11 WordPress Plugin Recommendations and Support
Over the years, I have tested many plugins, replaced them with newer ones, and recently significantly reduced their number. Plugins can be incompatible with each other.
Our own plugins reduce this dependency to a minimum. The following list shows which ones are indispensable and even required by us.
Your WordPress Professional
Johann Dirschl
Matomo and Connect Matomo
A website without analytics 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 advanced 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 sites free from unwanted messages, even without CAPTCHAs 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 RankMath are the SEO tools that every WordPress developer uses. I switched to RankMath 2 years ago, and new websites are processed with RankMath Pro. RankMath has excellent guides and tips that show SEO developers what else can be improved. I use additional features such as 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 custom data to index images or to provide OpenGraph for permalinks used only in programming. All our plugins integrate with RankMath's output when it is installed.
WP Super Cache
Especially with page builders like DIVI, it is 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)
A security plugin, for example, to change 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. Quickly duplicate and move a website 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-managed by my hoster and can be restored very quickly at the push of a button, having a final version of the website provides 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
Sort media into a folder structure, similar to Real Media Library, but as an agency license.
Post Type Switcher
Unfortunately, I occasionally 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 needed with the plugin. A simple and free plugin that you'll find yourself needing time and again.
Did I forget anything?
Surely you've also discovered indispensable plugins, like WooCommerce or WP-Rocket. We can expand the list together, so we not only showcase my plugins but also know exactly what we absolutely need. These are actually all the plugins I use in addition to my own.