Best Free WordPress Plugins [The Ones We Trust] - Monday Masterclass

When it comes to installing WordPress plugins, minimalism wins! There are 55,175 plugins in the WordPress repo, and numerous others available online. To help you sort through the mess and choose only the plugins you need, we rounded up the top 12 WordPress plugins that we consider 'must haves' for most website installations.

Which plugins did we include?

[Portmacquarieonlinemarketing]

You were right about the developer of "Intuitive Custom Post Order", it was Hijiri, who makes a lot of simple but essential plugins. Some alternatives we use are Shield Security rather than Wordfence (try uninstalling Wordfence if you have a day to spare), Shortpixel instead of Smush, and as @TechniSmart mentioned, WP Fastest Cache rather than WP Rocket.

[ScottThomason]

I think it's worth mentioning that in its free version, Smush doesn't do a very good job at reducing image weight. You need the Pro version to really see significant benefits.

Great post, as usual but How about webp images? Either tiny or smush can't compress without adding pro features and free options are "hard" for non-pro users. Any hidden plugin I have missed?

[eliopineda]

Good morning, i need to create a filter of 3 sections: Province, city and community. When I select the Province that enables me only the cities of that Province, when I select the City that enables me the communities of that city, and as long as this happens, I will filter the companies or services that are in those areas. How can I do it?

[itsmyownstyle]

How to use mp3 jplayer plugin for using multiple track in ELEMENTOR tutorial help me to learn.

[rrtkddigimon]

Hello.
I was wondering, is there a way to share my social media posts in my wordpress website if I use Elementor?
For example: if I want people accessing my website to see my latest tweet or facebook post, would I be able to do so with Elementor?
I found many videos teaching how to share my wordpress posts on social media, but not videos on how to share my social media posts in my wordpress website.


I later found out that it is apparently possible to do so with "regular" wordpress, (My Site > Tools > Marketing > Connections) but I found no way of doing so with Elementor. Hence why I am asking.

[carlwagnerphotography]

I know this is trite, but where did you get the "woo" sticker?

[karimsahraoui]

Thanks very helpful regarding yoast the only thing that is missing in integration with Elementor hope they Will take in consideration this feature in their plugin like math plugin did

[appleguy]

Great video! Smush plugin interfered with my SeedProd plugin. It made my .png file disappear.

[SevenMarketing]

NitroPack can replace the image compression and cashing plugins while adding more tools for optimizing your website ....

[GovardhanVarikuppala]

the first plugin not tested with present wordpress version . Is it safe to use "activitylog" plugin for present WordPress version

[maxziebell]

Scratch Yoast because it's to expensive for the pro features and use SEOPress instead!

[Rensoconese]

What Is your opinion about wpdev plugins. You mention smush do you test the others súper héroes

[NeilSnapePhotography]

Great collection. If there is one free caching from all my testing Breeze is very fast and very lightweight, as well as easy to use.

[SouthernEmperor]

WP Rocket is not a free plug. Unless I missed something...LOL..It's starts at $49 for 1 Website. $249 for unlimited.

[JanneWolterbeek]

Good video. But no Rank Math? Much better than Yoast, in my experience.

[MarioJuste]

Rank Math is much better I think and makes more than Yoast but free

[up]

Smush plugin got down my page on PageSpeed Insights
from 52 to 46.
It is 100% better to compress the images by Photoshop (Save for web) + Tiny PNG

[jhnpldng]

I won't use any plugin that tries to reel me in with cartoon graphics. SEO Framework and Rank Math do the same thing as Yoast without cluttering up my admin with silliness. Likewise with Smush or anything from wpmudev. I could care less for the infantile graphics. EWWW image optimizer and autoptimize do everything I need.

I use WP Fastest Cache but will be moving the site to a litespeed server soon and will just use their cache plugin which is also very good.

I'm running 30 plugins, many to accompany woocommerce, so the site is a little heavy but once I get a CDN, I'll be golden. On gtmetrix, I'm already scoring high 90s on Pagespeed and mid 90s on YSlow. Getting mid 90s on YSlow without a CDN is pretty damn good. (Elementor's video on their Hello theme shows it getting high 70s and he says that's great)

Expired Headers - easy fix by adding several lines of code to your .htaccess but some cache plugins will do it for you.

Use the right size images or ones that won't have to be scaled too much. Optimize them, even if using an image optimization plugin. Less work for the plugin is less CPU usage. Design around the Standard WordPress image sizes when you can. Minify and combine everything you can without breaking your layout or javaScript functionality.

Use a lightweight theme and not some bloated"premium" theme you found in the forest. I'm running GeneratePress with their GP Premium plugin but seriously taking a look at Elementor's Hello theme since I've already replaced GP's header to build a mega menu. If you end up using Hello theme, there's a plugin that will create two sidebars and four footer widget areas. Hello lacks those.

Elementor's "Solving Responsive Web Design Challenges With Elementor" video will also help you lighten your elementor created pages.

I still have an old copy of WP Spamshield and it's working fine. I don't like subscription either, like Askimet.

Wellhell, lemme pull out my free plugin list.
Boxers & Swipers(4 lightboxes in one)
ARI Fancy Lightbox is another good one
User Menus(hide menus depending on role/condition)
Members(create and edit roles/permissions and more and anything by Justin Tadlock is good)
OMGF(using 1-2 google fonts? Serve them yourself and make YSlow happy)
Post SMTP(smtp email)
Asgaros Forum
BasePress KB
Login/Signup Popup(no one ever has to see wp-login again)
Contact Form 7 of course but I'll look into using Elementor for that