Best WordPress Plugins: 15 Essentials Every Blog Needs

do you happen to help with installing certain plugins or guiding us through set ups? i get so confused

Awesome list of plugins! I will definitely need to update my plugin list after this… Thanks for sharing this!

I was having all kinds of trouble with comment spam, so I tested several plug-ins and settled on this: WP-SpamShield. Maybe once a month a spammy comment gets through…but it takes me a minute to realize that it is because the comment is kind and appropriate…the web address is the giveaway.

Thanks Jeni for this list. It’s a very different list than I have been seeing. I have several of the plug-ins you suggest, but there are several others that I’m going to be spending some time checking out. Also… thanks for encouraging me to spend more time with Yoast. This is a huge weakness for me. I just don’t “get” keywords. Sure I get the “green light” for my posts…but I don’t think I’m any good at choosing great keywords.

All the best…

Before read this article no idea about WordPress plugin. Now, i clearly understand how to use WordPress Plugin.

What a great list of plugins. I’ve been looking for one along the lines of what Optinmonster does but hadn’t been able to find one that was recommended highly enough. Thank you 🙂

Great list; I use many of those but will certainly try Vault as I use WPBackUp and haven’t had a response to a support request for two weeks !

A recent plugin that I found is Dropbox Photo Siteloader. If you use Dropbox to collect your photos or receive photos from brands/PRs you work with, this plugin pulls all your selected photos from Dropbox folders into your media library. No more downloading and re-uploading !

I have some of these, but I think I will look into a few on your list. Especially the vault press. Why do have an extra plugin for answering comments, when commentluv does that? The one thing I love about commentluv is that it will email a reply.

Love the list Jeni! and I have been meaning to pop over and say THANK YOU for not only this amazing list because I was looking for a new popup for subscriptions but also because I followed your tutorial on how to put Pins on the sidebar and guess what?

Doing happy dance because I got 1075 new subscribers last month and going strong this month!! For finishing my first year, I am a happy blogger.lol

Thank you, thank you!!!

I love this list of plugins, Jenny. Definitely going to be keeping track of this one. My webmistress is always yelling at me to stop using so many plugins lol! If I can whittle it down to just a handful that I need – she’d be happier than a robin in springtime! I do a ton of revisions before I actually publish a blog post – most have anywhere between 5 and 12 revisions – so I am definitely going to give the WP Optimize a go. I think if that does the trick with cleaning up some needed space she’ll be super happy and let me have some more plugins to play with! 🙂

If you write a lot of sponsored posts or share affiliate content, having the Ultimate Nofollow plugin installed is really helpful. You simply check a box when adding a link to make it nofollow.

I’m a free girl – for now. If it’s free and can help my site, I’ll give it a try. I rarely ever pay for plugins. I did purchase one a few weeks ago simply because I loved how simple it was to set up and it actually pulls the correct images from my posts when sharing (even if I don’t have one uploaded in the Social section on Yoast). It’s called Cresta Social Share Counter Pro (there is a free version). I’m a huge Buffer fan as well, and Cresta Pro allows me to have my Buffer share button up there with the rest of them. A lot of social share counter plugins didn’t show my Google+ shares or sometimes my Pinterest shares and Cresta has been grabbing them all and showing them. It was relatively inexpensive too – just $5.87USD ($4.99EURO).

What are your thoughts on the Social Warfare plugin from Dustin Stout? The Lieutenant’s Package is $24 (1 time payment for 1 website) and I love that I can customize certain things that I want tweeted out or pinned. Since I purchased Cresta – I was thinking that perhaps purchasing this as well would be redundant, but there are a lot of features available that Cresta alone doesn’t offer. Would love to know what your thoughts are on it. Another bloggy friend – Julie DeNeen – swears by it so naturally I just have to have it lol!

Just ran WP-Optimize … 5097 post revisions deleted, 2479 unused akismet comments metadata items deleted, and I cleared up a whopping 47.8MB of space on my server! Woo hoo! Thanks so much for THAT little gem!

Great list – I’m definitely going to try a few new plugins that you listed. Have you found a favorite instagram plugin? I’d love to feature my IG posts in a widget on my sidebar or footer. Thanks!

Thanks for this! I’ve been meaning to install a comment reply notification plugin, and now you’ve motivated me. Also, as a food blogger I couldn’t function without a good recipe plugin. I used to use Ziplist, but since they shut down I’ve been happy with Easy Recipe Plus.

