Useful WordPress Plugins

I’ve been using WordPress for my personal blogging for just over a year now, and over this time period have found and installed a collection of plugins to customize WordPress to my liking. This post describes the plugins I’ve installed to get my blog working just right.

Here are the plugins I’m using:

Plugin NamePlugin SynopsisMy Usage
Disable REST APIDisable the use of the JSON REST API on your website to anonymous users.

By Dave McHale
WordPress has a REST web API  that appears to be unsecured for many of the operations that can be performed on it. I don’t think it is necessary to expose access to the API for unauthenticated access and this plug-in easily let me disable the routes To the API so that they cannot be accessed anonymously.
GutenbergPrinting since 1440. This is the development plugin for the new block editor in core.

By Gutenberg Team
This is the most recent plugin I have installed, and it updates the text editor inside the local WordPress installation to use a more modern editing experience. I think this is going to become the default editor in the future and so it may not be an additional plug-in to install in future versions of WordPress.
Jetpack by WordPress.comBring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users.

By Automattic
I use this plugin to view analytics information from my blog on the wordpress.com website. It establishes a connection from my personally hosted WordPress installation to the WordPress.com service, and I can even manage most of the blog from the WordPress.com site instead of logging into my local installation.
Really Simple SSLLightweight plugin without any setup to make your site SSL proof.

By Rogier Lankhorst, Mark Wolters
The first plugin that I installed was for ensuring encryption was used on all HTTP requests. HTTPS usage has become a de facto expectation for most websites nowadays, and web browsers such as Google Chrome are starting to get more strict in their presentation of websites by indicating if the connection is secure in the address bar. It was very easy to use and through single button click, all http traffic now gets redirected from the HTTP port 80 URL to the HTTPS port 443 URL.
SyntaxHighlighter EvolvedEasily post syntax-highlighted code to your site without having to modify the code at all. Uses Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter.

By Alex Mills (Viper007Bond)
I have source code included in a few of my blog posts, and the default installation of WordPress does not seem to be terribly friendly to the display source code.  Using this plugin, I can add source code and have it nicely formatted with syntax highlighting.
TwitterOfficial Twitter plugin for WordPress. Embed Twitter content and grow your audience on Twitter.

By Twitter
At one point I wanted to embed one of my tweets in a blog post. This plug-in made by Twitter will convert a tweet URL to a full embedded tweet.
UpdraftPlus – Backup/RestoreBackup and restore: take backups locally, or backup to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, (S)FTP, WebDAV & email, on automatic schedules.

By UpdraftPlus.com, DavidAnderson
This next plugin that I installed was for performing daily backups. It supports a number of different back up options, and at first I configured send backups to my email. After a short period of time, I changed the backup location to a Google Drive account. This plug-in does have additional features that can be enabled by paying for it, however the free version handles my needs quite nicely.

I’ll continue to update this post with additional useful plug-ins that I install. I hope this list proves to be useful to others who are using WordPress or are looking to get started at blogging with WordPress.