70+ Best WordPress Plugins for 2015

I’ve searched high and low for the best WordPress plugins for you to use on your site in 2015. A lot of these plugins are great for not just blogs, but fully fledged sites. For example, backing up your content, membership systems and SEO optimisation.

All the plugins below have been categorised. This should make it easier to find any specific plugins you might be looking for. Each plugin also has its official description below the title, so you don’t have to click-through to get more info.

If you’ve got some great WordPress plugins to share please leave me a comment below and I’ll include it in the list!

Table of Contents

• Writing and Publishing Tools
• SEO
• Site Tools
• Social Media
• Marketing
• eCommerce and Membership
• Security and Performance
• Other

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Writing and Publishing Tools

WordPress is all about writing content, so that’s why I spent the most time researching tools to make writing and promoting your content easier. Everything from post ratings to comments, reading time and lightboxes. Everything below is aimed at making your content more than just text on the page.

1 SyntaxHighlighter Evolved

“Easily post syntax-highlighted code to your site without having to modify the code at all. As seen on WordPress.com.”

2 WP-PostRatings

“Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.”

3 Disqus Comment System

“The Disqus comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus.”

4 Thank Me Later

“Send a ‘thank you’ email to your blog’s commenters.”

5 FV Gravatar Cache

“Speeds up your website by making sure the gravatars are stored on your website and not loading from the gravatar server.”

6 Post Reading Time

“A simple wordpress plugin that estimates the time a reader will need to go through the article.”

7 Lightbox

“Lightbox is the perfect tool for viewing photos.”

8 WP Ajax Edit Comments

“Allow users to edit comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments.”

9 Editorial Calendar

“The Editorial Calendar makes it possible to see all your posts and drag and drop them to manage your blog.”

10 Advanced Excerpt

“Control the appearance of WordPress post excerpts.”

11 TinyMCE Advanced

“Enables the advanced features of TinyMCE, the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.”

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SEO

SEO plays a key role in getting your content discovered. Quality content is always the best route to take with a WordPress site, but having the right SEO tools and techniques in place is a huge part of publishing as well. Below are some WordPress plugins aimed at improving your on-site SEO.

12 WordPress SEO Plugin

“Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin.”

13 All in One SEO Pack

“All in One SEO Pack is a WordPress SEO plugin to automatically optimize your WordPress blog for Search Engines such as Google.”

14 Google XML Sitemaps

“This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.”

15 SEO Friendly Images

“SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images improving traffic from search engines.”

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Site Tools

It’s all well and good writing premium content and optimising it for SEO, but what about the site itself? You need to make sure your site is in superb condition and ready to meet the demands of your readers. Below are a bunch of WordPress plugins that aim to improve your site and it’s functionality.

16 WP-Print

“Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.”

17 WP Clone

“Move or copy a WordPress site to another server or to another domain name, move to/from local server hosting, and backup sites.”

18 Simple Custom CSS

“Add Custom CSS to your WordPress site without any hassles.”

19 Custom Post Type UI

“Admin UI for creating custom post types and custom taxonomies in WordPress.”

20 Broken Link Checker

“This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found.”

21 Jetpack

“Your WordPress, Streamlined.”

22 WP Retina 2x

“Make your website look beautiful and crisp on Retina / High DPI displays.”

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Social Media

How are people sharing your content? SEO is great but nothing beats word-of-mouth on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Below are some WordPress plugins that have been built to optimise social media interaction with your content.

23 Shareaholic

“The easiest, most effective way to grow your website traffic, effectively engage your audience, monetize, and gain insights for free.”

24 AddThis

“AddThis provides the best sharing, social, recommended content, and conversion tools to help you make your website smarter.”

25 WP to Buffer

“Send WordPress Pages, Posts or Custom Post Types to your Buffer (bufferapp.com) account for scheduled publishing to social networks.”

26 Click To Tweet

“This plugin allows you to create beautiful Click To Tweet boxes anywhere in your blog post.”

27 Pinterest Pin It Button For Images

“Add a ‘Pin It’ button over your images, so users can add it to Pinterest easily.”

28 Digg Digg (No Longer Available)

“Your all in one share buttons plugin. Add a floating bar with share buttons to your blog. Just like Mashable!”

29 ShareThis

“Social Charge your Content with ShareThis – features Social Analytics, CopyNShare, Open Graph Sharing, and the Hovering Bar!”

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Marketing

WordPress isn’t just for blogging, it’s for all manner of website types. That’s why having the right tools to extend the default WordPress functionality is essential. Below are some WordPress plugins that are great for enhancing your site through landing pages, A/B testing, email list building and so on.

30 Easy Coming Soon

“Easy coming Soon plugin allows you to quickly create a launch / under construction page for your website.”

31 WordPress Landing Pages

“Create landing pages for your WordPress site. Monitor and improve conversion rates, run A/B split tests, customize your own templates and more.”

32 Nelio AB Testing

“A/B Testing, conversion rate optimization, and beautiful Heatmaps specifically designed for WordPress.”

33 Testimonials Widget

“Easily add social proofing to your website with Testimonials Widget. List or slide reviews via functions, shortcodes, or widgets.”

34 Hello Bar

“Easily add your Hello Bar to your WordPress blog.”

35 List Builder

“List Builder converts one-time visitors into lifelong readers and email subscribers.”

