Over a period of eleven years of blogging on WordPress, I have tried and tested many WordPress plugins.
Every now and then I need to remove the outdated plugin and pick something which offers a better feature and let my blog grow.
I understand that searching for right plugins could be a daunting task and this is why I keep sharing about using WordPress plugins here at ShoutMeLoud. Based on my research and experience, I have created a secret list of plugins which I use on all my blogs.
However, today post is an exclusive post which is part of our transparency culture. I love to share how we do things, what tools we use and other important stuff which will help you to grow your blog just like ShoutMeLoud.
Today, I’m sharing the list of must-have WordPress plugins we are currently using at ShoutMeLoud.
Do remember, these plugins are the outcome of my years of experience with blogging.
If you have just started with WordPress, you should first read: How to add plugins to WordPress.
Do remember, I keep changing our plugins, so I suggest you to bookmark this page and keep checking after a month to see the updated list of plugins.
The list is not in any particular order, and at the time of updating (February 2020), these are the must have WordPress plugins which power ShoutMeLoud.
Since many of you asked: : Right now ShoutMeloud is currently using Genesis Theme + Custom skin design and hosted on Kinsta hosting.
List of Must Have WordPress Plugins I use on ShoutMeLoud:
Here is a quick list:
- Advanced Ads: This is the ad management WordPress plugin I’m using to run ads on ShoutMeLoud. This is a feature rich plugin, which let you add direct ads, banner ads, AdSense ads. The coolest part is, you can run A/B test, show/hide based on category/tags, to make most out of the ads on your WordPress website.
- Advanced database cleaner: I use this to reduce the size of my database. A free alternative is WP Sweep which doesn’t offer advanced feature but it’s alright for new blogs. For a serious blog, Advanced database cleaner is recommended.
- AMP for WP: I use the free version of AMP for WP plugin.
- Akismet: For handling spam comments
- Broken link checker plugin:
- Clicktotweet: To add a tweetable code within an article.
- Easy table of content: To show table of content in WordPress (Helps in SEO and UX)
- EasyDigitalDownloads: This plugin helps in setting up a digital download store.
- Email post changes: This sends me a notification when an author or editor make changes.
- Jetpack by WordPress.com: One of the most popular WordPress plugins offer great features.
- Limit modified date: This plugin helps me to prevent updating the timestamp when making minor changes to an old post. This practice is good for SEO.
- Linkwhisper: For internal link building
- OptinMonster: To add email subscription box.
- Pushengage: Push notification for desktop browsers.
- Pixel Caffeine: Fastest way to integrate Facebook pixel on your website.
- Premium Yoast SEO: For SEO optimization (On page & On-site)
- Peter’s Collaboration E-mails: Sends an email to admin & editor when a contributor submit a post.
- Q2W3 Fixed Widget: Fixed widget plugin
- Redirection: Manages 301 redirection & 404 errors from WordPress dashboard. However, I shifted a lot of redirection now using Yoast SEO premium. Over the time, I will be moving everything to Yoast SEO for redirection.
- ShortPixel: Compress images without degrading quality. Helps in faster loading of the articles.
- Ultimate Nofollow: Helps in adding nofollow tag from the WordPress post editor section.
- WP Link Status: The purpose of this plugin is to find broken links. I use it for more than this.
- WP Forms: To add contact form & create a variety of forms here at ShoutMeLoud.
- WP security audit log: Keep an eye on user activities inside the WordPress dashboard.
- WP Advanced Ads: For adding ads
- WPS hide login
Here is a detailed explanation of most of the listed plugins:
SEO By Yoast Premium:
This is a free WordPress plugin that is the powerhouse of my blog SEO. It helps to optimize on Site SEO, On page SEO & Social SEO of the blog. This is a must have plugin for every blog, and I have written a guide over here to learn about the configuration of this plugin. Yoast SEO comes in two versions: Free and paid.
In the pro version there are few extra features like redirection and internal linking. This is why I useYoast premium. You can read my take on premium version here.
Akismet Plugin:
Akismet is a free anti-spam WordPress plugin that I recommend as it is the official plugin from WordPress creator, which lets you fight with spam comments. To use Akismet, you need an API key. You can get one by following this tutorial.
