My Top 10 FREE WordPress Plugins

Sep 13, 2018 | Josh's Blog | 20 comments

Over the years, I’ve used hundreds of free WordPress plugins. Some have worked out great for many of my site builds and some have been a total waste of time and have conflicted with many other tools, themes and plugins I’ve used.

So here’s a list of my top 10 plugins that I use for the majority of my builds. I hope it helps contribute to your WordPress toolbox in your web design endeavors!

Testimonial Rotator – A great, lightweight plugin that displays scrolling testimonials on your site.
TinyMCEAdvanced – Taking the WordPress to the next level and alleviating the issue of HTML disappearing when toggling back and forth between the Visual and Text side in the editor.
Login Logo – A handy little plugin allowing you to put a custom logo in the WordPress login screen.
Sticky Menu (or anything) on Scroll – A sleek plugin allowing you to make any element on a page sticky when scrolling down.
Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode – My go to plugin for creating a Coming Soon Page or Maintenance Page to cover up a website.
Recent Posts Widget Extended – A very versatile plugin allowing you to customize post types in sidebars and widget areas.
Facebook Like Box – The most compatible and user-friendly Facebook Like Box plugin I’ve found in the WordPress market.
Mailchimp for WP – The plugin mentioned in this post which allows you to seamlessly integrate your Mailchimp sign up.
Velvet Blues Update URL’s – My go to solution for changing URL’s sitewide when moving WordPress sites or updating URL’s to SSL. Featured plugin in my post on how to Manually Migrate WordPress sites.
Events Calendar – The best free events plugin in the market. Light weight, customizable and very compatible with most themes and other plugins. Great selection of add-ons as well.

20 Comments

Rodrigo on September 13, 2018 at 1:13 pm

Thanks Josh. As always, always passing on useful stuff.
Reply
- Josh on September 13, 2018 at 2:58 pm
  
  Thanks Rodrigo! No problem 🙂
  Reply
Keegan Lanier on September 13, 2018 at 3:00 pm

Awesome list Josh. I’ve used most if not all of these quite a bit myself. Thanks for sharing!
Reply
- Josh on September 13, 2018 at 3:02 pm
  
  Great to hear, Keegan! Always good to know the tools I use are recommended by others as well 🙂
  Reply
Rajesh on September 13, 2018 at 3:16 pm

Thanks, dear Josh. I am looking for a free LMS currently; any suggestion ?
Reply
- Josh on September 13, 2018 at 3:18 pm
  
  I don’t know of a free LMS…and honestly, that sort of platform I would not trust or rely on a free one. I use LearnDash and really like it. Probably the most affordable out of most WP LMS’s.
  Reply
Hutch on September 14, 2018 at 11:58 am

Thanks for another great share Josh!
Do you know if the Tiny MCE plugin is going to play nice with Gutenberg?
Reply
- Josh on September 15, 2018 at 12:02 am
  
  ooo good question. Honestly I’m not sure. It’s a pretty popular plugin so I imagine they’ll make it compatible.
  Reply
Nathan on September 14, 2018 at 2:25 pm

Great Stuffs Josh! Thanks for this post, gives me idea what to post on my blog next time. 🙂 I am planning to share my mostly used plugin too. You have a great list of plugins. Thanks for this.
Reply
- Josh on September 15, 2018 at 12:02 am
  
  Awesome, Nathan!
  Reply
Davide Corizzo on September 14, 2018 at 8:06 pm

«Sticky Menu (or anything) on Scroll» is good but I just can use it for one single element in a page. Is anything wrong?
Reply
- Josh on September 15, 2018 at 12:03 am
  
  Not sure if it can be used on multiple elements if that’s what you mean. Worth trying it out! I typically just use it on the sidebar.
  Reply
Susan on September 14, 2018 at 9:50 pm

Thanks again and again for the info, Josh. I use a couple of these already, but I’m glad to learn of more to try.
Regards!
Reply
- Josh on September 15, 2018 at 12:03 am
  
  No problem, Susan!
  Reply
Liza Jakio on August 29, 2019 at 9:31 pm

Hi Josh can you help me with how to place the testimonial created in ” Testimonial Rotator ” on the home page as I am not able to see a module in divi builder so can you help me out with this. Thanks in advance
Reply
- Josh on August 30, 2019 at 2:31 pm
  
  Hey Liza, yeah you won’t find it in the Divi modules since it’s a 3rd party plugin. You just take the testimonial shortcode and place that in a Divi text module to make it show up!
  Reply
Loura Alsiyabi on September 29, 2020 at 10:58 pm

Hey Josh,

Could u please recommend a free plugin for book appointments with payments?

my client is a therapist and she wants able to collect payment with booking at the same time.

Thanks
Reply
- Josh on October 2, 2020 at 5:03 pm
  
  I actually haven’t used any WP booking plugins but I know it’s been asked and recommended a lot in my Divi group if you want to check there!
  Reply
Paul on March 4, 2022 at 4:53 am

Testimonial Rotator not available for a year now.

“This plugin has been closed as of February 25, 2021 and is not available for download. Reason: Security Issue.”

What is your new recommendation?
Reply
- Josh on March 7, 2022 at 11:58 am
  
  There are a plethora of free ones out there but my preferred one for Divi is now Divi Pixel.
  Reply

My Top 10 FREE WordPress Plugins

20 Comments

Submit a Comment Cancel reply