The plugins I use on this site – the what and the why

This is a snapshot, at time of writing, of what plugins I’m using on my site. And this will vary from one month to the next. I’ve grouped them appropriately too and given an explanation as to what it does for my site and, where appropriate, some additional notes about usage, performance, etc.

For some other context, this is my personal site and is not a money maker. There are some affiliate links on it, but these are rare. As a result, all the plugins I use are free.

Let me address the elephant in the room, though Despite what you may have read on Reddit, or similar, a large number of active plugins is not an automatic security or performance concern. Instead, it’s down to choosing the right quality plugins for what you need. In fact, I’d say hosting is the biggest factor here, as on a good host performance of your site will be strong enough that even a mildly bad performance plugin won’t make a noticeable difference. This site is hosted at Pressable, who I’d highly recommend.

Blocks

Assorted plugins that add to or enhance the block editor.

1. Blocks for GitHub
   Displays your GitHub profile, activity, gists, repos, etc. within the block editor.
2. Block Visibility
   Provides visibility controls and scheduling functionality to all WordPress blocks. I use this to add private notes to some of my content – sometimes I want to add an additional twist on a story that I don’t want public. I just need to make sure I never accidentally disable this plugin… 😬
3. Code Syntax Block
   Extends the existing code block with syntax highlighting
4. Stackable – Gutenberg Blocks
   A library of general purpose blocks, which I use quite a few of on the site.

Embeds

Anything that allows you to embed content into your site, which are not block related.

1. Nomad World Map
   I use this to track where I’ve travelled across the world for work. It’s not been updated for years and has various issues but is still the best solution for what I need. Because of its age, I need to keep an eye on it for security concerns. If anyone is aware of something I could be using instead, please let me know!
2. Plugins List
   Allows you to insert a list of the WordPress plugins you are using into any post/page. It’s one of mine, so I know it’s good 😉
3. Social Post Embed
   Another one of mine, this lets you embed posts from various less-common social media platforms.

Front-end UI Improvements

Anything that can be used to improve the front-end UI.

1. Dracula Dark Mode
   Adds a dark mode. This was the best free version I could find that didn’t mess up the colour scheme of my site.
2. To Top
   Adds a “scroll to top” button on the site.

Images

Plugins that improve/modify site images.

1. Gravatar Enhanced
   Enhanced functionality for Gravatar-ifying your WordPress site.
2. Instant Images
   Upload images to your media library from Unsplash, Openverse, Pixabay and Pexels.
3. Modern Image Formats
   Converts images to more modern formats such as WebP or AVIF during upload.
4. Wapuuvatar
   Use Wapuus for your user avatars.

Performance

Most of these are from WordPress’ own Performance Team, who put out a number of plugins, pre-hopefully going into core, that can help your site performance.

1. Embed Optimizer
   Optimizes the performance of embeds through lazy-loading, preconnecting, and reserving space to reduce layout shifts.
2. Enhanced Responsive Images
   Improves responsive images with better sizes calculations and auto-sizes for lazy-loaded images.
3. Image Placeholders
   Displays placeholders based on an image’s dominant color while the image is loading.
4. Image Prioritizer
   Prioritizes the loading of images and videos based on how visible they are to actual visitors; adds fetchpriority and applies lazy-loading.
5. Imsanity 
   Prevents large image uploads.
6. Optimization Detective
   Provides a framework for leveraging real user metrics to detect optimizations for improving page performance.
7. Performance Lab
   Performance plugin from the WordPress Performance Team, which is a collection of standalone performance features.
8. Performant Translations
   Makes internationalization/localization in WordPress faster.
9. Solo
   Instantly displays a single post or page when that’s a result of a search result. Will also do the same if the search perfectly matches the name of a post/page. One of my own plugins.
10. Speculative Loading
    Enables browsers to speculatively prerender or prefetch pages to achieve near-instant loads based on user interaction.
11. View Transitions
    Adds smooth transitions between navigations to your WordPress site.
12. Web Worker Offloading
    Offloads select JavaScript execution to a Web Worker to reduce work on the main thread and improve the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric.

Post Editor

Various tweaks to the editor, not related to blocks or content embedding.

1. Instant Images
   Upload images to your media library from Unsplash, Openverse, Pixabay and Pexels.
2. Public Post Preview
   Allow anonymous users to preview a post before it is published.

Site Security

The numerous ways I keep my site protected.

1. Akismet Anti-spam
   The best spam protection, imo. Keeps my comments and contact form free of dross.
2. iQ Block Country
   Block visitors from visiting your website and backend website based on which country their IP address is from.
3. Jetpack Protect
   An assortment of security tools, inc. vulnerability scanning and brute force protection.
4. Limit Login Attempts
   Limits the rate of login attempts.
5. Security.txt Manager
   Create, edit, and manage your “security.txt” file directly from the WordPress dashboard. 
6. Two Factor 
   Adds Two-Factor Authentication – one of the best security improvements you can make to your site, imo!

Social Media

1. ActivityPub
   Adds your site to the Fediverse!
2. Autoblue
   Automatically share new posts to Bluesky.
3. ShareOpenly
   The official plugin for ShareOpenly, adding modern, open social media sharing links to your website! And, another of mine.
4. Social Post Embed
   Yes, anotherone of my plugins, this lets you embed posts from various less-common social media platforms.

WP Admin

Plugins that improve the WP Admin experience.

1. Article Word Count Column
   Adds a word count of each post and page to the list in the admin area and makes the column sortable. I only use this occasionally so could disable it in the meantime but it doesn’t appear to add any performance overhead that’s noticeable, so I leave it active.
2. Draft Links
   Add menu links that take you straight to your drafts. One of my plugins.
3. World Domination
   Another of mine, this adds WordPress market coverage summary to your dashboard.
4. Yoast Duplicate Post
   Makes it easy to clone posts and pages.

Anything Else

1. Artiss.blog Configuration
   When I want to tweak my own site I use this plugin to do so – it makes it easier to disable it, in case of issues, but also to move it between one theme and another. Right now it…
   • Defines a new default Gravatar
   • Outputs automatic disclosure messages for any affiliate links on the site
   • Adds shortcodes for linking to Wikipedia, LinkedIn embeds
   • Adds a Block Patterns link to WP Admin menu
   • Under the Jetpack menu, adds a shortcut to the modules
   • Defines light/dark theme colours
   • Prevents logging in via email
2. Broken Link Checker
   Easily find and fix broken links on your entire site. Was always a performance hog, but now moves the checking out to the cloud.
3. Draft Concluder
   Email users that have outstanding drafts. One of mine.
4. Jetpack
   Security, performance, and marketing tools. Modules I’m using are…
   • Account Protection
   • Asset & Image CDN
   • Blocks
   • Brute Force Protection
   • Carousel
   • Forms
   • Jetpack Social
   • Jetpack Stats
   • Newsletter
   • Notifications
   • SEO Tools
   • Search
   • Secure Sign-in
   • Shortcode Embeds
   • Site Verification
   • Sitemaps
   • Tiled Galleries
   • VideoPress
   • WP.me shortlinks
5. No Self Ping
   Mine again! Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.
6. Safe Redirect Manager
   Manage URL redirects.
7. Twentig
   Adds customization features for the Twenty Twenty Five theme that I’m using.