The Best WordPress Plugins for Developers

WordPress plugins for developers are great tools for everyone, regardless of the developer’s experience level. Depending on their particular expertise or level of knowledge, the developer has a wide range of WordPress plugins available. Each plugin has different functions and features. But if you want your website to be the most effective possible, there are certain functions and features to look for.

Additionally, it’s important for web developers and their companies to create eye-catching designs to showcase their skills and attract potential clients.

If you are looking for the right WordPress plugins for you, then you have come to the right place. This article will cover a list of the best WordPress plugins for developers.

Best WordPress Plugins for Developers Like You

When it comes to WordPress plugins for developers, the options are endless. Whether you want to improve the quality of the WordPress website you are building, or you want to make certain functions easier, there are hundreds of plugins to choose from.

How do you decide which are the best WordPress plugins for developers’ websites? Rather than sending you to look through hundreds of WordPress plugins by yourself, this article will cover the best WordPress plugins for developers on the market today.

Amelia

Imagine, just imagine, creating a booking website without losing your sanity. Enter Amelia – the secret sauce to your spicy web development recipe!

Here’s why it’s a big deal:

• Super intuitive: You’re no rocket scientist? No sweat, Amelia’s got you. Click here, drag there, and voila! A booking site.
• Fast and furious: Remember the last time you waited for a website to load? Yeah, Amelia doesn’t do that. It’s all speed, no drag.

Oh, and get this. The nightmare of updating your site in real time? Gone! Amelia brings the future to your screen. Add a slot, change the price, tweak the details – all on the go, and it’s smoother than a Michael Jackson’s moonwalk.

Plus, Amelia’s not a one-trick pony. You need a booking site for a spa, a fitness center, or a fancy French restaurant? It doesn’t matter. Amelia tailors itself to you.

Scared your site’s gonna look like a MySpace page from 2006? Please. Amelia’s customization options are off the hook. Bring your personality, your style, and your vibe, and paint it all over your booking site.

And here’s the cherry on top: Amelia won’t send you to the poorhouse. The bang for your buck here is ridiculous! This is grade-A stuff, at a not-so-grade-A price. Yeah, it’s that good.

Alright, time for some real talk. You want to build an impressive booking site without the usual headaches? Ready to amp up your development game? Then Amelia is your ticket to the big leagues.

It’s go time.

Scoop up Amelia and start your booking site revolution!

Freemius

This is a great option to start with. Freemius doesn’t require you to create a storefront in order to sell your plugin. Instead, you can sell it directly through the user’s WordPress admin panel. The plugin also gives you an opt-in to help you get plenty of feedback from users.

Users can choose to allow you to collect feedback anonymously from the plugin. In addition, if they ever uninstall the plugin, a feedback form appears so that they can explain why they chose to uninstall it. Essentially, Freemius is a dream come true for web developers.

Debug Bar

This plugin helps users add a debugging option to the admin bar. The debug menu details all the debugging information you need, including queries and caches. This plugin is really useful for developers. Every WordPress website should have this plugin installed.

The plugin also offers other add-ons like filters, short code, and language files. These add-ons can provide you with a lot of insight into how your website is doing and how you can make it better.

The Debug bar plugin also allows you to see a timeline to identify which functions take the most time. You can also view the hooks that are triggered on a page, and view a list of loaded PHP files.

WordFence

Security isn’t something you should take lightly when it comes to your website. WordPress offers a lot of great security plugins for developers. One of the best WordPress plugins for this is called WordFence.

This WordPress plugin offers a wide range of website security settings and features to protect your website from spam, malware, and other attacks. If you want to further protect yourself from malware, check out this malware removal guide.

The endpoint firewall that comes with WordFence is impossible to penetrate. The plugin also comes with a security scanner that will continually scan for any threats. If it detects anything, it will report them to you.

Unfortunately, because the firewall is so strong, the speed of your WordPress website can be affected, and as a result, it might run a little slower.

Query Monitor

This is another example of debugging plugins for developers. Unlike Debug Bar, this WordPress plugin offers many more features.

Besides offering you ongoing information about database queries, Query Monitor also lets you view the rows that are affected. You can edit information such as template file names and rules.

Query monitor is also one of the only WordPress plugins that lets you track REST API redirects and requests and monitor AJAX calls. These functions make Query Monitor a great option for developers that are already working with the REST API plugin.

WooCommerce

This is one of the best-known WordPress plugins on the market. The plugin currently holds a 4.9-star rating and with good reason. It is one of the best eCommerce WordPress plugins. It works great for anyone who is looking to set up any kind of online market or store.

WooCommerce is a great option if you want to add transaction recording abilities, customize products, or collect payments. This plugin is a great option for receiving payments through a variety of payment gateways. Some of the other features it offers include elegant storefront themes and stat management.