I like Pippity for pop-up/out/over for opt-ins.
And I just discovered and am in love with Ultimate Social Deux for social sharing. Both of these are paid plug ins, but well worth the $$.

Jen,

I am so glad to know that I already have more than half of these plug-ins. It means I am on the right track. What do you know about mail chimp and are there any free email capture plug ins that you can recommend? I am happy to pay for optin monster if it is a necessity I just want to make sure there is nothing else out there before I do.

Thanks

I love SumoMe for my e-mail opt-ins using their List Builder app. They also have a social sharing app called Share that I love. It has a really great mobile optimization, where the buttons will float at the bottom of the mobile screen!

Oh my goodness I don’t know what I’d do without Vaultpress. I had a scare a little while back when my blog went down and I thought I got hacked and was so scared I was going to lose everything. After that, I was happy to pay the $5 a month so I could rest easy at night. I haven’t tried Optin Monster yet, but have heard such great things about it and plan on purchasing it in a month or so. What a great list, Jeni!

A great list, thanks! It’s nice to see I stumbled upon some of the good ones myself; in the meantime I’ll be looking to update based on your list. Thanks!

I used a pop-up for awhile then stopped and now I’m back at it again. I use pop-up ally which is also free and has the same fully customizable options that OptinMonster does, including an exit intent popup. I’ve only been blogging for about 8 months but have never backed up my site. Yikes! I will e investing inVaultPress today!!

Great list! A few of my faves that I use personally & recommend to my VA clients:
– Popup Ally – a beautiful pop-up to gather email address. It’s great b/c you can set it to recognize IP addresses so it doesn’t become annoying to regular visitors.
– Go Responsive Gallery – a paid plug-in but a beautiful gallery for all of my projects. And once it’s set up, it’s automated. I don’t have to populate it at all! I select categories and as I post, it populates the corresponding gallery.
– Tweetily – automatically tweets out old blog posts. I have surprisingly received great response to old posts from this!

Thanks for the list!

Great list! I love discovering new plugins. Here’s a run down on some of my most favorite.

I used to use Comment Reply Notification, but I’ve switched every one of my sites and my clients’ sites to Subscribe to Comments Reloaded. The most important feature of Subscribe to Comments Reloaded, in my opinion, is that it provides an unsubscribe link (crucial with all the anti spam laws). However, that’s just one of its many features. You can give readers a drop-down option for all comments or just replies to their comments, or choose which the checkbox defaults to. Plus, you can customize the notification messages–as well as the subscription management page on your own site. Not only is Subscribe to Comments Reloaded constantly being updated with new features (it has an active development team!), but it imports all your comment subscriptions from Comment Reply Notification so you don’t lose any in the switch. (Yes, I’m a big fan. And it’s free!)

Other comment plugins I love are Comment Probation (don’t automatically approve all future comments by this author) and No Self Pings.

For security, I use CloudFlare (free service + plugin) combined with Sucuri Security (free plugin) and Login Security Solution (free plugin).

I use Revision Control to keep the revisions from getting out of hand (because sometimes I don’t want to delete them all in one fell swoop).

I was sad when they removed the shortlink option from the admin toolbar, so I always install Reenable Shortlink Item In Admin Toolbar.

As much as I love Gravity Forms, I’m finding Ninja Forms is a great free alternative if you don’t need all the bells and whistles of Gravity Forms.

Align RSS Images answers a frequent client query for making the images keep their alignment in feeds. (Working with a plugin developer on another plugin that provides a lot of custom/summary RSS feed options–so excited about it!)

I like Simple Feed Stats for the sites that don’t use Feedburner or Feedblitz.

RealTidbits PushQuote is another one popular with clients.

With the demise of nRelate and its popular posts plugin, I’ve been using Google Analytics Top Content Widget.

I just read about Relevanssi – A Better Search and Better Internal Link Search. Still trying them out but impressed so far, especially with the options of Better Internal Link Search.

And for contributor/group blogs, I love Fanciest Author Box, Edit Flow, and Draft Notification.

And in going over my favorites list on wordpress.org I realized that I forgot one of my most favorite plugins for authors: MyBookTable by Author Media. I use the developer version of the plugin to have access to all the features, but the free version offers authors the ability to create a simple and professional sales page for each of their books without having to fight with PayPal button code. Upgrade for the ability to display Amazon or Goodreads reviews of your book right on your book sales page, use your Amazon Associates ID for affiliate income, and a whole lot more! You can even import a list of ISBN numbers to create an entire bookstore right on your site.

