It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride for WordPress over the past month or two, with stories of the botnet attack and compromises to two popular caching plugins emerging. But as far as I am concerned, the WordPress core is secure. It is up to you as the end user to ensure that you maintain your site so that it is safe against automated attacks.
One particular weak spot for any WordPress installation is out of date plugins. And that’s one of the reasons why our Plugins of the Month series is so great — we only feature the most up-to-date plugins. You will not find a plugin below that was updated prior to April 2013 — they’re all current, have been downloaded thousands (or tens of thousands) of times and come highly rated. Enjoy!
10. WP Content Copy Protection
I am personally not a fan of attempting to prevent people from copying content on your site. Quite frankly, life is too short and you’ll tend to irritate genuine visitors whose user experience is somewhat marred by copyright protection measures.
Having said that, if you do want to protect your content then WP Content Copy Protection is a good option. Some of the most common copying methods (such as right click, image dragging and keyboard shortcuts) are blocked. However, the plugin’s author does stress that the plugin is more of a deterrent rather than a preventative measure.
9. BJ Lazy Load
I love lazy loading. In short, certain elements are only loaded onsite when they become visible within the browser’s viewport, which means that your web page’s initial loading time is slashed.
BJ Lazy Load is a great option, not only because it does the usual lazy load job with images on your WordPress site (using JavaScript), but also because it includes a custom function that allows you to lazy load any image and iframe on your site.
8. AddThis Welcome Bar
You may have come across the likes of Hello Bar before and AddThis Welcome Bar does a similar job. However, its job is to present a custom message to site visitors based upon their origination. For instance, if a visitor comes from Facebook they will see the following:
These targeted messages should serve to increase the likelihood of people sharing your content on their social media network of choice.
7. Developer
Now I’m no developer but this looks like a great tool for those who do know how to wrangle code. And with Automattic’s involvement, you know it’s going to be a quality plugin.
In short, Developer helps you to optimize your development environment by ensuring that you have all the relevant tools and plugins installed.
As you can see from the screenshot above, the plugin provides you a list of recommended development plugins that you can activate from within its settings screen.
6. Google CSE
Although I am a huge fan of the Relevanssi plugin, Google is of course the daddy. And that is why I sat up and took note when this plugin arrived on my radar.
While many plugins have been created in the past to allow you to incorporate Google search within your WordPress site, they’ve always had their shortcomings and failings. However, Google CSE manages to serve up Google search results from within your WordPress search page template without the need for any customization:
The setup is simple: just follow the instructions to grab a Google API Key and a Custom Search Engine ID and you’re good to go!
5. Sendola
This is a cool concept and certainly one that may interest businesses using WordPress. Sendola enables you to add a button to your site that visitors can click on to have your contact details sent to their phone:
By contact details I mean rather a lot, including (but not limited to):
- Phone number
- Google Map
- Opening times
- Payment details
- Images
- Directions
- Google Streetview
4. Barc Chat
Ah, chat rooms. I wasted many an hour in them on my parents’ pay-per-minute dialup connection in the late 90s. And although they may seem rather a quaint notion these days, there is definitely still a place for them in the right context.
That’s where Barc Chat comes in — it enables you to create a chat function on your site with ease. Just check out the following video:
3. Stealth Login Page
Given that security has been such a hot topic these past few weeks, it only seemed right that I included a security plugin on this month’s list.
In short, Stealth Login Page protects your /wp-admin/ and wp-login.php pages from being accessed without you having to make any potentially confusing manual adjustments to your site’s .htaccess page. Any person (or bot) that attempts to access will be redirected to a page of your choosing, while you can still login via the custom URL.
This plugin does not offer you comprehensive protection against malicious attacks but it is another layer of security to consider.
2. Advanced Settings
I’ve always been puzzled by what I perceive to be missing settings in the WordPress core. Fortunately, the Advanced Settings plugin does a great job of filling in many of the gaps, including (but not limited to):
- Remove comments system
- Insert author bio on each post
- Add description and keywords meta tags in posts (SEO)
- Get the blog description and add a description meta tag
- Hide top WP admin bar
- Remove HTML comments
- Easy FeedBurner configuration
- Insert google analytics code
- Display page loading time
- Add thumbnail support
- Set JPEG quality
- Fix post type pagination
The plugin’s author is working on even more settings in the future, so stay tuned!
1. SEO Plugin by Squirrly
I don’t tend to get excited by SEO optimization plugins much as I think that WordPress SEO by Yoast has the market pretty well cornered, but having said that I do like the look of SEO Plugin by Squirrly.
Unlike SEO by Yoast, its focus is entirely on onsite optimization, as demonstrated in this video:
It’s got a bunch of interesting features that Yoast’s plugin doesn’t include, so if you’re looking to squeeze the most out of each of your WordPress blog posts, this plugin could be well worth a look.
Savita Sathe
A fresh air in seo onpage optimization, SEO Plugin by Squirrly. I think it matters most these days. Thanks for sharing it.
Rayn
From long time people were stealing contents of my WordPress blog, that’s why i was looking for such kind of solution for long time. And my search end here. Thanks for writing this great article to make us aware of this great plugin wp copy content protect.
