WordPress is one of the best free content management systems / blog system that powers millions of websites and an incredibly high percentage of Alexa’s Top 1000 sites use it. In this article, we’re taking a look at the best free plugins for WordPress of all time
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1) Akismet
Akismet was one of the first free WordPress plugins and is one of the best anti-spam plugins out there. It’s one of the default-plugins and deserves the top-spot on this list. Make sure you have the latest version.
2) Advanced Custom Fields
Your website requires more flexibility? Custom fields are a great way to add additional site features. One of the best plugins to deal with custom fields is “Advanced Custom Fields” – many consider it a must-have WordPress plugin for their blog
Download Advanced Custom Fields
3) All in One SEO Pack
All in one SEO pack is one of the oldest SEO plugins out there and in my opinion still one of the best. Some of the features include Google Analytics integration, canonical URL’s, custom Meta tags descriptions, optimized Title tags and a built-in API.
4) BackWP Up
You never know when your database crashes. Let this plugin backup your WordPress database, optimize the database, schedule file backups, repair the databases, store backups on your FTP server, S3 CDN, Microsoft Azure or even Dropbox.
5) Breadcrumb NavXT
Breadcrumb NavXT is the ultimate breadcrum plugin – if you need customizable breadcrumbs to make site navigation easier, this is your must-have plugin.
6 ) Captcha WordPress Plugin
Captcha’s can help you to protect your site forms from evil spambots – it’s definitely one of those must-have plugins
7) Contact Form 7
Having a contact form or contact page is a ranking signal – well, not officially of course, but a site without a contact page is not a good idea. This free WordPress plugin makes it extremely easy to integrate a contact form into your blog.
8) Digg Digg WordPress Plugin
Digg Digg is the most poplar social media plugin that integrates seamlessly with the different social media networks and makes WordPress content sharing on social media very easy and hassle-free.
Download Digg Digg WordPress Plugin
9) Disqus WordPress Plugin
Disqus is a comment system that allows users to comment on posts easily. Comments can be displayed as threaded comments and notifications – it is by far the best comment plugin
for WordPress.
10) Facebook WordPress Plugin
A site with Facebook integration can improve social ranking signals – readers are more likely to share your content or post a comment if they can do it via their Facebook account.
Download Facebook WordPress Plugin
11) Fast Secure Contact Form
The “Fast Secure Contact Form” is the 2nd most popular free contact form plugin and is incredibly easy to customize. If you don’t like the Contact Form 7, try this alternative
Download Fast Secure Contact Form
12) Google Analytics for WordPress
Running any website successfully requires that you monitor the traffic on a regular basis to better monetize the traffic and increase the conversion of sales on the website. Google Analytics makes this really eay and this free plugin gets you started in seconds.
Google Analytics for WordPressDownload
13) Google XML Sitemaps
A blog without a sitemap is not a good idea – to keep your sitemaps up-to-date you need a plugin like Google XML Sitemaps.
This is usually the first pick by many blogs out there, it’s reliable and can auto-submit your sitemap to the most important search engines.
14) Image Widget
Want to add images to your WordPress sidebar? This plugin makes it extremely easy to do using a widget.
15) Newsletter WordPress Plugin
Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your readers. If you can’t afford a solution like Aweber yet, give this free plugin a try.
16) Next Gen Gallery
With over 6 million downloads – this is the ultimate free image gallery plugin for WordPress
17) Poll Daddy Polls & Ratings
One of my favorite services for polls on websites is PollDaddy – it’s free and easy to use. With this plugin you can integrate them without having to edit template files
manually.
Download Poll Daddy Polls & Ratings
18) Search Everything
Search Everything is a WordPress plugin that allows you to search your entire WordPress website: Search highlights, pages, tags, categories, comments, taxonomies, excerpts, drafts, custom fields, attachments or any other content.
19) SEO Ultimate
Another free SEO plugin to help you with your SEO-optimization efforts.
20) Share This
ShareThis is a great social bookmarking service and with this plugin you have access to 120 social channels including Facebook and Twitter. If you don’t like the AddThis approach, this is your best free alternative
Download Share this
21) Shareaholic Share Buttons
Shareaholic share buttons is a WordPress plugin that is extremely useful to get your readers to actually discover and submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites.
Download Shareaholic Share Buttons
22) Sidebar Login
Want to log into your WordPress site right from your sidebar? This free plugin makes it possible.
23) Subscribe 2
The Subscribe2 WordPress plugin can send out email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish new content. Make sure to set up the correct TXT DNS records – also a valid Reverse-DNS records is required for your server to send out mails that people can actually receive. Tip: Hire a technician if you can’t get it done yourself.
24) Table Press
TablePress makes it easier to create tables if you don’t know a great deal about HTML. Extremely handy for new webmasters!
25) Ultimate Tiny MCE
Ultimate TinyMCE adds more buttons to your blog editor. Very useful for site editors.
26) User Role Editor
WordPress comes with some built-in user roles – if you want to have more control over these, this free plugin is a must-have
27) Widget Logic
Widget logic is an awesome plugin to control when and where widgets appear on your site. Must-have!
28) Woo Commerce
You’re building up an eCommerce site? Woo Commerce is the most powerful free eCommerce plugin for your WordPress site to date.
29) WordFence
Securing WordPress websites is not easy. This plugin helps a little to prevent hackers from accessing your backend and performing brute-force attacks. One of the must-have plugins for sure.
30) WordPress Importer
Dealing with a lot of content? This plugin makes importing content hassle-free.
31) WordPress Popular Posts
To engage your audience it’s a good idea to show your most popular posts in the sidebar or footer. Use this plugin to track stats and display the most popular articles
Download WordPress Popular Posts
32) WordPress Related Posts
Readers are used to find related posts directly below your article – this free plugin helps you to do just that
Download WordPress Related Posts
33) WordPress SEO by Yoast
There are a bunch of SEO plugins out there, but this is definitely one of the best alternatives to the All-in-one-SEO package – many consider it to be the ultimate SEO plugin for WordPress
Download WordPress SEO by Yoast
34) WP Stats Dashboard
This plugin can track 50+ social metrics that you can use to improve the social and search performance of your website quite easily. If you are serious about your website, don’t miss this one!
35) WP to Twitter
Don’t want to log into your Twitter account to post new articles to your followers? Let this plugin do the chores!