WP Reset

Wp reset is a great WordPress plugin for developers. The reset plugin’s design helps you to accelerate the debugging and testing process. WP reset allows you to quickly reset the configurations in the WordPress admin panel to make the adjustment you need to your WordPress site.

With WP Reset, you can reset a WordPress site to the original installation values without modifying or changing any files. You can delete any content and customization, either wiping the slate clean or allowing specific modifications like the theme to remain.

WP reset is also safe to use, and fast. It comes with one-click restore functions and failsafe mechanisms so that you never lose your work. With WP reset, any post, comment, or user that gets accidentally deleted can be instantly restored.

Show IDs by DraftPress

Developers often need reference ids for a wide variety of purposes. In order to make it easier to navigate the WordPress admin panel, the ID numbers have been hidden from view, which can make them difficult to track down. When a developer wants to pull in custom content using the ID tags, it requires a lot more work and it is a bit more complicated.

Fortunately, there are WordPress plugins to fix this. Show IDs is one of the best WordPress plugins for developers who want to work with ID numbers. The install file is small and lightweight. It’s also easy to upload and use. Once you download the zip file, you can activate the plugin in the WordPress plugins menu.

UpdraftPlus

In order to keep your progress safe, you should have a backup option to save your work. This way, even if your website crashes you won’t lose your progress. UpdraftPlus is just the tool for the job.

This WordPress plugin is perfect for storing backups, even remotely. Whether the server crashes, an update doesn’t install correctly, or an error occurs, your information will be safe in the backup. Then you can easily restore the backup in one click. This way, your site is always protected from possible damage.

Here are a few of the best features that come with UpdraftPlus:

• Operates anywhere WordPress does
• Multi-site compatible
• Confirmed ability to back up websites of 100GB
• File size up to the amount permitted by the Web host.

Health Check and Troubleshooting

This is another excellent WordPress plugin for WordPress site developers. You can use it to troubleshoot configuration issues, PHP errors, and MySQL database issues. This way you can keep tabs on the overall health of your WordPress site.

The health check plugin helps you identify how your website is doing overall. It also lets you keep tabs on what your website is doing exactly. The basic interface gives you an overall picture of the site. Then you can dig deeper into the data on the server configuration to make sure it’s running optimally. Health Check helps you give your site a once-over to see how things are going. The troubleshooting mode will temporarily disable all plugins and any non-default theme.

Usersnap

This WordPress plugin checks for bugs in your website’s system. The point-and-click reporting system and the project management tools make it easier than ever to identify bugs.

Usersnap is a great tool because it is everything you need all in one. You can get reports and feedback from customers directly without installing another program. It also screenshots your browser and provides you with efficient communication tools. The context-capturing feature also allows you to isolate the browser, device, or resolution that was the source of the problem.

The plugin does integrate well with other plugins for project management or bug tracking. This way you can maximize your performance.

Styleguide

Would you like to customize fonts and colors in your WordPress themes? With Styleguide you can do that. This WordPress plugin is perfect for those who want to make changes to their website’s appearance, but don’t know a lot of code.

You can personalize your WordPress site with different Google fonts, character sets, and a variety of colors. You can also add support for other themes.

If you want a simple solution for customizing your WordPress site, this plugin is a theme developer’s best friend. To make it easier for users and clients to make their own adjustments, you should think about adding extra support for your themes.

Redirection

A website error can often be as simple as a 404 error or broken link. You could code a redirect pretty easily, but it’s always nice to save a simpler way to do things. That’s where Redirection comes in.

This WordPress plugin is a redirect manager. With this plugin, you can control the parameters of the redirect you want to create. You can also create conditional redirects. This way, only those meeting certain criteria are redirected. You can create a redirect based on login status, a redirect based off of the browser in use, page error type, cookie settings, and more.

Really Simple SSL

An SSL provider must provide you with a certificate. Later, this certificate will be installed on your website’s control panel. This means you will also have to manually change the URL for your website from HTTP to HTTPS.

This process can be a little complicated. That’s what Really Simple SSL is for. With this plugin, you can install an SSL certification with just a few clicks. It also helps you to fix any issues that come up in the process. The plugin has a 5-star rating from thousands of users and with good reason. Really Simple SSL is a great tool.

Simple History

Simple History is a great plugin for all WordPress users, not just developers.

While creating a WordPress site there are a lot of changes and adjustments that need to be made. The plugin dashboard page displays all recent changes made in WordPress. You can get an overview of the recent change history. For example, you can review any plugins that have recently been activated or deactivated.

The plugin will also let you view failed login attempts, new pages and posts, or information on widgets.

Password Protected

WordPress websites are often the target of cyber attacks. Password Protected is one of the best WordPress plugins to help you create strong password systems to protect both yourself and your clients’ websites.

