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How many WordPress plugins are your best plugins? Are they working together efficiently or just sitting there staring at each other incommunicado?

Of your plugin arsenal which ones are the ones you absolutely need, and are there WordPress plugins out there that you don’t have and are missing out on?

The aim of this article is for you take the time to re-examine your WordPress plugins. Plugins are an indispensable part of blogging and we stack and load them as we need them as our website grows from its initial phases up until its current iteration.

However, I’ve found that as our WordPress blog evolves, so do the demands of our website design and functionality, and therefore the usefulness our plugins as well. Some remain relevant, others not so much.

Going through your WordPress plugins panel can be like spring cleaning! It’s like going through that junk drawer or storage closet and giving it a good going through. “Yuck, I don’t need that old sweater anymore!”

For me WordPress plugins fall into 3 categories:

THEMES
MARKETING
SEO

1. THEME PLUGINS.

Your theme plugins are those that are absolutely necessary for your blog to function properly. For me these include my Child Theme Configurator, Jetpack, and my WP-PageNavi plugin. You can also use the Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades plugin if you ever purchase pro versions and need to upload zip files.

Some themes I’ve used in the past have required additional plugins to make them function smoothly, I’ve only accommodated these types because I couldn’t live without their design. I think the best ones don’t.

What theme plugins are you running on your blog site? Are there extra, errant, or erratic ones sitting in your WordPress folder taking up extra space? Today is the day to rethink them and do some spring cleaning!

2. MARKETING PLUGINS.

Marketing plugins include both design and promotional plugins. These are the plugins you use to effect page design and also how you communicate with external social media sites to let the world know how awesome you are.

For me these include Elementor, SNAP Auto-Poster, and my Icegram forms and subscription plugins. Jetpack is a crossover WordPress Plugin that is for both theme functionality and marketing. Depending on your type of WordPress blog you may require additional marketing plugins. If you enjoy the flexibility of designing your own pages without being a coding guru, then Elementor is absolutely the best of the best, it literally lets you control every aspect of how a page looks.

As API keys become less relevant in the future bloggers will all have to stay abreast of the ever-changing site-to-site security market.

3. SEO PLUGINS.

SEO is king! Blogs and websites in general live and die by SEO, thankfully there are a few super powerful WordPress plugins out there that will make your knees wobbly with delight in how effective they are.

For me these include Yoast SEO, WP Super Cache, and WP Review Pro. I’ve tried a few different SEO plugins and I have to say that all the hype about Yoast is real, it’s hands down the best WordPress SEO plugin out there and short of sounding like a commercial you should use it too (I have no affiliate relation with any of these plugins btw).

Choosing the right SEO plugin upfront is paramount to success as a WordPress blogger not only in terms of returns but also the staggering amount of time it takes to reconfigure new plugins! If you want to stay relevant on search sites like Google, having a single, effective SEO plugin that plays well with other plugins is definitely the best strategy. It might be time to rethink your SEO plugins.

Before You Delete

One word of advice: carefully inspect each plugin before you delete them. Certain plugins may not be stand alone applications but may effect the functionality of other plugins that you use.

For example, my Rainmaker Forms plugin is integrated into my Subscriptions plugin, deleting one will necessarily effect the other. You can simply DEACTIVATE one (like an A-B test) and study the effects of how your site may or may not change – it’s hard to remember or be cognizant of the rabbit hole of effects that plugins have on our sites.

The good news is that if you delete a plugin by mistake, just reinstall it! Also, for design plugins, while you may not have used one in a long time, deleting it will cause you to delete all of your page designs so please proceed carefully.

Your WordPress Plugins Team

Think of your WordPress plugins as your team. You want your team to consist of winners and producers, no dead weight loafing about dragging the others down. Unused WordPress plugins are making your website function at less then optimal levels, it’s clutter and junk you don’t need so take the time today to look through your plugins one by one and rethink what you absolutely need and what you absolutely don’t.

WordPress is the king of publishing and there is no way any blogger could function without plugins so invest some time in doing a little WordPress plugin housekeeping.