One downside of this plugin is that sometimes it skips spam trackback or comments or legit comments land in the spam folder. Though this usually happens due to a previous interaction with an I.P or with an email address but you can always address this problem by checking your spam folder daily.
This is also a must have plugin that you should have from day one to stop spam comments on your blog.
Schema Pro plugin
This WordPress plugin is useful if you do review post. Using this plugin, you can add a star rating to your blog post, and make it stand out in the search engine. It’s a premium plugin that cost only $79, and it’s a good one-time investment.
CloudFlare plugin:
Cloudflare is a free service which offers security & free CDN. What I really like about CloudFlare is, you can block bots and spam traffic at DNS level. This saves a lot of bandwidth and also your server load is not affected due to the bot traffic.
If you are using a managed WordPress hosting, shared hosting or any web hosting where your bandwidth is a limit, you should definitely use a service like CloudFlare.
Social Snap plugin for social media sharing buttons:
SocialSnap lets you add social sharing & social media follow buttons on the blog. This plugin offers beautiful looking social sharing button at various places such as Floating sharing buttons, after post, fixed bar, and a few other options.
If you need one plugin that takes care of your social media sharing needs, this is the best plugin for now. This is a paid plugin and cost about $39 only for a yearly license.
The analytics feature is also highly useful and you can get stats right inside your WordPress dashboard.
WP Forms plugin:
This free plugin lets you add the contact form on your blog, and I like it because it also shows the referral URL of the person who is using my contact form to send a message.
This helps me to filter down the real and spam message. If you are using Jetpack plugin, you should rather use contact form feature of that plugin.
Jetpack WordPress plugin:
This is a multi-purpose free WordPress plugin that adds the feature like stats, contact form, mobile theme, social sharing button and many more. This is a power packed WordPress plugin.
You need to have a free account on WordPress.com to use this plugin. You can learn more about this plugin over here.
LinkPatrol:
This is a WordPress SEO plugin that controls your blog external link. Using this plugin you can Nofollow, remove any existing external link of your blog.
It’s a premium plugin and is very powerful and useful for the SEO of your blog. You can read the review and how I use this plugin over here.
No Self Pings:
This useful and free WordPress plugin let me stop sending the trackback to interlinked posts inside my domain.
Read: No self-ping WordPress plugin: Stop pinging your Blog post.
OptinMonster:
This is a feature rich plugin. I use it to show email subscription pop up and is highly configurable. Even without any designing skills, I can quickly configure and design an effective pop up for my blog.
If you are into email marketing and need an easy to use WordPress plugin, look no further than OptinMonster.
SEO Friendly Images:
This free plugin lets you optimize images for the search engine. It adds alt text based on the name of the image. Highly recommended.
Read: How to Alt Tag into Images.
WP Status Notifier Plugin:
This plugin notifies me when any blog post is submitted for review and notifies the user when his blog post is accepted.
Later on, we shifted to peter’s collaboration Email plugin that turns out to be more powerful.
Some additional plugins which I use for ShoutMeLoud:
- Ultimate Nofollow to quickly add Nofollow link attribute.
- Link Whisper for internal linking
- Q2W3 Fixed Widget for making sidebar widget fixed
I will keep updating the post whenever I add or remove a plugin here at ShoutMeLoud. You can bookmark this page & visit it after a month or so to see the updated list.
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Author Hreview plugin is redirecting to WP Review. Which one are you using at the moment? Yesss I am clicker …
@Rene
I’m using Author H review as of now (May 2018) but have to change the plugin as the developer doesn’t seems to be updating it and his website goes down every now and then for days. That’s why redirected the link so that user doesn’t end up buying that plugin. Let me know if you have any follow up questions on this.
Your all articles are great and I am loving your blog.
I am new in the blogging and you are my teacher, everything which I have learned is because of you.
You are my inspiration, keep up the good work
I do acknowledge that these plugins are a must have. However, I strongly feel that all the plugins may not be useful at a given point of time. So, why not disable and delete the plugin after its usage. One can activate whenever needed. By doing so one can restrict their load on the server.
You have mentioned you are using AMP plugin, but could not find any /amp pages on mobile. I had tried this AMP plugin earlier but found that it doesn’t show featured images or landing page. Are you really using AMP?
