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43 comments
  1. Marius Profile Pic

    Thanks for the list, I’ve been using the exact plugins which you have recommended, except for security (GOTMLS).

    I do have a (bit unrelated) curiosity: why no external links to any of the plugins which you’ve mentioned? In fact, there are no links at all in the content. It seems… weird.

    I’m trying to understand if it’s an SEO reason for that, or you guys just missed adding links.

    1. Sujay Pawar Profile Pic

      “Astra Hooks” works on just Astra theme, whereas “Insert headers and footers” plugin works with any theme. Any non theme / design related things and functionality should always be in the plugin.

  2. markhenry Profile Pic

    Keep up this good work. Excellent post.
    I would like to suggest you Blog Designer WordPress Plugin to add in your list. With the help of Blog Designer you can revise, edit and reorganize your blog page. And also you will get many features like. multilingual translation ready, 15+ different and unique blog templates, fully customizable admin interface, import/export, custom post type support, live preview & many more.

  3. Bastian Rappl Profile Pic

    Hey Elvina,
    thank you for this article! I think Yoast Seo is great. We use it for optimizng our blog posts.
    I´m missing a conclusion of social media automation tools for a WordPress blog. What do you think is the best herefore?
    Right now I´m using Blog2Social. It´s a very userfriendly automation tool for sharing, scheduling and resharing all your blog posts to up to 15 (!) different social networks. It is a big time safer as well. You can easy access the free version of the Blog2Social WebApp or/and WP-plugin. There´s also a premium paid version for all the professionals around ;)!

    Anyway, thanks a lot!
    Cheers
    Bastian

  4. Valente Profile Pic

    Hello, thank you for your recommendations
    I have Formidable Pro forms , Does it work well with Astra or Does it have any comatibility issues that we should be aware of?

    1. Team Astra Profile Pic

      We are not aware of any compatibility issues with Formidable forms. If you do notice any issues, feel free to open up a support ticket 🙂

  5. Megan Brain Profile Pic

    In regards to insert headers and footers would you reccomend using that for Google analytics code or Astra custom layouts? I’ve been trying 1to figure out how to do it with Astra which I’ve just began using. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks so much.

  6. Pingback: Black Friday WordPress Deals 2018 - 16 Must Buy Offers

    1. Team Astra Profile Pic

      Hello,

      There are several plugins that you can use to show related posts. It is hard to recommend one. May be you can take a look at this article and look at the available options. You can choose the one that best suits your needs.

  7. Brendon Profile Pic

    Noticed WPAstra.com is using Gravity Forms but isn’t listed above. Looking for an Astra-friendly form builder that integrates with email campaigns (e.g. MailChimp) and CRMs (e.g. Zoho). Unfortunately, ConvertPro offers a feature for regular forms (or CRM integration). Gravity supports forms with integrations but does not offer the same sophistication of ConvertPro for email list signup. One product to do all, that would be grand!

    1. Team Astra Profile Pic

      Hello Brendon,

      This post was written way back and we weren’t using Gravity Forms then. 🙂

      However, Convert Pro works great with MailChimp. You can definitely use them together. Please feel free to get in touch if you need help with anything.

  8. Martin Profile Pic

    Great selection of plugins! For me, a very important plugin is stepFORM. Through it, I create quizzes for visitors to my site and they successfully pass various tests. In general, users really like it.

  9. Paul Profile Pic

    Could you point me in a direction on how to get a „recommended articles“ section under my posts? All plugins I tried didn’t show up…

    1. Team Astra Profile Pic

      Hello,

      It won’t be possible with the existing settings to display the recommended articles under the Astra Blog page.

      While we do have the same in works so you can expect the same in future updates.

      Also, you can try a few plugins listed here which might help you achieve this requirement.

  10. Laurence Profile Pic

    We are a small business; we have installed Astra Pro for developing our several web sites and would like to know if installing the Pro version of iThemes would conflict with basic Wordfence and Jetpack or should they be disabled before using iThemes. We are using Updraft plus and backing up to the cloud.

    1. Team Astra Profile Pic

      Hello Laurence,

      We haven’t heard of any issues occurring. You could go ahead and give it a try or contact the plugin authors who’ll be the best to advise you on this. 🙂

  11. Thiru Profile Pic

    We have been using Astra Pro theme on our site. We don’t find the newsletter subscription form in available default widgets.
    How do we create the email subscriber form which can be placed on top of front page, sidebar and within posts as well?

    1. Team Astra Profile Pic

      Hello Thiru,

      Thank you for getting in touch!

      I’d like to inform you that the Astra theme can be used to manage the global styling options of your website like color, typography, layout, etc.

      Subscription forms are a part of the content on your website that can be added using a page builder or a third party plugin to do so.

      You can take a look at Convert Pro, a lead capture tool for WordPress built by us.

  12. Andy Profile Pic

    Thank you, your post helped me so much. I installed too many plugins, and because of this, the speed of my site slowed down a lot. After reading your post, I realized which plugins I really need. Thanks!

  13. Krishna Loyal Profile Pic

    I love stepFORM for WordPress. With it, you can build quizzes for visitors to your site. They successfully pass the tests, I think it’s a great plugin.

  14. Yvonne McLeod Profile Pic

    Yvonne here again – does the ASTRA PRO theme work with Jet Pack plug – or would it slow it down/cause problems??? Cheers

  15. Eric Profile Pic

    Great article but… what about Secupress ? Best in town when it comes to secure wordpress IMAO ! Not to mention Rank Math when it comes to SEO !

  16. Marcus Profile Pic

    Hey great list thank you, if you must use an SEO plugin the All in One plugin is decent, but prefer a proper platform like SEMRush, LocalAdworks or Ahrefs. SEO plugins only do part of the job and it’s yet another plugin and more code weight.

  17. Dirk DV Profile Pic

    Hi, this is a really nice overview of some of the best WordPress plugins.

    I do think however this article should be updated including WPvivid Backup & Migration (Backup plugin), Fluent Forms (Contact Form Plugin) and FluentSMTP (Email Plugin). These are really among the best plugins out there with 100.000 to 200.000 installs and solid 5 star ratings on the WordPress repository. I use these on all my websites and these are just top notch.

  18. Jeanette Profile Pic

    Just an observation that none of the WPMU Dev plugins are included anywhere in this article and we use pretty much all of them and sometimes I’m questioning if we have the best suite of plugins. I guess I just want to be confident and also try not to have FOMO about this list 🙂

  19. George Lerner Profile Pic

    Redirection plugin: “The plugin works in a similar manner to how WordPress handles permalinks and should not result in any noticeable slowdown to your site.” All the tracking and logging options can (should?) be turned off; use Google Analytics to track that data instead of something on-site.

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