPress visual editor.

28. Loginizer: Enhances login security.

29. Limit Login Attempts Reloaded: Protects your site by limiting login attempts.

30. Post Type Switcher: Easily change post types.

31. Yoast Duplicate Post: Quickly clone posts and pages.

32. WP Security Audit Log: Keeps an audit trail of all changes and user activity.

33. WP Smush: Compresses and optimizes images for speed.

34. Really Simple SSL: Converts your site to HTTPS.

35. Disable Comments: Allows you to disable comments globally.

36. Disable XML-RPC Pingback: Enhances security by disabling XML-RPC pingback functionality.

37. WP Google Maps: Easily add Google Maps to your site.

38. Mailchimp for WooCommerce: Integrates WooCommerce with Mailchimp.

39. WP Fastest Cache: A caching plugin for speed optimization.

40. WP Sticky Sidebar (formerly “Q2W3 Fixed Widget for WordPress”): Keeps widgets in your sidebar visible as you scroll.

41. WP-PageNavi: Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your site.

42. WP User Avatar: Allows users to upload avatars.

43. EWWW Image Optimizer: Optimizes images for faster loading times.

44. WP Rollback: Easily roll back plugin and theme updates.

45. WP Video Lightbox: Adds responsive lightbox functionality to your videos.

46. Easy Google Fonts: Customize your site’s typography.

47. Widget Importer & Exporter: Import and export widgets between WordPress installations.

48. WordPress Popular Posts: Displays popular posts based on views or comments.

49. Code Snippets: Add custom code snippets without editing theme files.

50. Duplicate Page: Quickly duplicate pages and posts.

51. WP Statistics: Provides detailed statistics about your site’s traffic.

52. Insert Headers and Footers: Easily add code snippets to your site’s header or footer.

53. MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress: Integrates Mailchimp with your site.

54. WP Maintenance Mode: Displays a maintenance mode page to visitors.

55. WP Live Chat Support: Adds live chat functionality to your site.

56. WP-PostRatings: Allows visitors to rate your posts.

57. WP Multibyte Patch: Fixes issues with character encoding.

58. WP RSS Aggregator: Import RSS feeds as WordPress posts.

59. CM Tooltip Glossary: Adds a glossary of terms to your site.

60. MailPoet Newsletters (formerly “WYSIJA Newsletters”): Create newsletters and manage subscribers.

61. WP Google Search: Integrates Google Custom Search with your site.

62. Advanced Custom Fields: Customizes the WordPress edit screens with fields.

63. All In One WP Security & Firewall: Enhances your site’s security.

64. Login LockDown: Adds login attempt limiting and monitoring.

65. iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security): A comprehensive security plugin.

66. WP Accessibility: Improves accessibility of your site.

67. Content Views – Post Grid & List for WordPress: Creates beautiful post grids and lists.

68. WP Smush: Compresses and optimizes images.

69. EWWW Image Optimizer: Optimizes images for speed.

70. NextGEN Gallery: A popular gallery plugin.

71. Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd: Displays a coming soon or maintenance mode page.

72. Disable Comments: Allows you to disable comments.

73. Disqus Comment System: Integrates Disqus comments with your site.

74. User Switching: Allows administrators to switch between user accounts.

75. Adminimize: Simplifies the WordPress admin interface.

76. Easy WP SMTP: Configures your site to send emails via SMTP.

77. Breadcrumb NavXT: Adds breadcrumb navigation to your site.

78. Sucuri Security – Auditing, Malware Scanner and Security Hardening: Enhances site security.

79. Google Captcha (reCAPTCHA) by BestWebSoft: Adds reCAPTCHA to your forms.

80. BulletProof Security: A security plugin with firewall protection.

81. Instagram Feed: Displays Instagram feeds on your site.

82. Contact Form by WPForms – Drag & Drop Form Builder for WordPress: A user-friendly form builder.

83. WPTouch Mobile Plugin: Creates a mobile-friendly version of your site.

84. WP-DB-Backup: Backs up your WordPress database.

85. Blog Designer: Customizes blog layouts.

86. Easy Testimonials: Adds testimonials to your site.

87. Gallery – Photo Gallery and Images Gallery: A feature-rich gallery plugin.

88. Shortcodes Ultimate: Adds a variety of shortcodes for content enhancement.

89. WP Simple Booking Calendar: Allows booking and reservations.

90. SEO Redirection Plugin: Manages URL redirects.

91. LiveChat: Adds live chat functionality.

93. Amazon Auto Links: Monetizes your site by automatically linking Amazon products.

94. WP User Frontend – Membership, Profile, Registration & Post Submission Plugin for WordPress: Allows user registration and front-end post submissions.

