At Bourn Creative we have a stable of various paid and free WordPress plugins that we regularly use on our clients’ sites, depending on needed website functionality. Out of our collection of trusted WordPress plugins, there are five must have plugins that we use on pretty much every custom WordPress site we build — and this past week I shared these five plugins in a lighting talk I gave at the Sacramento WordPress Meetup.
WordPress Plugin #1: Akismet
Why We Recommend the Akismet WordPress Plugin:
- Created, managed, and owned by Automattic
- Save time with simple comment spam protection
- Low monthly fee (still free for personal bloggers)
- Download Akismet
WordPress Plugin #2: Limit Login Attempts
Why We Recommend the Limit Login Attempts WordPress Plugin:
- Simple and easy security for your WordPress login
- Automatically locks out an IP address after a specific number of failed login attempts
- Download Limit Login Attempts
WordPress Plugin #3: Google Analytics for WordPress
Why We Recommend the Google Analytics for WordPress Plugin:
- Easy integration with Google Analytics
- Includes download tracking and outbound tracking by default
- Advanced settings are available
- Download Google Analytics For WordPress
WordPress Plugin #4: Simple Page Ordering
Why We Recommend the Simple Page Ordering WordPress Plugin:
- Helps you manage your WordPress pages dashboard
- Drag and drop functionality makes it easy to keep your pages organized
- There is no effect on the front end of the site
- Download Simple Page Ordering
WordPress Plugin #5: WordPress SEO
Why We Recommend the WordPress SEO Plugin:
- The most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin available
- Easily manage your SEO titles and meta descriptions
- XML sitemap support to alert search engines of site changes, new pages, and new posts
- OpenGraph data support for Facebook
- Google authorship support (so your photo shows up next to your links in the search results)
- Even more awesome settings and advanced configurations available!
- Download WordPress SEO
And That’s It!
With about 20,000 different WordPress plugins available, these are the five plugins we install on nearly every custom WordPress site we build.
A Note About the Sacramento WordPress Meetup
Whether you’re a WordPress developer, web designer, or WordPress user, at the beginning, intermediate, or advanced level, the Sacramento WordPress meetup group is something you should check out! We love WordPress and we’d love to not only see the Sacramento WordPress community grow and thrive, but to meet more WordPress lovers and users in our area! The Sacramento WordPress meetup group meets the third Tuesday of every month at Hacker Lab — 1715 I Street, Sacramento.
