Best WordPress Plugins 2019

The following best WordPress plugins 2019 have been tested by not only content creators, but highly-experienced developers — and me.

Unlike most of the ‘Best WordPress Plugins 2019’ articles out there, companies didn’t pay to have their’s listed here. These plugins are part of my standard toolkit when building any WordPress site. All have been throughly tested my numerous content creators, back and frontend developers to ensure reliability, stability, security, functionality and ability to customize using best practices.

Don’t get ‘Install’, ‘Activate’ click-happy.

It’s a cinch to install WordPress plugins with just a click. This can be dangerous. Many don’t review code, performance, reviews, etc. and get a little click-happy with the install button. Don’t get click-happy!

1. Will this WordPress plugin easily integrate with my theme?
2. Does the WordPress plugin have a lot of positive reviews?
3. How many active installs does the plugin currently have?
4. Is the plugin’s issue queue active & responsive?
5. And the most important… do I really need it?

Finding, reviewing, installing, then setting up plugins can be time-consuming and tedious. Speed up the process with this list of the most useful WordPress plugins that every site should have.

Best WordPress Plugins 2019

Here’s an ever-updating list for the best WordPress plugins in 2019, grouped by category.

WordPress SEO by Yoast — for SEO

Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.

This is a great plugin for site owners that aren’t well-versed in SEO—and ones that are! With this hugely popular plugin, you’ll be able to set the meta title, description (what shows up in search results) and more per post/page. You can also set default dynamic options to help speed up the process. Even better, it’ll help you write quality, SEO-friendly posts and provide you with suggestions on how to improve the page.

Akismet — for fighting spam

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

This spam fighting plugin comes pre-installed with WordPress. All you need to do is activate it and enter an API key (free to get). This is a good one because it helps combat spam comments and uses their web service to check against common WordPress scammers. It’s not a complete solution, but should definitely be used to help keep spam out.

Jetpack by WordPress.com — for enhanced functionality

Supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.

This plugin is a must-have! Built and supported by WordPress.com, you know it’ll work great. Once installed, it adds a host of features to your site including:

• Advanced social sharing & comment system
• Notifies you when your site goes down
• Speeds up your site by hosting images on their CDN
• Adds advanced theme features like infinite scroll
• Traffic stats with no additional load on your server
• Email subscriptions for your blog’s posts and comments
• Likes, allowing your readers to show their appreciation of your posts
• Easily embedded media from popular sites like YouTube, Digg, and Vimeo
• and much, much more!

AdRotate — for monetization

The very best way of putting ads on your website. As many as you want… Make making money easy!

Trying to manage advertisements on a WordPress website can be difficult without a management system. AdRotate will help you monetize and manage your website advertisements with an easy-to-use ad management system. Create an unlimited number of ads and groups, track performance, set expiration dates and more with this useful plugin.

Broken Link Checker — for SEO

This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found.

This is another must-have plugin for WordPress websites. If you’re concerned about SEO and/or usability (which you should be), this plugin will help. Broken links can hurt your site. Tracking them down can be a problem, especially if you’re not aware their broken. The Broken Link Checker will continuously crawl your site and notify you of any broken links.

Redirection — for SEO

Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors without requiring knowledge of Apache .htaccess files.

Did you know updating your post title/URL could make you lose your link juice? This can have a negative impact to your SEO. Many times, WordPress will update the permalink or URL to reflect title changes. If that happens, anybody that’s linking to that page will then have broken links. User’s will no longer be able to find their favorite post and all that work you put in will be lost. This plugin will help retain that link juice by adding redirects to updated URLs.

Other Useful WordPress Plugins

There’s a ton of plugins out there to choose from. Depending on the type of site you run, here’s a few more great WordPress plugins I’d suggest you install:

WooCommerce – excelling eCommerce — for selling online

WooCommerce is a powerful, extendable eCommerce plugin that helps you sell anything. Beautifully.

bbPress — for forums

bbPress is forum software, made the WordPress way

BuddyPress — for communities

Social networking in a box. Build a social network for your company, school, sports team, or niche community.

What WordPress plugins do you use?

Is there a plugin that you always use on your WordPress sites? I’d love to hear from you. I keep this list updated so if there’s a great plugin out there you think all WordPress sites should be using, comment below to share your opinions.