It’s been on my list to install OptinMonster. Thanks for the reminder!!

Just added in comment reply notification. Thanks for the tip!

I love Mail Munch (free or premium). It’s a completely customizable subscribe box and a pop up subscribe window.
We are using pretty close to the exact same list, but I am excited to try the one that gets the junk out of your site!

Thanks for this great list; finding lots of useful stuff in the comments, too!

I have Yoast installed, but I’m just getting started.

I agree with previous commenters–I really like Sumome, too!

Thanks for the amazing list (and to the commenters, too). The only problem I have now is I will be spending a lot of time checking out different plugins! Have you had the same problem I have in finding some cause conflicts with others?

Thanks so much for this great list! I installed several plug-ins per your suggestions. I recently installed SumoMe and that has been really helpful. It’s free for the first year.

This came at the perfect time! I just switched hosts and when I did the counts on the Share Buttons Adder went to zero. The only fix would have been to upgrade to the pro version. So instead I installed the genesis simple share and all my counts are back! Not to mention I love how streamline it is and doesn’t distract from my content too much! Now to check out some of the others here! Thanks Jeni!

I have been googling “best wordpress plugins” for weeks now and this is a great list 🙂 You’re awesome!

Check out the SumoMe plugin by AppSumo (http://www.appsumo.com/sumome/), it combines a couple of the plugins you listed into one, very easy to use, very customizable plugin that makes social media marketing, email signups, and a few other things a breeze. Great list!

Great post Jeni. I’ve been trying to figure out how to activate comment reply notification for a while now and you supplied the solution. Took a few moments to download, activate and configure and I’m in business. Thanks again for your help!

This post just helped me help a client of mine that needed a very complex form in their site. I was struggling to get 3 plugins to do the job, and it still wasn’t what they were looking for. After reading this, I downloaded gravity forms, and 2 hours later, their perfect form is up. They think I’m a genius! Thanks for this post!

Jeni,

There were definitely some good plugins mentioned in this list. I’m curious though that with all of those plugins installed on your WordPress, what kind of affect does it have on site speed?

I’ve personally done away with XML Sitemaps in favor of the Yoast sitemap. I like that its all available in one plugin. Though I admit, there have been times where the sitemap wouldn’t work because of some conflict. The fix is usually easy enough but for non-tech people I can see why XML Sitemaps might be the better choice.

Hey Jen

I hope to get my new website launched this year (or before Zombies strike!), so this is a fabulously useful post – thank you! I am a complete non-techie, meaning I might have to look up the dictionary to spell ‘technoology’ (wait – was that right? 😛 )! So easy and effective options are my best friends 😉

Thank you #HUGS
Kitto

This is such a helpful list! I have some of these already active on my blog (love Yoast!). My blog is in WP, but our website is sorely outdated (Dreamweaver). Next week, we’re relaunching our entire website, blog included, as a WP site. I’m looking forward to updating the blog with a few of these!

Question: Will a plugin (such as VaultPress) apply to the entire site, or just the blog portion? We’ll have a full-blown website with a WooCommerce store and blog.

I LOVE the google analytics dashboard! Makes tracking analytics so much easier!

Thanks for these, Jeni. I’ve installed the first four so far!

Can you recommend a good RSS stats plugin? I’ve currently got Simple Feed Stats installed, and that seems to be OK, but I’m just wondering if there’s anything better. For your info, I just want to use the out-of-the-box WordPress feed.

Also, can you recommend an alternative to Jetpack Subscribe? I like that it’s simple, but there’s zero control over subscribers, and only one verification email ever gets sent out (even if a person tries to subscribe again), which is a worry. There’s potential for losing subscribers without even knowing it. I don’t really need Mailchimp or anything like that, just a simple, reliable way for readers to subscribe and receive posts by email, and for me to have some control over my subscriber list. I was considering MailPoet.

I’m always worried that if I have too many plugins installed, it will slow down my site. Am I being paranoid for nothing? How many plugins do you (or any blogger) usually run?

Jeni,

Thank you so much! I installed three of them on my blog, http://www.thechinesequest.com well two out of three. On the third o found one that seemed to be better than what you recommended. What do you think of the bone I used instead.

These plug-ins are great and I really appreciate you letting us know about them.