Tom Ewer
Pleasure Rayn 🙂
Alexandra Petean-Nicola
We are happy to hear that you like the look and features that Squirrly Seo plugin has to offer. Thank you for mentioning us and sharing that awesome video. -Squirrly Team
Alejandro maisonnat
Florin its the best, this plugin change the world to SEO WP.
Rajendra
Interesting to read this post, and I’d love to see more!.. Thanks for sharing
shgn
Thank you so much. Nice Post.
Yoga Mat
Thank you for this plugin list. I am looking for a plugin “you may also like this” for listing 2-3 articles that floats when visitors scroll up or down…
Mujahid
Hey Tom,
Thanks for this great list of wordpress plugins will try a few of them out.
Thanks
Tanmay
Thanks a lot.. I am using Yoast plugin for SEO but now I am thinking to go for Squirrly.. here is my blog: thetechgeek.in
Can I use both plugins side by side..?
Mujahid
Its not a good thing to use to SEO plugins side by side it does harm your sites SERP. I have tried and been hurt once.
Caro
Tom,
Just wanted to say thanks for putting this list together. I’ve been looking for the best plug in and found your site, bookmarked it and always come back to find the goodies- your rock!
Now I had the same questions about using two plug ins and whether they affect SEO, SERP, usability etc….?
I just realized I have a “recent posts tabber “and YARPP they do conflict with each other?
Keep up the good work 🙂
stuart
Thanks for the list. Sendola will be useful for my business.
Key West Video Inc.
Thanks for the list. Sendola interests me and my business.
Arun S
Sendola! Love the idea. Will definitely use on my website. Thanks for the list.
griffin63
Great plugin list
I use WordFence but find it uses a lot of CPU only for short bursts though
stangu.com
We have tried a number of SEO plugins however we have decided on yoast for our website about mustang gt’s http://www.stangu.com . We also use the same Social media plugin and love it so far.
Keep up the great work with updating us with new plugins as it is so hard to keep up with all the new plugins etc. that are out there.
Susie
Nice list! I’d add a Pinterest plugin, I’ve had some insane traffic from Pinterest lately… like 8,000 hits a day.
stangu.com
Susie…which plugin do you use for Pinterest? We want to start using it for our site http://www.stangu.com
Thanks
rewriting
Great news.thanks for sharing information about wp content plugin it was nice like other plugins are.thanks for share such a important post.
Allii Allee
Dear Tom Ewer,
Do you think that SEO Plugin by Squirrly is good then SEO by yoast and All in one SEO please reply.
Tom Ewer
Well they’re all good. Squirrly is a bit different to the other two. I’ve got a post coming out on Monday that may answer this question in more detail for you.
Allii Allee
Sure, I will be waiting for your next post about this plugin
Patrick
I like the look of Barc chat, being able to add a chat function by simply installing a WordPress plugin sounds great. I’m not aware of another plugin for that but maybe I’m wrong.
Tom Ewer
It’s not the only one out there but it’s a really nice plugin 🙂
Elliot
Great article! Big fan of Addthis welcome bar, has really increased my blog’s presence on social media. Unfortunately trying to be to engaging on my blog by enable all kinds of content has made me vulnerable to attacks such as XSS a few times. Do anyone have good recommendations against that?
Cheers!
Sophia Hill
Try the SmartFilter plugin, it’s been working great so far!
you can find it here, and its free
http://wordpress.org/plugins/smartfilter/
Raghav
Thanks, installed most of the plugins provided here. Really wanted this WP Content Copy Protection!
Thanks
Robin Jennings
Great collection here, I’ve only personaly used one out of your top 10. Sendola looks like it could have some great applications for small business
Samir
thanks for sharing WP Content Copy Protection is Awesome to keep Copier away from our website thanks
Adarsh
Thank you. Great article with clear information.
Paul Clark
Don’t forget Styles! It was just rewritten this month to add hundreds of options to default themes using the WordPress customizer: http://wordpress.org/plugins/styles/
Marcel
Great list of Plugins (again!). Thx!
Mosam Gor
I just try out Bark Chat Plugin.! Looks like Awesome Plugin. For Chat Thanks For sharing. 🙂
-Mosam
Iain
I just tried out Squirly.
It is pretty solid although by using Yoast you hit all the same elements as my post was already optimized when I used squirly.
It looks pretty cool though. I like the tracking and the research within the post.
Pretty nifty.
Iain
Just as a quick note, Squirly is only free for two weeks then goes to a 19$/mo for three blogs.
Tom Ewer
Good point Iain — thanks for noting that.
Florin Muresan
Thanks 🙂 I’m happy you like it. There is a free version, after the trial ends and it allows users to optimize 2 articles / month. We actually plan to extend that to 5 articles / month and make the Free Plan for bloggers who write at a more personal level.
Iain
Glad you pointed that out Florin. I didn’t see that.
Josh
Great article. Which plugin are you using as the floating sidebar for sharing? I like that it has comments as well. Is this available as a wordpress plugin?
Tom Ewer
It’s something Vladimir put together: https://managewp.com/fast-loading-social-media-sharing-buttons-managewp-style