The plugin allows you to set a password for your website and secure your posts, products, and more. It does not protect uploaded files or images, but if you enter a URL for the image file you will still be able to access it.

Other features Password Protected offers include:

• 2-factor authentication
• Easy password set-up
• Monitor and restrict access to websites

LambdaTest

This is a great go-to plugin to test websites across different browsers. Rather than simply simulating the results from a certain browser, the plugin takes screenshots of how your posts and pages will appear on the browser. Rather than conform to synthetic analytics, they use real browsers and operating systems to provide you with the best possible results.

Other great features of LambdaTest are:

• Over 2,000 browser combinations
• Words with local and private sites
• Real-world, real-time browser data
• OS tests and desktop and mobile data

User Switching

This plugin allows you to quickly switch between different user accounts. All it takes is one click. The interface is user-friendly and the plugin is easy to set up.

The user’s screen allows you to switch between users, logging you out of one account and into another instantly. Even if you want to relog into the same account immediately, you can.

The security system for the User switching plugin makes it safe to change from one user to another. If you have to complete complicated tasks across multiple user accounts, this is one of the best WordPress plugins you could choose.

Blog Vault

At times, developers find themselves working with multiple extensions and tools at the same time. When a website has this capability, it increases your productivity. The problem is that it also comes with different challenges and problems as you try to keep track of everything. Blog Vault is perfect for addressing this problem specifically.

This plugin offers a complete solution for all your website management needs. From staging to website migration (transferring a website to another domain), Blog Vault has you covered. The heaviest web migration that was recorded to date was 300GB of storage. Millions of websites use Blog Vault.

Theme Check

The WordPress theme and plugin repositories have made a lot of progress as the years have gone by. Where there was once chaos, there is now a haven of developed and well-designed software. WordPress has set standards now for what can be included. With Theme Check, you can double-check that your theme follows those standards. Even if you don’t plan to submit your theme to the repository, Theme Check can help you make sure the code follows the current standard people expect from a WordPress theme.

This simple plugin is very useful, and not very complex or complicated. That’s why it makes the list of the best WordPress plugins for developers.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular plugins out there. Anyone can use it, but it is an especially helpful plugin for developers. By having a higher SEO rating, your website will be more likely to get a higher ranking on search engines. And higher rankings mean more site visitors.

When Yoast SEO was released, the goal was to make it easy for anyone to use. SEO has many users, from small websites to websites that are popular worldwide. The plugin offers suggestions for title templates and headings to make your brand stand out.

Yoast SEO is a free WordPress plugin, but the free plugin offers limited features. The paid version is more complete.

Advanced Custom Fields

This plugin gives you the power to take full advantage of the custom fields in WordPress. This allows you to create custom post types and pages with functions unique to that page or post. The functions you create here are only applied to the specific page or post you are editing.

You can choose between 30 different custom fields to edit. The plugin also comes with extensive support. Best of all, it is easy to use.

This popular plugin has currently over 1 million downloads. If you do a lot of your customizing in the custom fields, this might be one of the best WordPress plugins to invest in.

Regenerate Thumbnails

If you are looking for a simple, straightforward plugin to edit and manage thumbnail dimensions, Regenerate Thumbnails is the solution for you. This simple plugin helps you regenerate thumbnails for the images you attach. If you have recently changed the dimension of thumbnails in your WordPress theme, this plugin is especially useful to you.

There are a lot of other plugins for developers that perform this same function. The advantage of Regenerate Thumbnails is that it is very popular. With over a million downloads, it is more reviewed and more trusted. This makes it the safest option.

Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a great option for form builder alternatives. It is highly capable and flexible. Besides registration forms and contact forms, you can also create quizzes, polls, and surveys. Essentially, you can create any form you need or want. Then you can track the results from the WordPress dashboard.

This plugin is also outstanding when it comes to compatibility with other plugins. You can seamlessly integrate PayPal, Woocommerce, Mailchimp, and so on. API integrations allow you to extend your customization abilities even more. This is what makes Formidable Forms another one of the best WordPress plugins for developers.

Marker.io

The best way to keep improving something is to get some feedback or constructive criticism. This plugin allows you to get feedback from users and clients so that your WordPress theme or WordPress site can reach its full potential. Screenshots, session replay, and metadata can all be delivered directly to the PM tool you choose.

You can collect non-intrusive live data on every page. In addition, Marker.io enables you to receive detailed feedback from internal stakeholders and colleagues. You can also create shorter feedback forms for external visitors, clients, and users. Make feedback and bug reports more visual with the option to use emojis, arrows, text, and shapes. You can also include a file upload option so that people can share more details. The session replay gives you the ability to see the last 30 seconds or more of the users’ experience before they submitted their report.