I installed frizzly, subscribe to comments reloaded (instead of comment reply notification, and CommentLuv. Oh. Forgot. Also installed Comment Redirect.

I hope I get lots more engagement now on my blog.

A great list, thanks!! I’m happy I found a couple on my own, and in the mean time I’ve installed some of your suggestions.

I just installed Frizzly and it’s so easy to get it up and running! Love it! I also love the Yoast plug-in, really simplified SEO for me!

Great list! Pinned it. I use a number of these. My favorite plug-in right now is Optimize Press. It isn’t free, but it allows me to drag and drop to make beautiful opt-in pages, sales landing pages, online newsletters, membership pages and more.

Jeni, I wish I had found this a year ago. It took me a lot of energy finding the plug-ins I use. Although I use a couple of these mentionee or at least comparable. However not all is lost, I did implement a compatible version of the WP optimizer and I love the idea of the comment luv and comment redirect. Thanks

I love slim stats. It is an analytics type plugin, but it is easy to use within your wordpress site.

Wow, what a great post! I’m so glad it was in my Pinterest feed this morning. I’ve found a few interesting plug-ins in the comments, too.

As for me, my go-to plugi-ins are:

-Ninja Forms – much easier to use/create different types of forms that Contact Form 7.
-All in One SEO Pack – I’ve tried Yoast’s but find it lacking when compared to All in One.
-Disqus for Comments – I like it because it’s used on so many websites and helps your content get found.
-upPrev – this creates a pop up in the lower right hand corner of your site of “related” content to help keep visitors on your site longer.
-Click to Tweet – it lets you create a pre-populated tweet within your blog post to help encourage sharing of your content

Thanks again for the great list! 🙂

Thank you for the list. I’ve since checked into Wordfence and I love that it has its own caching program. I’ve been using WP-Super Cache but have had trouble with it conflicting with other plugins. After installing it, I checked my site speed over at pingdom and found it to be back below two seconds. Thank you.

Great list but I have to add Social Metrics. I use the FREE version but there is a premium version as well. It allows me to see the number of shares my posts have received on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Stumbleupon, Digg and Linkedin all in one place, in my WordPress dashboard.

I installed anti spam plug in that you recommended and in the last few days I have no spam in my folder to get rid of. This is great, as I was constantly emptying my spam folder, and now I can devote my time to other things. Thanks so much for the tip. I will be trying others…..

I’m looking to limit the number of plugins I use now. I think I have almost 40 that are active and I worry about slowing down my site.

Good information, Jeni. I plan to add a few on your list. I also really like the Smart Youtube plugin for those times you want to insert a video on your post instead of a link people have to click to get to the video. There’s also the option to personalize the settings so that no spam or advertising connected to the video you embed gets added too. I did one just this week on my February “Healthy, Wealthy and Wise! Celebrating Women!” post showing how remembering a simple acronym could save someone’s life. As a nurse, I feel it’s important to present easy ways for people to keep things in their memory as far as their health is concerned. Link:
http://wp.me/p2U2Tf-6H0 All you have to do after adding this plugin is add a “v” right after after the http on the Youtube URL you are putting in your post. I love it. You can also just visit my homepage at http://www.mytributejournal.com and you can see it on my latest post.
Thanks again, Mary Wilding

I would say Yoast SEO is the best plugin for handling meta tags, description. Anyone with basic knowledge about the SEO can easily optimize webpage with relevant tags.

YOAST is a boss plugin i ever used. I hardly have to do for my onpage customization. Comment redirect is also nice but i never used it before. I am just starting it on my dite. thanks for sharing a informative article.

Hi, Jeni, finally updated my blog with your listed plug-ins. Really awesome post and thank you so much for all info.

All these plugins have been added to my blog just after reading your article. thanks

I’ve been using WPSecurity and it’s been fantastic for me, my ‘site is now a fortress

Hi Jeni,
Thanks so much for this list! It’s extremely helpful! (Your posts always are.)

Do you have a favorite plugin for no right click? To protect images and content?

Love,
Taryn

Hi Jeni! I love the idea of being able to thank a visitor making a comment for the first time. However, Comment Redirect hasn’t been updated in 3 months. As a new blogger, I’ve heard to beware of using plugins that haven’t been updated in a while for security reasons. What are your thoughts?

Thanks for this great list of plugins! I’m always looking for new ones since I’m still pretty new to WordPress. I’m looking to build my blog community so I’m looking forward to trying out Comment Redirect and Comment Reply Notification. Loving all your blog tips!

