There are a lot of great plugins for WordPress out there. Here are five favorites that have been in regular rotation lately — and are easy to use:
1. Easy Social Share Buttons
Choose your button style, color, layout and more with this plugin that will not only get great sharing buttons on your site, but will also allow you to count the number of shares your posts get.
Cost: $14 / Purchase
2. Gravity Forms
This is one of the most robust and comprehensive form plugins I’ve had the pleasure of working with on websites. It integrates with newsletter systems like Mailchimp and payment portals like Paypal. This plugin gets the job done.
Cost: $39 / Purchase
3. Wordfence Security
This plugin will scan your site regularly for any issues and let you know when plugins need to be updated.
Cost: Free / Download
4. EWWW Image Optimizer
I was wary of this plugin’s promises. Faster loading images without noticeable quality loss? But seeing was believing. I saw this plugin take one site from a 3 second load time to under 1 second.
Cost: Free / Download
5. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
This gets analytics on your site and allows you to monitor your stats directly from your dashboard.
Cost: Free / Download
