For any WordPress developer, it’s always good to have a set of plugins at the ready before launching a website. Some I consider essential plugins, some are additives to make the site “work” better. Here’s a list of plugins that I simply copy over whenever I’m launching a new website.

YOAST:

By far and away the most used SEO plugin out there. If you want to fine tune your SEO preference and meta fields, Yoast does the job perfectly. Although it can be somewhat tiresome, it’s well worth the effort.

Link: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

WP mail SMTP:

This doesn’t apply to all WordPress websites but some web hosts do block php mail function, if that’s the case then this is your best bet, you can either set it up send all WordPress mail via SMTP or choose PEPIPOST to do the job for you. It’s a free service with a generous allowance that’s more than enough for most websites.

Link: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/

W3 Total Cache:

My absolute favourite! If you feel your website feels a tad bit slow, this can solve it in a heartbeat! Although it’s a caching plugin in general, it’s got quite a few knobs and dials to make it a rather good performance improving plugin across the board. Features include minification, HTTP compression, script combining and deferring plus a lot more.

I’ve written a rather long article on how to speed up a WordPress website that has a large section dedicated to W3 Total Cache, you can have a look by clicking here.

Link: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

CMS Tree page view:

Simple and effective when you’re working with more than a few pages and posts. Not only does it give you a functional tree view of WordPress posts and pages, it comes with drag and drop, page/post creation as well.

Link: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/cms-tree-page-view/

Intuitive Custom Post Order:

Sometimes existing ordering simply isn’t enough and changing the publish date to move a WordPress post around isn’t the most elegant of ideas. This plugin allows you to drag and drop to reorder and rearrange the order any post, page taxonomies, and custom post types.

Link: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/intuitive-custom-post-order/

Google Analycator:

If you’re serious about your website, chances are you’ve signed up for Google Analytics. Although it’s not hard to simply copy Analytics code over from Google and paste it into template, this plugin streamlines the whole process especially if you’re dealing with multiple websites.

Link: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/google-analyticator/