The WordPress Plugins Running on This Website

It’s no secret that this website is powered by WordPress. I mean, you cannot really hide it anyway. Just like lots of other websites, this one makes use of several WordPress plugins. In this post, I would like to list them all, and provide some context as to why I am using each of the plugins.

My List of WordPress Plugins

Without further ado, here is the full list of all the WordPress plugins installed and activated in this website, in alphabetical order. Click an item in the below list to get to the according section in this post.

• Adorable Avatars
• Antispam Bee
• BackWPup
• Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP)
• highlight.js Syntax Highlighter
• Imagify
• Post Thumbnail Editor
• Progress Bars
• Public Post Preview
• Publish Confirm
• Wordfence Security
• WP Rocket
• Yoast SEO

Just to make that very clear: this is not a TOP 10 list, and most probably not a list of WordPress plugins you want to or should use either. It’s simply what I ended up using.

Of course, all of what you find in the list may be subject to discussions. If you don’t understand why I am using some plugin, ask me. If you think there is a better alternative out there, tell me. This is what comments are there for. 😉

Adorable Avatars

Adorable Avatars is one of my own plugins. That’s why I also published a post about it.

This plugin integrates the Adorable Avatars avatar placeholder service into WordPress. All you have to do to see these funny faces is install and activate the plugin, and select Adorable Avatars as default avatar setting on the Discussion Settings page in your WordPress back end.

I am using this plugin because I simply don’t like the available options to choose defaults from, but I really like these adorable avatars.

Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee is one of the top-notch plugins initially developed by Sergej Müller, and now maintained by the pluginkollektiv group.

This plugin blocks spam comments and trackbacks effectively and without captchas, and it is compliant with European data privacy standards.

Antispam Bee is a plugin that you can safely install, activate and just forget about it.

BackWPup

BackWPup is my weapon of choice when it comes to automated backups of my website.

This plugin lives under the umbrella of Inpsyde, where I happen to be working at. 🙂

I have set up a nightly backup of all the database tables, most of the (real) uploaded files, and also have BackWPup include a text file of all installed plugins. The backup is triggered via WordPress cron, and it is pushed to my Dropbox.

Please note that there is also a Pro version available that offers additional features as well as premium support. Personally, I don’t need any of that, so I am good with the free version of BackWPup.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP)

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP is what I am using to get a quick overview of what is happening on my website analytics-wise.

While the plugin by Alin Marcu sure offers more, I am only using the main dashboard widget, and in that only the Pages and Referrers view, respectively. This means I am not doing any analyses or evaluations from within WordPress, but only in Google Analytics.

I tried a few other plugins first, but I either didn’t like their UI or code quality, or I found them too heavy (for what I am doing). Or all of that.

highlight.js Syntax Highlighter

This is one of my own plugins. It allows (me) to make use of the highlight.js syntax highlighting and integrate it into WordPress. Right now, the plugin is not available for download yet. I will (try to) publish it sometime soon, though.

You can see the plugin in action on any of my code-heavy posts, for example, this one.

Imagify

Imagify is what I am using to optimize all my uploaded images, and thus the user experience for my visitors.

So far I am on the free plan, but I would totally pay for the service by WP Media. It’s just that I, unfortunately, do not blog that often, and when I do, I usually do not include that many images. (Yes, I know: this post seems to be an exception. 😉 )

I have set the optimization level to aggressive, activated auto-optimization on upload (for all image sizes), and have larger images resized to a maximum width of 1920 pixels.

Post Thumbnail Editor

Post Thumbnail Editor by sewpafly is a great tool to manipulate each and every image size of any of your uploaded images, directly from within the WordPress admin.

To me, this plugin offers two features I wouldn’t want to miss: see all thumbnails of any image in one place, and crop and set arbitrary image sizes, either individually, or as a bulk operation.

Progress Bars

Progress Bars is the third plugin developed by me.

This plugin is a pretty simple one that lets you use a new configurable shortcode, [[progress]], to render HTML5 <progress> elements. You can see it in action in my post about benchmarking Yarn.

Public Post Preview

Public Post Preview by Dominik Schilling is of great help to anyone who wants to make their draft posts available for preview, without the need to set up any (editor or even admin) accounts.

This plugin only does a single thing, and it does it well. The option to have public previews can come in handy for quite a few very different reasons, for example, when you want someone to proofread one of your posts, or to show people who you interviewed how their answers ended up in the complete context.

Publish Confirm

Publish Confirm is another helpful previously-Sergej-Müller-now-pluginkollektiv plugin.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone asked you if you really want to publish the post that you clicked the Publish button just now? Say because you forgot the SEO meta description. Or because you meant to save the post as draft when you accidentaly clicked that big blue button instead. (Yes, this might happen not only to trigger-happy people. 🙂 ) Good news: this plugin does exactly that.

Wordfence Security

Wordfence is one of the first plugins I install on a new (soon-to-be-live) WordPress website. Since ages!

This plugin enables you to both harden and monitor your WordPress website, in almost any thinkable way.

I am running the premium version for quite a while now, and I really like what it offers. It’s simply money well spent.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is, in my opinion, the best WordPress caching plugin you can get (for money, yes).

This plugin comes with all the features you can think of when it comes to improving the loading time of your website. Page caching, lazyloading for images, videos and iframes, options to minify and/or combine static asset files, synchronization of your Varnish, … You name it, WP Rocket has it.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO takes care of anything SEO.

Although I like lots of the plugin’s features, I am still using the free version. The reason is that there isn’t really anything I am missing, and I also don’t really (think I) need anything of the premium version.

What About Your Website?

If you happen to have a WordPress website as well, I really would like to know which WordPress plugins you are using, and why. You can either leave a comment here, or create a post on your own (and then leave a comment about it here 😉 ).

Thanks in advance.

Other Websites

These awesome people answered my call, and published something like this post in their blog:

• Caspar Hübinger
• Hans-Helge Bürger (German)
• Tom McFarlin

Thanks a ton! 🙂