We’re really excited about 2015. Lion’s Share has been growing steadily and our clients have been nothing but happy and great to work with. Every year, we try to curate a list of WordPress plugins that we suggest people use on their sites. So here’s the 20 best WordPress Plugins for 2015.
WordPress is the most popular Content Management System(CMS) for making websites. Over 20% of the world’s websites are made using WordPress.
One very popular feature of WordPress is its plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its abilities well beyond the core installation. WordPress has an enormous database of plugins, each of which offers custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their sites to their specific needs. These customizations range from SEO (Search Engine Optimization), social media sharing, eCommerce stores, email list sign up boxes, and much more. That said, finding good plugins in a sea of
Here are the Best 20 WordPress plugins for 2015
Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.
Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most popular plugins of all time with over 9 million downloads. By far, the best image gallery plugin in the market. We highly suggest purchasing the pro version for additional functionality and designs.
First of all, this plugin makes sure you’re using the latest Google Analytics tracking code. This way you’ll benefit from all Google Analytics offers and use the fastest method of embedding it on your site.
Easy Web Performance Optimization (WPO) using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.
6. WP Smush.it
Reduce image file sizes and improve performance using the Smush.it API within WordPress. This is a great plugin for updating an existing site to make it run more quickly.
Allows you to minify your CSS and JS files for faster page loading for visitors. You have to be careful with this one though, make sure to test your site on all browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari and even Internet Explorer).
Disqus is truly revolutionizing the blog comment system, allowing you to instantly turn your blog into a social media community. Disqus allows you to create a much more interactive blog community that connects seamlessly with all of the top social media sites online. This is by far the best solution for adding comments to your blog and will help to keep spam out. There is also a few settings that can show related posts as well as some advertising to earn a little extra advertising revenue.
Attacks on blogs have become more and more prevalent these days. It’s critical that you keep your blog safe with something like ‘Better WP Security’. Which makes it super easy to secure your site in just a few seconds.
10. Duplicate Posts
Allows you to quickly and easily duplicate pages and posts. If you are building a site from scratch, this can really save you some time.
Facebook Like Box Widget is a social plugin that enables Facebook Page owners to attract and gain Likes from their own website. The Like Box enables you.
For those of you who would prefer a horizontal share bar that scrolls down the page, this is the one for you. Maximize your social media shares without slowing down your site. You can see this in action at www.wpbeginner.com.
13. HTML Sitemap
A simple plugin that allows you to create a page for your HTML Sitemap.
14. WP Super Cache
A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files. Careful with this though, you want to make sure you know what you are doing. We also recommend hosting with WP Engine and using their ultrafast caching and CDN system.
15. Redirection
If you are moving to a new theme or domain, you’ll want to install and use Redirection. It allows you to quickly setup 301 redirects for pages or posts that you are moving. It also keeps a log of how many times those pages are hit so you can see that it’s working.
16. Digg Digg
Your all in one share buttons plugin. Add a floating bar with share buttons to your blog. Just like Mashable!
17. bbPress
bbPress is the de facto WordPress forum plugin. It is an impressive forum solution that integrates seamlessly with WordPress. It may also be the only WordPress forum plugin with its own book!
18. Shareaholic
This is probably the best social media sharing system out there. It is a bit heavy in regards to load time but the options and design are the best we’ve found.
Testimonials Widget lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your WordPress site. You can insert Testimonials content via shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and having multiple display options such as random or specific ordering. Also, Review schema for improved search engine results is built-in.
20. WooCommerce – Excelling eCommerce
WooCommerce is a powerful, extendable eCommerce plugin that helps you sell anything. Beautifully.
We hope you enjoyed our list of 20 Best WordPress Plugins for 2015. Do you have a favorite WordPress plugin that you want us to know about? Leave a comment and we’ll add it to the list.
Hey Jesse, can you tell me on what basis you consider them the best plugins for 2015? There are many other plugins too. These plugins can be your personal favorite for 2015 or you should suggest them as the active ones with the support. But, I don’t think there is something to be called “Best WordPress Plugins”.
I do make lists, recently I build a list of 100 WordPress Influencers to Follow in 2015 at Torquemag.io that went viral. I have written that all these 100 folks are those whom I personally attached with over the past year. Last day, I build another list collecting the memories of WordPress folks at cloudways.com which is also working great. I did this several times. But, I ignored to mention them as ‘best’ or ‘top’. It can be my recommendations, my personal favorite, and my suggestions.
I respect your opinion. All these 20 plugins are well-known and favorite to many others in the WordPress community. But, there are many other great plugins like Flare for social share, All in one SEO for SEO, etc. These are my favorite ones.
how to use auto poster in http://www.onsidegoal.com ? :) Please reply…
Thank you Jesse for that cool list! However: why are we not on there? :)
We recently released a FREE plugin which allows to add social icons to a website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/
We think it’s the best one on the market and user feedback seems to confirm that: in less than 4 months we got over 60k downloads, >280 5-star-reviews and an overall rating of 4.9/5.0.
Please let me know what you think. Thank you Jesse!
Cheers, John
I like CTA Manager 2 – which is a great plugin for creating Call To Actions on your website: https://orbitcarrot.com/wordpress-plugins-purchase/cta-plugin-manager-wordpress-plugin/
Hey, These are all necessary plugin that you have listed. All those plugins are so good as well as useful. As you mention ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast ‘, this is one of the best plugin and this plugin is already installed in my website: https://www.alltechzoom.com/. There is a best comment system plugin called ‘Disqus’. I love this plugin so much!!
We’re actually removing Disqus from our blogs. THey have started injecting ads without permission and several other really shady issues.
For wp galleries you have to mention the Unite Gallery for WordPress. The best image / video gallery that I know.
https://codecanyon.net/item/unite-gallery-wordpress-plugin/10458750
It’s quite new and a few people know about it, but it’s great.
Interesting. We’ll take a look.
For WooCommerce we’re using PAYMILL for accepting payments: https://developers.paymill.com/en/reference/plugins-and-extensions/
Any other suggestions about this topic?
We’re big fans of Stripe. I haven’t tried Paymill. Why do you like it?
Cool! I like the style of angled screenshots!
Very saucy!
I do understand that you were limited by the number of 20, but I’d like to mention the plugins, creating tweetable quotes.
They’re getting more and more popular. Obviously because they bring nice results.
Click to tweet as a free one and TweetDis a premium – definitely a must have in 2015!
This website was… how do you say it? Relevant!!
Finally I’ve found something that helped me. Thanks!
Thanks for this very useful list. Unlike in the past when I install every plugin that catches my fancy, these days I am now more choosy. That’s because some plugins can slow down your site. So I recommend P3 Plugin Profiler as it tells which plugins can slow down your site. After using it, I removed a few plugins and installed alternatives that didn’t slow down my site. And of course, it helps to have a caching plugin.
I would like to share Avartan Slider and Blog Designer.
Avartan Slider: Avartan Slider is a multi-purpose slider for creating image galleries, content sliders and video slider with more flexible video settings and element options.
Blog Designer: Blog Designer offers a number of features and flexibility to get more attractive blog and archieve pages. You can change blog page design easily anytime with our favorite design collections, show/hide post meta, social share and much more.
Hey guys!
I’d like to recommend you the social media plugin I’m using for my website. It’s easy to use and it helped me to make my page more popular and more social.
Check it out here if you wish: https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-builder/