@Mathykutty
Indeed we are using AMP. Try this https://www.shoutmeloud.com/wordpress-plugins-that-power-shoutmeloud.html/amp
Hey Harsh!
you didn’t mention about your deals or affiliation plugins……….!
which plugin are you using for your deals section? I like the design of your deals sections and want to create to my blog.
It is a custom post type.
You can create them using the plugin called ‘Custom Posts UI’
List of all great plugins at one place. It’s going to most helpful for every wordpress user. I really appreciate your work. Thank you !
Hey Harsh,
You have provided a great list of wp plugins and I will definitely try some of them according to my needs. Your all articles are great and I am loving your blog.
I am new in the blogging and you are my teacher, everything which I have learned is because of you.
You are my inspiration, keep up the good work.
hello Sir,
Those plugin you provide on your blog that are enough for startup website or we need to more plugin out of it for starters.
@Sushil
This is enough
Hello Harsh,
This article is really amazing, can you also help me out?
i want to know if is there any FREE wordpress plugin for newsletters,
currently i’m using jetpack subscriber widget on my website for collecting users emails and for sending newsletters but jetpack’s subscriber widget is not eye catchy and its layout is not matching with my theme and also sometimes its not working properly when someone submitting their email for subscribing my newsletter.
but it’s helpful whenever i make any article it automatically sends email to my subscribers who are in its list that’s is only thing i like about jetpack subscriber widget, i want same thing with another plugin with greater look and layout so that it can collect subscribers mail ids and automatically send emails to my subscriber whenever i post new article.
and yeah i tried sumo me plugin but its not working accordingly its only collecting email id but not sending mails to subscribers when i post new article.
so any FREE wp plugin you can suggest?
it will be really helpful if you can help and suggest something
Thanks
Hi there.
First of all, for sending emails to your subscribers, you need to register on MailChimp and you need to start a campaign there.
I use most of them on my website. Social Warfare and Yoast is my favourite. Jetpack made my website slow (as I am on shared hosting). had to get rid of.
I think you do not require clicktotweet plugin if you have social warfare as it has click to tweet inbuilt feature.
Anyways great list for anyone looking for suggestions.
great list, Thanks for Sharing, I am using few of them in my site although, due to heavy usages of plugins my site became slow.
Any Plugin for generation + download link for ical files for my Event Website ?
thanks
Stopped using Thirsty Affiliates for link cloaking?
@Yaseen
Yes, using ShoutCodes now.
It was an amazing collection of plugins Harsh. I used to wonder am I the only one who has installed so many plugins in a website?
Now, got it cleared. You too installed so many.
These features are necessary. They reduce our time to finish the work. But I worry about the page load time, that these plugins might increase.
What do you use to manage ads? Noticed you haven’t mentioned anything to do with ads in your list. Any specific reason?
Sir i using All in one seo pack, Can i deactivate all in seo pack from my website and use Yost Seo?
Hi Harsh!
This is the great plugins list you shared with us! Got some valuable info about wordpress plugins in this post. Loved this article very much!
One question: Is there any problem while using so many plugins at a time?
I will be happy to know the answer!
Anyway, thanks for sharing an informative post with us.
Keep it up!
happy blogging.
Hey Harsh,
You are using so many Plugins in your site but your site still loads faster than mine, even thogh i am just using about only 8 plugins
Well i wonder how you have managed to do that
Hello Harsh
I want to ask a question, installing all this plugins won’t it slow my website..
I can see you have installed lots of plugins, does it not slow your website?
Waiting for reply
Hi Fakrul,
ShoutMeLoud is Hosted on one of the Best WebHosts i.e., Kinsta.
Choosing best webhost doesn’t slows your website.
Awesome list. Thank you, Harsh.I am already using many of them, but there are some new I will definitely try out.
SEO Yoast in one of my favorites. It really helps to streamline my blog posts for SEO and readability, and I always edit my posts according to their suggestions.
I use BetterClick2Tweet as alternative for Click2Tweet for its easier usability.
Thank you for pointing to WP Forms, Short Pixel and Ultimate NoFollow. I will definitely give them a try.
And, I am a big fan of the GetSocial Social Sharing Icons as an alternative to Social Warfare, but I also use Mashshare on one of my blogs for its’ great design options.
You recommend WP Related Posts. I am using YARPP, but both plugins get bad reviews for slowing down the site. What is your experience?