One of the advantage using wordpress self hosted compared to other blogging platforms, is allow us to easy customizing our sites. There are so many plugins provided in wordpress plugin directory which can be used to modify and add function in our site as needed.

If you want your wordpress blog work very well, secure, interesting, interactive and loved by search engine, you can use some best wordpress plugin to make it real. So, here i make a list of the best and the most popular wordpress plugin you can install both free or premium.

Multi Function

1. Jetpack by WordPress.com

Jetpack is all-in-one wordpress plugin developeb by Automatic. This plugin allow you to add some function into your wordpress blog such as statistic, contact form, gallery, auto post to social media, etc. You can active or deactive the functions as needed.

Statistic

2. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

This plugin allow you to see your google analytics data and reports directly in your wordpress dashboard. There are many data that can be shown.

Search Engine Optimization

3. WordPress SEO by Yoast

A most popular free SEO wordpress plugin. WP Seo by yoast help you to optimize your sites SEO by adding some setting of basic and essential SEO factors such us Meta Tag, Title Tag, Redirection, Sitemap, Htaccess, etc.

4. Broken Link Checker

BLC help you to detect the broken links in every page of your sites. You can unlink, re-check or redirect the detected links based on the error message shown.

5. Premium SEO Pack

An advanced SEO plugin that not only allow you to optimize Onpage SEO, but also Offpage SEO. The most complete and complex SEO plugin to optimize a great website.

Website Perfomance

6. Wp Optimize

Wp optimize help you to optimize your sites database and clean it from unimportant saved data. You can automate the optimization by schedule it, or optimize manually just by click “Process” button.

7. P3 Plugin Perfomance Profiler

P3 help you to identify plugins that causing slowness or bad performance of your sites. You can see the plugins performance and make decisions on what to do with those.

8. Redirection

A free plugin to help you manage 301, 302 or 307 redirection in your wordpress sites without require the knowledge about htacces. It can also monitor the 404 page in your sites.

Caching Plugin

9. W3 Total Cache

This is the most popular caching plugin. W3 total cache help you to manage caching and speed up your website. There are so many setting you can set.

10. WP Super Cache

Wp super cache is alternative of W3 Total Cache. Some people are more comfort using this plugin than W3 total cache. For the comparison of them, you can see here : https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/top-wordpress-caching-plugins/

Spam Filtering

11. Akismet

Akismet is the most popular wordpress plugin to handle spam in your sites, especially spam comments. It developed by automatic team and installed automatically in your wordpress installation. You just need to activate it by your account.

12. WP Spamshield – Anti-Spam

It is an all-in-one anti-spam plugin that help you to remove spam comments, trackbacks, and contact form spam. It also have no captchas, challenge questions or other inconvenience to site visitors.

Security

13. Wordfence Security

Wordfence is the most popular wordpress security plugin. It checks if your site is infected or not, and protect your site from hacks and malwares.

14. iThemes Security

iThemes Security help you to secure your wordpress site from attack, especially automated attack. It detect and fix common holes and vurnerabilities in your sites.

15. Sucuri

Sucuri is a security toolset for security integrity monitoring, malware detection and security hardening. It is good in monitoring your site health from malware.

16. Login Lockdown

Login Lockdown allow you to limit login attempts from an IP for a certain time period. Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. It help you to secure your site from hacks via login form.

Media

17. Regenerate All Thumbnail

This plugin is useful when you change your wordpress theme. It will regenerate all thumbnail size based on wordpress theme you use and delete unused thumbnails.

18. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWW Image Optimizer optimize every image you uploaded via Media File. It makes your images more fast-loading and light.

Backup

19. BackWPup

BackWPup allow you to backup whole website file and database manually or automatically by schedule. The backup file can be sent to email, dropbox, FTP, etc.

20. Vaultpress

Vaultpress is a backup plugin developed by automatic team that based on paid subscription. It help you to backup your wordpress site easily to its server. This is the best and the most secure backup plugin for wordpress site.

21. BackupWordress

BackupWordpress is similar to BackWPup that allow you to backup whole website file and database. The different is BackupWordpress only requires PHP version 5.3.2.

Ads Manager

22. Simple ads Manager

Adsanity help you to manage ads (adsense script, banner ads, etc.) in your website. You can place ads anywhere in your site by its shortcodes.

23. WP PRO Advertising System

This is an advanced plugin to manage all of advertising campaign in your wordpress site. There are more complete settings and features available.

Social Campaign & Marketing

24. SumoMe

SumoMe is all-in-one social plugin that can help you to add social share button, promotional popup, building email list, etc. You have to register first in sumome.com before you use it in your wordpress dashboard.

25. MyMail Email Newsletter Plugin

MyMail is premium list building plugin that has a lot of features. You can send auto responder, follow up, and greetings to your subscriber and track their reactions.

26. WordPress Social Stream

Wordpress Social stream allow you to automatically post your social media update to your blog. There are more 15 social media available, with 60 feed content options to fetch and publish it on your blog.

27. Easy Social Share Button For WordPress

This plugin provide you many design options of social share button that can be placed in 12 location in your sites. You can place it only by drag and drop. There are 20 social media button available.

Page Builder

28. Page Builder By SiteOrigin

It is a free page builder to design page easily in your wordpress sites. There are some template elements you can use to make an instant page.

29. Visual Composer

Visual Composer is more complex and advanced page builder that not only allow you to create simple page, but also some crucial pages like landing page, product promotion page, etc. All you need to do is just drag and drop the element.

Slider and Gallery

30. Nextgen Gallery

Nextgen is the most popular wordpress gallery plugin with over 13 million downloads. It provides two front-end display styles (slideshows and thumbnail galleries), and a powerful engine for uploading and managing galleries of images.

31. Photo Gallery

It is a plugin that allow you to create unlimited responsive gallery album. There are many options, features and designs available.

32. MetaSlider

It is an easy to use, fast and responsive wordpress slider plugin with 4 options of jquery slider. They are Nivo slider, Flex Slider, Coin Slider and Responsive slides.

33. Slider Revolution

Slider Revolution is the #1 selling slider plugin in themeforest. It has so many features, design options and styles. It also has visual editor that help you to edit your slider easily.

Other

34. Easy Updates Manager

Easy updates manager help you to manage every update (WP update, themes, plugins, etc) in your wordpress sites. You can automate and schedule the update

35. Display Widget

Display widget allow you to manage where widget will be displayed. You can make a widget that only displayed in homepage, single post, or archive page.

That’s all the plugins i recommended to you. You can choose from the 36 plugins above to install in your wordpress site. I don’t suggest you to install them all because it will hurt your site. Pick some according to your needs.

Do you have any opinion about the list ? A suggestion about other plugins maybe ? Don’t hesitate to write that in the comment below.