Great list and I already have a lot of these and love them! I found the blog because I was looking for the comment luv plugin and here it is! Thanks so much for putting this together! ~ Laurel

Good tips on that list. I found some cool plugins here that I will definitely try them, thank you.

Hi,

Good information and Very good list of wp plug-in.

Thank you!

Jeni thanks for this awesome list of plugins! I keep meaning to add the comment reply notification but I forget. Always! Thanks for reminding me why I need it!

Thanks a bundle for sharing such a helpful article keep it up
Cheers

Great list of wordpress plugins. As we all know that plugins are the real power of wordpress and every wordpress blogs are incomplete without plugins but choosing the right plugin for a blog is the toughest thing……Thanks a lot for the great list of wordpress plugins. 🙂

Wow! Thank you so much for this list. I’ve installed WordFence and the Simple Trackback plugin and I love how easy they were to set up. Thanks again!

Thanks for this great list! I already use some of them but I’m definitely going to look into the other ones mentioned!

Thank you for the guide, can look at wordpress plugin section for hours trying different ones. Atleast with this guide I know exactly what to go for, thanks.

Tnx Jeni Elliott

Thanks for the guide

Thanks for this nice overview and for the helpful links. It is a really ‘need to know’ information.

Hey Jeni! Interesting blog you have here. Thanks.

I love JetPack and Tweetily. They do so much of my social media work! Also, JetPack (free version) features some nice side-bar options.

Hello, Jeni!
Valuable content, as always! Thank you, thank you!
I use CommentLuv, wordfence, antispam, frizzly, simple share buttons adder and almost all of the plugins you’ve recommended. Hehe.
Thank you as always, Jeni!

Hey
I want to insert “Like us on Facebook,follow on twitter” kind of box or buttons so that my viewers can like my facebook page and follow on twitter. Please suggest a plugin for the same.
Waiting for reply

Thank you for the list!!! Definitely usefull. i would like to know which plugin do you use to show the total number of comments CCC(151comments.leave your below).Thank you very much.

Thanks for the amazing list of plugins! I’ve most of these plugins installed already but the Editorial Calendar is a life saver:)

Oh, thank you for the CommentLuv. I will try it now. Just what i was looking for)))

It is a great list of some essential WordPress plugins. Now it will be easy for me to suggest some best plugins to my client’s website. Thanks you so much for sharing.

Thank you so much for this great list. I found and installed a couple new plugins.

This post has been so insightful. I have been blogging for just over a year, and I’m slowly starting to look into plug-ins. But there are so many to choose from – it’s quite overwhelming. Thank you for the much needed information.

Hi,
thanks for this list of best wordpress plugins 🙂 I definitely recommend also this plugin http://bit.ly/webwidgets, which allow add to your website floating share buttons, email subscribe widget, pop up window, contact form and many more feautures for free 🙂

Fabulous list! I finally updated my free wordpress blog to a hosted one and this is such a wonderful list, it’s helped me a lot to choose plug ins.

Hi Jen thanks. Good article. This is what I need since i am an amateur blogger.

Hi! I would like to ask if I can use several plugins for the security of my blog at the same time, such as Akismet and Suucuri? Would it cause a problem? Thank you!

So informative and helpful! Checking out your other posts on setting up a blog. Thank You!!

Thanks for sharing such an interesting wordpress plugins.!!!!!!! Those are some great choices there.!!!!!!!!

Hi Maven, i absolutely got tons of value from your post. Please i have 2 quick questions.

1. What is the number of plugins every blogger shouldn’t exceed? I currently have about 18 installed, would you consider that number outrageous. Please could you also check out my site and offer me a

2. Your font is really beautiful. would you suggest plugins that would give me beautiful fonts just like yours?
Finally, would you spare a few seconds to check this site and offer me your candid advice http://www.samozoani.com

Thanks for this helpful Blog.
I used a WordPress plugin that I found interesting. So I would like to recommend it.
The plugin helps me quickly create and customize images before inserting them in my blog post.
Check at: https://getpikiz.com/wordpress-plugin/
It’s free.

Thank you so much for this post! I have been so lost trying to figure out which plug ins I should be using. Are there any visual widgets you recommend?

Great Post for every blogger or website owner to install new plug-ins in their WordPress site for optimizing their site
for search engine.

