WordPress Plugins we use

Each WP project varies and so that has a knock on effect on what plugins we use so this is by no means a definitive list, but merely our favourites that get used quite a lot

Akismet

Blocks the majority of spam comments, can also be used in conjunction with Contact Form 7

Advanced Custom Fields

Custom Fields made easy and more importantly, with the site administrator in mind. Makes everything easy and is relatively easy to code into your templates.

Advanced Custom Fields Repeater Field

This is a premium add-on but well worth it as it allows you to create groups of custom fields i.e. if you were creating a slider with image, title and link then you can keep adding these grouped objects.

Better Related Posts

Creates a list of related content below your post. If you’re creating templates then you can also customise pretty much everything.

Better WP Security

Keeps your site nice and secure and keeps you informed of 404 errors, login attempts, detects changed files and lots lots more.

Catch IDs

Invaluable when creating sites as it adds an extra column in the admin pages so you can see right away what the ID of anything is.

CodePress Admin Columns

Allows you to add and remove columns from the admin pages. Useful when developing custom post types.

Contact Form 7

Still my favourite contact form. Easy to use with lots of options.

Contact Form 7 AutoResponder Addon Plugin

A nice add-on to Contact Form 7 is the Mailchimp checkbox. This will add a checkbox to your contact form so users can subscribe directly.

PHP Text Widget

Add custom queries and anything else php based to a text widget.

Simple Image Sizes

Although I still add images sizes directly to the functions file, this gives a nice admin page which gives you options such as regenerating certain image sizes, including adding an image size to the post insertion screen and a few other things.

Theme My Login

Styles the login, password and register pages according to your theme. You can also tweak the stylesheet to suit. Lots of other tweaky options too.

Types

I still prefer to use Advanced Custom Fields for custom fields but Types is great for creating custom post types, easily.

W3 Total Cache

I’ve tried lots of caching plugins, but still come back to this one. Keeps Dare to Think running quickly.

Widget CSS Classes

Adds a field to each widget so you can add a class to individual widgets. Useful when uniquely styling widgets.

WordPress SEO

Just brilliant! Adds fields for SEO titles, descriptions and keyword checking as well as creating XML sitemaps and lots lots more.

WP-Optimize

Optimises your site’s database. Now also includes an automated option.

WP-PageNavi

Numbered page navigation which is easy to style. Much better than a Next/Prev link on your category pages.