WordPress is a versatile platform that powers millions of websites, offering an extensive range of customization options. As a web designer, using tools that increase productivity and improve project delivery is key. Web design involves more than content creation; collaboration, testing, backup, security, and other tasks can create workflow bottlenecks. Whether you’re a web developer or designer, these 17 plugins can help streamline your workflow, improve site performance, and boost overall functionality.
Important note: Installing every WordPress plugin you read about is an ugly habit and bad practice. Before adding any plugin to your (or your client’s) website, ask yourself these 4 most important questions:
- Does my WordPress theme or another plugin already provide this functionality?
- Has the plugin been maintained in the past 12 months?
- Does the plugin author offer support?
- Will I actually use this functionality?
Before we move onto plugins, we’d like to start with a short disclaimer:
- Almost all WordPress plugins on this list are used by our team members; others came recommended by web design agencies and freelancers that handle 50+ websites.
- For majority of plugins on this list, only free versions have been tested / used.
- Order of appearance is random, and doesn’t represent a ranked list.
#1 Classic Widgets
Classic Widgets WordPress plugin removes the block editor and restores the old-school look and functionality of the Widgets area in the admin dashboard (Appearance > Widgets).
If you’re nostalgic or simply prefer the ease of use, then you should check out Classic Widgets.
It’s important to mention this plugin will only function on classic themes, such as OceanWP.
Absolutely no setup required, just activate and you’re good to go. Although, you might want to recheck widget areas after activation, and remove any residues left by the block editor.
#2 File Manager
File Manager WordPress plugin enables you to access the entire website’s directory folder directly from the dashboard.
By skipping FTP, cPanel or hosting file manager usage, you’ll be able to make changes to existing files, add new files or download files quickly and easily.
Enabling WordPress Debug Mode, reading the error log, or adding codes to the functions.php file of your WordPress child theme has never been easier.
No special setup required. Just add to your website, and start using it.
#3 Simple History
Simple History WordPress plugin acts like an audit log, and helps you track the most important events on the website.
From user logins and profile edits, over pages and posts edits, to plugin installations, Simple History will help you track user behavior or your team’s engagement.
But it can also help you identify a potential security threat and malicious behavior.
For example, if a contributor starts adding nonsense articles, you will know their profile has most likely been compromised, enabling you to take action immediately.
No special setup required. Simply install and activate on your website, and it will start logging events.
#4 Temporary Login Without a Password
Temporary Login Without Password WordPress plugin lives up to its name entirely: its purpose is to provide login access to your website without creating a user account.
By generating access links (access tokens), every person that you share the link with can access your website. However, what that person can see or can do, and for how long, is already predetermined by you.
At OceanWP, we have been recommending this plugin to our users and clients for 4 years now, for support and troubleshooting purposes. You can basically use it the same way, and share access with:
- clients: to check the work in progress (and without the fear they will mess something up),
- tech or hosting support: to check issues you’re unable to troubleshoot,
- external contractors: to contribute to specific blog posts, pages or something else.
#5 Stop Emails
Stop Emails WordPress plugin is one of those tools you usually don’t know you need, until you actually do.
Most of WordPress users probably couldn’t think of a situation where you’d ever want to stop outgoing emails from a website. But the answer is quite simple – staging websites.
Serious business and eCommerce stores use staging websites to test updates, new functionality or design changes. At the same time, such websites heavily rely on email services.
Those emails services include subscriptions, user accounts, newsletter, sales, etc.
Professional developers and designers should always block outgoing emails on any staging or test website, in order to prevent a mess (and costs) caused by potentially duplicate orders, duplicate billings, or duplicate newsletters.
In short, the simplest and fastest way to stop all outgoing emails from any WordPress website is to use the Stop Emails plugin.
#6 Check & Log Email
Since we’re talking emails, if your website’s functionality depends on emailing, such as user registration, subscriptions, or eCommerce, it’s crucial to ensure that your email feature is working correctly.
Check & Log Email WordPress plugin helps you test all outgoing emails, debug email related problems, setup SMTP, log sent emails for audit, and more.
#7 Duplicate Page
Duplicate Page WordPress plugin enables you to duplicate pages, posts, and custom posts with a single click.
Building website pages from scratch is a mighty feel, but when you’re working on new projects, you always seem to waste time on simple tasks – such as duplicating content for design reuse or improvement.
Duplicate Page helps you save time and improve efficiency during the web design process.
#8 All In One WP Migration
If you’re building and designing a website locally in order to migrate it to its permanent location at one point, or if you’re migrating a website manually from one host to another, then you will probably want to check out the All in One WP Migration WordPress plugin.
Beside website migration, at OceanWP we use or recommend this tool for various other purposes, such as:
- to duplicate a website: some hosting providers don’t offer their official staging tools. In that case, you can duplicate a website for testing and troubleshooting purposes, design makeover, etc.
- to perform manual backups: download website backup to your PC.
- to create your own starter sites: when you’re building sites for clients that all start out, more or less, the same, like using the same theme such as OceanWP, using a child theme, have multiple plugins in common, sample pages, and so on, you can use the All in One WP Migration tool to download that starter setup to your PC and then upload on every new website you create. This will save you lots of time because you won’t be starting from scratch.
Be advised, the free version of this plugin will only support actions that handle files up to 512MB.