Plugins are the another reasons why WordPress has become so popular. Mainly plugins add additional activities to theme and ultimately on website and make sure a site to become dynamic and the best . As there are a number a plugins online , the best plugins must be chosen to get a success website . In this case this article will be more helpful surely .

“Participants Database” Plugin seems to be well thought-out. One of our faculty wanted a way to generate student photos for a student roster in our LMS. This plugin installed easily. I added a dropdown list for a course list, and added an upload photo option. When the user submits their info, an email is generated giving them a private “update record” URL so that can add to or modify their personal info. There is also an option to re-send the update record URL to their email address. Uses shortcodes and shortcode switches/modifiers to post database info to one or more pages.

Listed plugins are best and easy to use. I use them.
Please tell me.. plugins for website rating reviews in post bottom.??

thanks for awesome article regarding the wordpress plugins.

Great list of plugins, and I’m really glad you made the point about how plugins should be lightweight, easy to use, and conflict free. Having fewer “heavy” plugins have really helped to speed up my site.

I have enjoyed how she has set the plugins based on what the person is trying to accomplish very well though out post

Great list! I have used most of those plugins and will always rely on Yoast and WordFence. Have found UpdraftPlus to be a good free alternative to Vault. Well, written article. Thanks for sharing.

I want to add one in the list
i.e Shortcodes Ultimate
It helps to make the articles more attractive. Especially the buttons and the carousel proved to the best for bloggers 🙂

Nice article. especially for new bloggers

Hi Jeni,

Really useful list.

I already started using Yoast and Login Lockdown on my website.

For contact forms, I found WPForms Lite to be easier than Contact Form 7. You should check it out:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/

Good Plugins. I would like to add one more WordPress plugin in this amazing list. I have found Blog Designer Pro plugin which has amazing features that will help you to design an attractive and eye catching blog page. I hope you also like it.

Nice list by the way! I had started using of WP Optimize plugin a couple of weeks ago on a project. Thanks for your entire team for sharing this article, would be pretty much useful for upcoming people. Definitely, I will bookmark this source for future reference.

Nice list by the way! I had started using of WP Optimize plugin a couple of weeks ago on a project. Thanks for your entire team for sharing this article, would be pretty much useful for upcoming people.

There is no doubt that These are the must have WordPress plugins for every blogger.

Currently I am using few of them like Yoast SEO, Jetpack, W3 Total Cache, Redirection, Wp Smush.it.

For WordPress security, I am using ” iThemes security ” also known as ” Better WP Security “.

Thanks for sharing this list with us.

Thank you so much for this list! I am a new blogger so I am still trying to build my foundation. This was very helpful 🙂
I would also recommend SumoMe. That has gotten me the most subscribers over others!

Hey,
I read your article and I really like your article, You giving me a great knowledge for plugins and It is very helpful for making the great site.Thank you so much for sharing the useful article with an online.
With Regards,
Sarah.

This is a great list! I’ve had “install Wordfence” on my to do list for weeks now, thanks for reminding me! (PS-Does it slow the site down at all? That is my only hesitation.)

If I had to add any to the conversation it would be:

Facebook Open Graph, Google+ and Twitter Card Tags
I don’t use this so much for myself because I use a lot of featured images that work just fine. Since some social media sites grab really random images from a page without featured images, I use this plugin on client sites to ensure that the links shared from the site look professional and have images attached. I may use in tandem with the Default Featured Image plugin.

Ultimate Nofollow
I don’t really do any affiliate marketing, but still use nofollow to handle links that Google might misinterpret. I really like how easy it is to use–just a checkbox.

Hello, I just want to say, thank you for telling me all of these sweet WordPress plugins. I have just started up my blog and I am constantly trying to make improvements, thank you. I will be checking out this website a lot in the future!

Oh my gosh, I just came across this article through a Pinterest search and am SO happy I did! Thank you for the great insight, I had looked at a ton of articles earlier and none of them talked about Opt In options (weird, right?). I have already installed a few more as well- thanks again!

I was using Jetpack for the link within function but had to disable it – what do you recommend instead? I’m finding it hard to find something I like. Great tips – loving all the comments too there is so much information here.

Hi thanks for such a great and helpful post!!!!!
Already tried some of your suggestions and Im loving them.
I tried looking for Wordfence but couldnt find it, do you have another suggestion for a different plug in that does something similar?
Thanks!

After reading this article….I really need to update my plugin list