36 MailChimp for WordPress

“The best MailChimp plugin to get more email subscribers. Easily add MailChimp sign-up forms and sign-up checkboxes to your WordPress site.”

37 Google AdSense

“This plugin allows Google AdSense implementation into your website.”

38 Advanced Advertising System

“Manage your advertiser simply with many professional features.”

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eCommerce and Membership

WordPress has come a long way since the old days of it being a simple blogging platform. If you’re looking to sell goods online, digital or otherwise, then you have quite a few options to choose from. Below are a load of eCommerce and membership plugins to bring your store to life.

39 WooCommerce

“WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. And it’s available for free. Packed full of features, perfectly integrated into your self-hosted WordPress website.”

40 Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

“Very easy to use Simple WordPress PayPal Shopping Cart Plugin. Great for selling products online in one click from your WordPress site.”

41 Easy Digital Downloads

“Sell digital downloads through WordPress with this complete digital downloads management plugin.”

42 Amazon Auto Links

“Generates links of Amazon products just coming out today. You just pick categories and they appear even in JavaScript disabled browsers.”

43 BuddyPress

“BuddyPress helps you run any kind of social network on your WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.”

44 Simple Membership

“Simple membership plugin adds membership functionality to your site. Protect members only content using content protection easily.”

45 bbPress

“bbPress is forum software, made the WordPress way.”

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Security and Performance

Keeping your site secure is of the utmost importance. The best thing about WordPress isn’t just how secure it is by default, although that is great, it’s the amount of plugins that go the extra mile to make your site secure and keep it safe from hackers. Below are some WordPress plugins to keep your site safe from all manner of attacks and vulnerabilities.

46 BackWPup

“Schedule complete automatic backups of your WordPress installation. Decide which content will be stored (Dropbox, S3…).”

47 Akismet

“Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam or not.”

48 iThemes Security

“The easiest, most effective way to secure WordPress in seconds.”

49 Sucuri Security

“The Sucuri WordPress Security plugin is a security toolset for security integrity monitoring, malware detection and security hardening.”

50 Login LockDown

“Limits the number of login attempts from a given IP range within a certain time period.”

51 Wordfence Security

“Wordfence Security is a free enterprise class security and performance plugin that makes your site up to 50 times faster and more secure.”

52 W3 Total Cache

“Easy Web Performance Optimization (WPO) using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.”

53 Theme Check

“A simple and easy way to test your theme for all the latest WordPress standards and practices.”

54 Simple 301 Redirects

“Simple 301 Redirects provides an easy method of redirecting requests to another page on your site or elsewhere on the web.”

55 WordPress HTTPS (SSL)

“WordPress HTTPS is intended to be an all-in-one solution to using SSL on WordPress sites.”

56 WP-Optimize

“Simple but effective plugin allows you to extensively clean up your WordPress database and optimize it without doing manual queries.”

57 InfiniteWP Client

“Install this plugin on unlimited sites and manage them all from a central dashboard. This plugin communicates with your InfiniteWP Admin Panel.”

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Other

Sometimes you need other types of services and functionality. Luckily WordPress has one of the largest plugin reservoirs for any CMS, with new ones being added all the time. Here a load that I couldn’t quite categorise, but are incredibly handy none the less.

58 Compact Archives

“Displays a monthly archive of posts in a more compact form than the usual long list.”

59 Google Maps Builder

“One Google Maps plugin to rule them all. Google Maps Builder is intuitive, sleek, powerful and easy to use.”

60 Cookie Law Info

“A simple way to show how your website complies with the EU Cookie Law. Implied Consent. Style it to match your own website.”

61 MP3-jPlayer

“Easy, Flexible Audio for WordPress.”

62 WordPress Related Posts

“WordPress Related Posts – the plugin for related posts with thumbnails. Caching included.”

63 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

“Display a list of related posts on your site based on a powerful unique algorithm. Earn money by including sponsored content!”

64 WP-PageNavi

“Adds a more advanced paging navigation interface.”

65 Contact Form 7

“Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.”

66 WP-reCAPTCHA (No Longer Available)

“Integrates reCAPTCHA anti-spam methods with WordPress including comment and registration spam protection.”

67 Dribbble WordPress Plugin

“A sidebar widget for Dribbble, the show and tell social network for web designers, developers and other creatives.”

68 Google Analytics

“Track your WordPress site easily with the latest tracking codes and lots added data for search result pages and error pages.”

69 Regenerate Thumbnails

“Allows you to regenerate your thumbnails after changing the thumbnail sizes.”

70 Favicon Generator

“Create and install your favicon for all platforms: PC/Mac of course, but also iPhone/iPad, Android devices, Windows 8 tablets…”

71 Shortcodes Ultimate

“Supercharge your WordPress theme with mega pack of shortcodes.”

72 Meta Slider

“Easy to use WordPress slider plugin. Create SEO optimised responsive slideshows with Nivo Slider, Flex Slider, Coin Slider and Responsive Slides.”

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In Conclusion

As you can imagine, putting that list together took an incredibly long time…you can’t even imagine the amount of copy and paste that went into it.

I hope the above plugins can help you make your WordPress site even better than it already is.

If you’ve got some great WordPress plugins to share please leave me a comment below and I’ll include it in the list!