WordPress Plugin Roundtable Meetup

The Seacoast NH WordPress meetup recently held a Plugin Roundtable meetup. The goal was to share info on recommended WordPress plugins. Since meetup doesn’t allow long comments on meetups and no longer allows file uploads, the full notes from the meetup appear below.

Please note that just because a plugin is listed here, does not mean I recommend using it. This list is meant to be a comprehensive list of all plugins discussed at the meetup.

Announcements:

WordCampBoston
https://2017.boston.wordcamp.org/

WordPress 4.8 is out!
https://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.8

Plugins Discussed or Recommended:

Newsletter Plugin
https://wordpress.org/plugins/newsletter/

MailChimp – Recommended free mailing list provider (free for under 2,000 subscribers)
https://mailchimp.com/
Either embed MailChimp form directly into a Text widget using code from MailChimp or use a plugin such as https://tzm.wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-for-wp/

WP Mail SMTP
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/
https://wptavern.com/wpforms-acquires-wp-mail-smtp-plugin

Add Posts to Pages (Warning: not updated in over 2 years)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-posts-to-pages/

Hide products count (for WooCommerce)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/hide-products-count/

Homepage Product Organizer for WooCommerce (Warning: not updated for 3 years)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/homepage-product-organizer-for-woocommerce/

Black Studio TinyMCE Widget (adds a Visual Editor widget with full TinyMCE editor)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/black-studio-tinymce-widget/

Duplicate Page (create a copy of any type of post)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicate-page/

Post Type Switcher (allows switching a post from one post type to another)

Post Type Switcher

Updraft Plus (backup plugin)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus/

Advanced Custom Fields (add custom fields – useful for developers who are also updating theme files)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp/

Password Protected (lock down your entire site with a single password)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/password-protected/

Imsanity (Image Compression)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/imsanity/

Smush (Image Compression)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/

Regenerate Thumbnails
https://wordpress.org/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails/

WordFence (security plugin)

Wordfence Security

iThemes Security
https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/
https://ithemes.com/security/

Debugging in WordPress (not a plugin, but a good habit for developers)
https://codex.wordpress.org/Debugging_in_WordPress

Developer (allows easy installation of a number of developer-friendly plugins for use during site development)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/developer/

Floating Publish Button
https://wordpress.org/plugins/floating-publish-button/

Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd
https://wordpress.org/plugins/coming-soon/

The Events Calendar
https://wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/

Events Manager (less fancy than The Events Calendar, but allows for Recurring Events and User Submitted events for FREE)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/events-manager/

Ninja Forms
https://wordpress.org/plugins/ninja-forms/

Caldera Forms
https://wordpress.org/plugins/caldera-forms/

Formidable Forms
https://wordpress.org/plugins/formidable/

Contact Form 7 (not reliable as does not save submissions to database)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/

Appointments+
https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/appointments-plus/ (paid plugin)

Elementor Page Builder
https://wordpress.org/plugins/elementor/

TablePress (makes pretty tables with sortable headers from CSV files)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress/

Favorites
https://wordpress.org/plugins/favorites/

Widget CSS Classes (allows assignment of custom classes to widgets, plus adds classes for first, last, odd, even)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/widget-css-classes/

Woo Sidebars (allows creation of custom sidebars for certain pages on a site)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/woosidebars/

WP Simple Booking Calendar
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-simple-booking-calendar/
https://www.wpsimplebookingcalendar.com/

User Switching
https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-switching/

User Role Editor
https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-role-editor/

Column Shortcodes (lightweight plugin providing shortcodes to create columns)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/column-shortcodes/

Bloom (email pop-up)
https://www.elegantthemes.com/plugins/bloom/ (paid plugin)

WP Rollback
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-rollback/

What do you think?