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!

  1. Testimonial Rotator – A great, lightweight plugin that displays scrolling testimonials on your site.
  2. 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.
  3. Login Logo – A handy little plugin allowing you to put a custom logo in the WordPress login screen.
  4. Sticky Menu (or anything) on Scroll – A sleek plugin allowing you to make any element on a page sticky when scrolling down.
  5. Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode – My go to plugin for creating a Coming Soon Page or Maintenance Page to cover up a website.
  6. Recent Posts Widget Extended – A very versatile plugin allowing you to customize post types in sidebars and widget areas.
  7. Facebook Like Box – The most compatible and user-friendly Facebook Like Box plugin I’ve found in the WordPress market.
  8. Mailchimp for WP – The plugin mentioned in this post which allows you to seamlessly integrate your Mailchimp sign up.
  9. 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.
  10. 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

  1. Rodrigo
    Rodrigo on September 13, 2018 at 1:13 pm

    Thanks Josh. As always, always passing on useful stuff.

    Reply
    • Josh
      Josh on September 13, 2018 at 2:58 pm

      Thanks Rodrigo! No problem 🙂

      Reply
  2. Keegan Lanier
    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
      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
  3. Rajesh
    Rajesh on September 13, 2018 at 3:16 pm

    Thanks, dear Josh. I am looking for a free LMS currently; any suggestion ?

    Reply
    • Josh
      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
  4. Hutch
    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
      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
  5. Nathan
    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
      Josh on September 15, 2018 at 12:02 am

      Awesome, Nathan!

      Reply
  6. Davide Corizzo
    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
      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
  7. Susan
    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
      Josh on September 15, 2018 at 12:03 am

      No problem, Susan!

      Reply
  8. Liza Jakio
    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
      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
  9. Loura Alsiyabi
    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
      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
  10. Paul
    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
      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

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