Starting with the Right WordPress Plugins

Here is a list of var­i­ous plu­g­ins that we have come across and we think would help you get the bet­ter out of Word­Press, our themes and life in gen­er­al.

Images related

• EWWW Image Opti­mizer to auto­mat­i­cal­ly opti­mize your images: http://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/
• WP-Smush.it — it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly opti­mize your images using Yahoo’s online ser­vice smush.it: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
• Force Regen­er­ate Thumb­nails will process all your exist­ing image attach­ments and will recre­ate all of the need­ed thumb­nails sizes by the cur­rent theme, while delet­ing the old ones so you don’t waste host­ing space; very help­ful when switch­ing themes: http://wordpress.org/plugins/force-regenerate-thumbnails/

Moving WordPress sites

• Dupli­ca­tor — this is one of the eas­i­est and most help­ful WP trans­fer plu­g­ins out there; you sim­ply back­up your entire Word­Press instal­la­tion, data­base includ­ed, download/upload the result­ing files, and run a sim­ple php installer that will recre­ate the pre­vi­ous instal­la­tion on your new host­ing, domain, or what­ev­er: http://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/
• WP Clone — anoth­er site mov­ing tool: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-clone-by-wp-academy/

Backup solutions

• Back­Up­Word­Press is one of the eas­i­est to use back­up plu­g­ins out there: http://wordpress.org/plugins/backupwordpress/
• Back­W­Pup Free is one the most used back­up plu­g­ins (it also has a Pro ver­sion): http://wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/
• Vault­Press is the ulti­mate back­up solu­tion from the mak­ers of Word­Press, Automat­tic, but it is a sub­scrip­tion based solu­tion so not free: http://vaultpress.com/

Sidebars and Widgets

• WooSide­bars is a very use­ful side­bar man­age­ment plu­g­in that will help you get cus­tom side­bars for any post or page, with added advance con­di­tions: http://www.woothemes.com/woosidebars/