CSS Hero

Editing CSS files is time-consuming and complicated. However, it is still the best option out there for styling the front end of your WordPress website.

The CSS Hero plugin makes styling the front end of your site so much easier. It comes with a whole toolkit of resources to use to make the process easier. You can view your customizations in real time, and track how they will look across different screen sizes and devices.

It also comes with safe editing features so you don’t accidentally modify the theme’s files until you want to. This plugin doesn’t impact the performance or the speed of your website.

FAQ on WordPress Plugins for Developers

What is a WordPress plugin for developers?

A WordPress plugin for developers is like a toolkit, full of tools and materials you can use to create or tweak websites.

It’s the software you add to your WordPress website to extend or expand its functionality. You might use these plugins for custom coding, debugging, security enhancement, performance tracking, and so much more.

Why would a developer need WordPress plugins?

Imagine trying to build a house with just a hammer. Not gonna happen, right? That’s why developers use plugins.

They’re tools that can make your work easier, more efficient, and even more fun. Whether you’re optimizing a website for speed, enhancing security, or trying to squash an annoying bug, there’s likely a plugin to help.

Are there free WordPress plugins for developers?

Absolutely! The WordPress plugin directory is like a candy store for developers, full of free treats.

Whether you need a simple CSS editor, a complex debugging tool, or something in between, you can probably find a free plugin that fits the bill. Of course, there are also premium plugins if you need something more advanced.

How does a developer choose the right WordPress plugin?

Choosing a plugin is a bit like choosing the right tool for a job. It needs to match the task at hand. Check out the plugin’s features, read the reviews, and see if there’s support available.

Consider whether the plugin is updated regularly – you don’t want to rely on a tool that might not be maintained. And finally, try it out! The best way to see if a plugin fits your needs is to take it for a spin.

How does a developer install a WordPress plugin?

Installing a WordPress plugin is like assembling a piece of furniture. You go to your WordPress dashboard, click on ‘Plugins’, then ‘Add New’.

Search for your plugin, click ‘Install Now’, and then activate it. And voilà! You’ve got a new piece of software ready to use on your website. Just make sure to read the instructions (the plugin documentation) to use it correctly.

Can developers create their own WordPress plugins?

You bet they can! In fact, developing your own plugin can be a rewarding challenge. It’s like building your own custom toolbox. If you know PHP and understand WordPress Core, you can design a plugin that does exactly what you need. It could be something just for you, or you could share it with the world.

What are the best practices for developers when using WordPress plugins?

When using plugins, you want to be smart. That means keeping them up-to-date, deleting any you’re not using, and only downloading plugins from trusted sources.

Think of it like maintaining a car. Regular tune-ups keep everything running smoothly and prevent breakdowns. And remember – just because you can install a ton of plugins doesn’t mean you should. More isn’t always better.

How can developers enhance WordPress plugin performance?

Optimizing plugin performance is a bit like fine-tuning a musical instrument. You want it to perform at its best.

This could mean using a caching plugin, cleaning up your database, or selectively loading scripts and styles. Sometimes, it could even mean finding a more efficient plugin that does the same job. Every bit of effort can help your website run smoother and faster.

How do WordPress plugins affect website security?

Plugins are like doors and windows in your home. They can let in light and air, but if not secured, they can also let in intruders.

It’s essential to keep plugins updated, delete any unused ones, and only install plugins from trusted sources. Some security plugins can help lock down your website. But remember, security is a process, not a product.

Can developers sell their WordPress plugins?

Yes, indeed! If you’ve created a WordPress plugin that fills a need, why not share it with the world – and maybe make some money in the process?

Like selling handmade crafts at a fair, you can sell your plugins on various marketplaces or your own website. Just make sure to provide great support – that’s a surefire way to keep your customers happy and coming back for more.

Wrapping Up the Best WordPress Plugins for Developers

Using WordPress plugins has become a necessary part of developing a theme or website. The way your website will perform depends on the plugins you choose. This is what makes it so important that you choose the right WordPress plugins for the task.

This list of the best WordPress plugins for developers has the potential to drastically improve the performance of your website. All these plugins are proven to improve the quality of the websites they are used to build. This can even have an impact on the amount of visitors your site attracts.

Since choosing the right plugin makes such a big difference, it’s important to understand the tools you will be working with. This means also understanding exactly what you need and want. With that in mind, here are a few more sources to finish off that might help you make a decision.

If you enjoyed reading this article about the best WordPress plugins for developers, you should read these as well:

• The Best Local WordPress Development Environments
• Web Designer vs. Web Developer: What’s the Difference?
• The Best WordPress Plugins for Photographers
• The Best WordPress Booking Plugins to Streamline Your Business

Author Jovana Smoljanovic Tucakov

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