I develop with WordPress every day, it’s still my preferred platform for building content managed websites and the community is a massive part of why that has been the case…ever since I started developing. Plugins have saved me endless hours over the years and enabled me to create functionality that I simply wouldn’t have been able to write from scratch when I first started out.

However, over the years (with a few bad experiences, a build-up of legacy sites to maintain and a growing need to make my websites fast and efficient) I have become a lot less reliant on plugins. The constant worry of bad updates and abandoned plugins is a headache is something I like to avoid nowadays!

That said I do have a small list of trusted plugins which have proved stable and very reliable and are used on most sites that I create.

Admin Menu Editor (Free)
It’s essential that my customer’s admin dashboards are clean and simple, with only essential options on there.

Advanced Custom Fields PRO (Freemium)
This makes custom fields a breeze along with extending the core functionality with loads of field types and complex logic if required.

All In One SEO Pack (Free)
My ‘go-to’ SEO plugin. Simplist and powerful without the ads and bloated UI like some of it’s competitors.

Capability Manager Enhanced (Free)
I use in conjunction with Admin Menu Editor to ensure my user accounts are locked down with the correct capabilities, without the need for functions. It also supports. all other plugins capabilities out of the box.

Custom Post Type UI (Free)
A user-friendly UI for adding and editing custom post types. A simple plugin but does exactly what it says on the tin!

Duplicate Post (Free)
A subtle plugin which my clients find useful, but I also find it handy when populating staging sites with dummy content.

Gravity Forms (Premium)
My form plugin of choice…and I have used it for a wide spectrum of forms. From simple contact forms through to complex order forms. There’s also a great range of official and community add-ons.

iThemes Security (Freemium)
Again I choose this plugin over a few big competitors. I’ve never had a site compromised with this installed, so that’s good enough for me!

WooCommerce (Freemium)
A no-brainer. By far the best WordPress e-commerce solution and now stands up against the big dedicated e-commerce platforms.

WP Mail SMTP (Free)
It’s essential that my customers receive all of their transactional emails quickly and reliably. I always use external SMTP and this plugin supports all the big SMTP providers along with the option of using a custom server.

Do you have a trusted list of WordPress plugins? Have I missed a plugin which you think I need to know about? Drop me a comment below!

The post My essential WordPress plugins first appeared on Ashley Hollinworth / Front-end Web Developer & Designer / Wakefield, West Yorkshire.