Plugins and You: Finding that Perfect Plugin

Finding the right plugins, and navigating through the large library can be hard. Come and hear about some personal tips and tricks I’ve found to make the selection easier. I’ll recommend some plugins based on what you need – and discuss the advantages of a paid plugin rather than just free.

Transcript

1. Plugins and You Finding that perfect plugin Miriam Goldman @mirigoldman
2. Lead Developer for Pondstone Digital Marketing 15 years of web development experience – 10 years with WordPress Co-organizer of WordCamp Ottawa and the Ottawa WordPress Meetup Speaker at various WordCamps Hi, I’m Miriam
3. Plugin Basics
4. Fantastic plugins… •Functionality, not design •Not theme-dependant
5. …and where to find them •WordPress Plugin Repo •Google (for more premium plugins) •Other repositories, such as CodeCanyon
6. What to look out for • Plugin updates • Active installs • Plugin ratings • Reviews • Support
7. Free vs. Paid ◦ Free is good for basic functionality, “what’s in the box” ◦Can have limited support from the developer ◦Freemium: Has a free version, but additional features require you to pay ◦ Paid: Fully paid, often quite robust, good support from developer
8. Recommendations
9. Contact Forms • Gravity Forms • Contact Form 7 • Ninja Forms • Caldera Forms
10. Multi-language • WPML - paid • Polylang • q translate-xt • Weglot *
11. Security / Backup & Migration Security • Wordfence • iThemes Security Backups / Migration • Backup Buddy • WPVivid Backup • Duplicator • All in One WP Migration
12. Caching / Custom Fields Caching • WP Rocket • W3C Total Cache Custom Fields • Toolset • ACF (Advanced Custom Fields)
13. Various Others • Woocommerce (ecommerce) • TinyPNG (image optimization) • AddThis (social sharing) • WPS Hide Login (login obfuscation) • Yoast (SEO) • Google Analytics • Classic Editor (for sites not Gutenberg ready) • BuddyPress / bbPress (forums)
14. Thanks! Questions?