95. Redirection for Contact Form 7: Manages redirects for Contact Form 7 submissions.

96. WP Store Locator: Adds a store locator to your site.

97. NextGEN Gallery: A powerful gallery plugin for managing and displaying images.

98. Disable Comments: Allows you to disable comments globally on your site.

WordPress is the most popular blogging and publishing platform in the world today. WordPress also powers a great number of websites including corporate solutions and personal websites. This has also pushed the demand for plugins (which power up websites) go up. Developers are now spending sleepless nights trying to develop plugins to help WordPress users easily run their websites. This article has ten tips to help plugin developers with their plugin developing tasks. Whether you are a newbie or guru, these tips are beneficial to all plugin developers.

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1. Use Ubiquity Firefox add-on to speed up development

This is a cutting edge add-on for Firefox and was developed by Mozilla Labs. Ubiquity allows plugin developers to instantly search WordPress and PHP documentation in an instant using PHP Search and WP Codex Search plugins. This add-on also has several creative ideas that can help developers transform their creativity into WordPress development.

2. Need a plugin idea? Use the official Ideas forum

Developing new plugins is just as important as creating new WordPress themes. Many developers find themselves in a funny predicament where they run out on new plugin ideas. This happens all the time. The best place to come up with new ideas is through the WordPress forum. There are thousands of new plugin ideas every time and you can miss one. Through the forum, many developers who ran out of ideas are now refreshed from new ideas from the WordPress community.

3. Use the WordPress Plugin Directory

The WordPress Plugin Directory is a haven for many new apps. Hosting your apps at WordPress Directory has several benefits including:

• • Free hosting bandwidth
  • You can manage your plugin versions though SVN repository
  • Free download statistics
  • Free plugin promos

Setting up a WordPress directory doesn’t take more than an hour. The Developer Center gives you detailed instructions while doing WordPress Plugin development.

4. Invest in proper readme.txt file

Any plugin distribution should have a readme.txt file. Investing in one is a time well spent and the results will be worth it in the long run. One benefit of readme.txt is that the plugin will have more downloads since users want to download plugins with installation instructions, good descriptions, and screenshots. Another advantage that is not so obvious is that once a WordPress plugin becomes popular, it will get lots of support questions that a developer may not handle. A good readme.txt will help you with that. The standard readme.txt provided by WordPress gives you a good base to build your own on.

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5. Promote Your Plugin

Whenever you are done developing a WordPress plugin you expect maximum exposure and download. You can follow the following steps to achieve this.

• • Go to the WordPress Plugins and Hacks forums
  • Create a new topic
  • Have a simple, informative template describing your plugin release: Plugin Name: Insights
  • Visit the Weblog Tools Collection forum and also create a topic there using the same template. After the team reviews the topic, the plugin will be added to their regular plugin news post that appears on the dashboard of every WordPress user.
  • Add it to wp-plugins.net
  • Announce it on your blog

6. Enhance plugin security by using the nonce

Nonce is a number used once as an effective way of secure your plugin against a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) hacking attack. Fortunately, its implementation takes a few minutes. For starters, you can check out WordPress documentation, for examples of implementation.

7. Mind your database queries

Ensure you utilize functions provided by WordPress to create database queries and insert/update information.

These functions are $wpdb->prepare (), $wpdb->insert () and $wpdb->update (). You will be guaranteed that your queries are properly escaped.

8. Don’t forget the optimization

To avoid your WordPress plugins being a resource hog, you need to localize the usage of resources by loading them only when needed. This is done through code. Therefore, you need to have some coding skills or you may ask another developer to help you with it. On this, you also need to pay attention to load JavaScript files only when needed.

9. Properly load JavaScript with WP_enqueue_script

For external JavaScript files, you can invoke these using wp_enqueue_script () function. For passing variables to your JavaScript from your plugin, use wp_localize_script () function. Besides making it easier to handle and change, it also ensures future maximum compatibility for your plugin.

10. How to handle freelance work

To start getting Freelance work, create a couple of free plugins and publish them in the WordPress directory for self-promotion. Before you know it, you will be approached with parties interested in custom development. If such happens, don’t be shy to ask for an upfront payment. This shows a level of professionalism and that you mean business. If there are no disagreements, it also shows that they mean business. Honesty and consistency are the main ingredients of the professional WordPress plugin developer.

Conclusion 

There you are a huge market of WordPress plugins and as a WordPress developer; you shouldn’t sleep hungry with so much potential. Follow these simple tips and you will surely benefit from your WordPress plugin development services. This is one career that is not fully explored simply because developers are afraid to enter into the murky water of plugin development. If you have confidence in yourself, take the competition head-on and you will have nothing to lose and much to gain.

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