Matomo and Connect Matomo

A website without analysis is useless. Knowing how many visitors visit which pages, when, and for how long is the benchmark for success. Knowing whether customers come directly, via Google, social media, or AI search is essential for marketing. Controlling campaigns, measuring contacts, knowing what visitors are interested in... An analytics tool is indispensable.

Some of our plugins use extended statistics; for example, DIRSCHL Contact Fab tracks contacts and links them to the Matomo ID. DIRSCHL Music tracks the number of album and song views as well as playback time...

WP Armour

WP Armour is a free plugin that embeds hidden fields into all forms on a WordPress site. If a bot fills these out, WP Armour knows that it is 100% a spam attempt. This works very well and keeps your pages free from unwanted messages without requiring calculations or third-party checks. You don't need to configure anything, but as an admin, you will see in the forms that WP Armour is active.

Rank Math Pro

Yoast and Rank Math are the SEO tools every WordPress developer uses. I switched to Rank Math 2 years ago, and new websites are processed with Rank Math Pro. Rank Math has an excellent guide and tips that show the SEO developer what else needs to be improved. I use additional features like Breadcrumbs and SEO Rating (visible here in the footer), Sitemap and Image Sitemap, llms.txt and local SEO, SEO analysis, and Structured Data, and I inject the plugin with my own data to index images or to provide OpenGraph for permalinks used only in programming. All our plugins integrate into Rank Math's output when installed.

WP Super Cache

Especially with page builders like DIVI, it's important that pages load quickly despite complex CSS structures. Caching ensures fast delivery, and for those who don't rely on WP Rocket as a paid caching plugin, WP Super Cache is a good candidate.

All-In-One Security (AIOS)

Security plugin to change, for example, the wp-admin permalink. However, it offers many more security features and is therefore useful even in its free version.

Duplicator or UpDraft

Migrate your WordPress database and files or create a backup of them. Duplicate and move a website quickly from one location to another. For several years, I have been using Duplicator to at least save a complete backup of the website locally after its completion. In an emergency, you have a backup. The hoster, e.g., all-inkl., then takes over additional daily, weekly, or monthly backups. Since this is well-solved with my hoster and can be restored very quickly at the push of a button, having a final version of the website is sufficient security for me, in case files are accidentally deleted, which can certainly happen during plugin development.

Better Search and Replace

A plugin that allows you to search for and replace strings in your WordPress database.

Local Google Fonts

Host the Google Fonts you use on your server and make your website GDPR compliant.

Redirection

Manage all 301 redirects and 404 errors. Useful when renaming slugs, especially if they are already in the Google index.

HappyFiles

Organize media into a folder structure, similar to Real Media Library, but with an agency license.

Post Type Switcher

Unfortunately, I sometimes create posts or projects instead of pages, or need to convert a post into a page... WordPress handles content via the post type, and this can be switched as desired with the plugin. A simple and free plugin that you'll need again and again.