WordPress Plugin Recommendations

Plugins are the beauty and bane of WordPress.
See my top picks, ones to stay away from, and plugin tutorials.

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Top Plugins | Tutorials | Recommended | Don’t Use

Top Plugins

The following plugins are on every site I create for myself and my clients.

  • Yoast SEO
    site SEO, XML Sitemap, and more
  • Formidable Forms – free version, easy to create, no database capture option, and works with Cloudflare Turnstile. tutorial
  • WPCode Lite – great for adding GA4 tags and anything you need in the header of every site

Plugin Tutorials and Posts

See the Plugins section on the Helpful Posts page for more plugin posts and tutorials.

Most Recommended Plugins

Here you will find the plugins I use and recommend most to my clients. Some have reviews and/or video tutorials too. Most are free, some are premium, and some are my affiliate links, which is one way I support bringing all the great info on BlogAid to you free. I appreciate you using them.

Do you know of a plugin I need to check out? Contact me directly and tell me why.

Note to plugin developers – I’ll be happy to give your plugin an honest evaluation, and will only include it on this wall if it is top notch and a good fit for my readers, who trust me to tell them the truth.

Affiliate Links: This page contains affiliate links for some plugins. I earn a small commission when you purchase through them. Your use of my affiliate links helps offset the cost of the deep research I do to bring you reviews and testimonials for free Thank you for supporting BlogAid. I only endorse products I and my clients use with success!

Analytics

WPCode Lite – (formerly Insert Headers and Footers) – put your GA code in the header and don’t use any of the dedicated analytics plugins.

Backup

UpdraftPlus – more info

Caching

WP Fastest Cache – both free and premium – see settings
WP Rocket – premium plugin

Comments

Simple Cloudflare Turnstile – filters spam on comments, contact form, and login without false positives
Antispam Bee – filters spam without false positives – see settings
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded – comment reply notification – see settings

Forms

Formidable Forms – can create most any form you need, fully customizable, fast, and GDPR compliant – see my tour and tutorial
Gravity Forms – Fully customize unlimited forms, integrates with other services, advanced features

Extra Functions

Email Address Encoder – hides your published email address from spam bots
WP Sweep – safely cleans meta comments and post revisions from the database
WP All Export – export site data into spreadsheet – see tutorial
WP-Maintenance – easily create a splash page while your site is unavailable

Content Revamp

Enable Media Replace – swap one image for another without updating posts/pages where it is used see tutorial

Change Last Modified Date – update a post without changing the Last Modified date – see tutorial

Images

Regenerate Thumbnails – useful when you change themes

NOTE: I don’t recommend ANY image optimization plugins – do this instead

Links

Redirection – takes visitors from one URL to another
Pretty Links – script cloaking and redirects

Member Site

MemberPress – comprehensive membership plugin, integrates with other services

Podcast

Blubrry PowerPress – creates proper iTunes support, multiple players, integrates with multiple storage services

SEO

Yoast SEO – complete site SEO, XML Sitemap, Open-Graph, and more

SEO Data Transporter – makes it easy to switch to Yoast SEO from most any source

Security

Login LockDown – prevents brute force attacks

NOTE: I don’t use behemoth security plugins – get a site audit and get your security properly squared away

Recipe Plugin

WP Recipe Maker – see the review

Video

Yoast Video SEO – premium plugin

S3 Media Maestro – hides full path of videos stored on AS3, fully responsive and customizable premium player