#9 ManageWP Worker
ManageWP Worker WordPress plugin enables you to easily manage multiple WordPress websites at once, and from a single dashboard.
Instead of login into every website, performing backups or updates individually, ManageWP Worker helps you streamline website maintenance workflow, as well as save a tremendous amount of time.
This tool compiles all your websites’ data in one place, available to you at a glance. It also lets you perform bulk actions, perform security checks, integrate Google Analytics, and more.
One of the features we like the most is Safe Updates. Though Safe Updates comes included with their premium Backup add-on, for serious web agencies it’s worth the investment.
This feature creates a restore point before the update, and in case anything goes wrong (site down or other functionality seems off to you), it enables you to roll back automatically.
#10 Better Search Replace
Ever migrated a website to a new domain or from localhost only to find out that, for example, images are not displayed, Customizer styling is not applied, HTTPS protocol not applied, or page links appear broken or incorrect?
Such mishaps happen to everyone, because it’s not your oversight.
Better Search Replace WordPress plugins enables you to address these, and other similar issues, without editing the website’s database manually.
Word to the wise, you can’t use this plugin to edit / replace your website content.
#11 User Switching
User Switching WordPress plugin enables you to quickly swap between user accounts with a single click.
This plugin can be incredibly useful when building or troubleshooting user issues on eCommerce websites, membership sites, or testing environments, because it enables you to see what other user roles are seeing.
Just like Duplicate Page plugin, User Switching helps you improve efficiency and save time on trivial things, such as manually login in or out.
#12 WP Optimize
Creating content is the most important task of any web designer. But so is getting rid of residues.
While building a website, we tend to experiment a lot – themes, plugins, content. We install, we remove, we delete, we edit until perfection.
But all those actions leave traces in our database.
WP Optimize WordPress plugin enables you to completely optimize the database and get rid of all unnecessary stuff that piled up during the development process.
Likewise, you can use WP Optimize once in a while on your live website to ensure everything runs smoothly.
#13 WP Reset
WP Reset WordPress plugin is a user-friendly development tool that quickly restores a website’s database to its default settings. It can delete all customizations and content, or specific elements.
The built-in snapshots feature enables 1-click restore, making WP Reset fast and safe. It prevents accidental data loss, and speeds up testing and debugging.
Basically, WP Reset is a user-friendly development tool with advanced reset capabilities.
You can check out WP Reset in action, and see how to perform a WordPress website reset and fix any mistakes from website template import.
On a quick note, if you’re using the OceanWP theme and need to reset Customizer settings only, you can use the OceanWP inbuilt Customizer reset tool.
#14 Visual Website Collaboration, Feedback & Project Management – Atarim
Inefficient communication and constant back-and-forth are major obstacles to completing website projects. 78% of website teams and digital agencies report that these communication issues are the most common roadblocks.
Visual Website Collaboration, Feedback & Project Management – Atarim WordPress plugin offers a solution to these challenges in a form of a visual collaboration platform designed to streamline task management and communication. In this way, the platform eliminates the need for email or chat platforms for website-related discussions.
Atarim is a cloud-based project management that offers post-it note style feedback directly on sites.
This innovative tool allows you to visually manage website projects with clients and your team across live, staging, and development environments – all from a single platform.
Even after project completion, you can continue to use Atarim to facilitate seamless internal communication around the website.
#15 Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) WordPress plugin simplifies the process of adding additional fields to your WordPress edit screens.
With just a few clicks, you can add simple fields like “director” to a movie review, or implement complex structured data for eCommerce sites.
Fields can be added to various areas within WordPress, including posts, pages, users, taxonomy terms, media, comments, and custom options pages, enhancing the structure and flexibility of content creation.
In short, ACF helps you make WordPress even more flexible.
#16 Query Monitor
Query Monitor WordPress plugin is used for debugging database queries, PHP errors, hooks and actions, block editor blocks, enqueued scripts and stylesheets, HTTP API calls, and more.
It has advanced features like Ajax and REST API call debugging, user capability checks, and full support for block themes and FSE (Full Site Editing).
The tool focuses on presenting its information in a useful way, like grouping aggregate database queries by plugins, themes, or functions responsible for them. It adds an admin toolbar menu with an overview of the current page, and complete debugging information is displayed in panels when you select the menu item.
Query Monitor is not only handy while building websites, but it’s also an amazing replacement for WordPress Debug Mode to help you catch non-fatal errors quickly, as well as isolate them efficiently.
#17 WP Mail SMTP
By default, WordPress uses a PHP function to send emails. But most hosting companies don’t have their servers properly configured or simply do not offer this service at all.
This causes delivery issues with contact forms, password reset emails and similar.
The WP Mail SMTP WordPress plugin solves this problem by reconfiguring the wp_mail() function to use proper SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) host credentials or an SMTP mail provider.
With built-in SMTP mail provider integrations, emails are sent using the provider’s direct API.
In short, if you’re experiencing outgoing email issues, you will need an SMTP plugin like this one.
Bonus #1: eComm Treasure Box
Ocean eComm Treasure Box is the ultimate premium WordPress plugin for building custom WooCommerce websites due to its versatility and powerful features. It offers a seamless Elementor integration, making it easy to create unique product pages, layouts, and designs without coding.
With its extensive library of pre-built templates, customizable elements, you can quickly build a professional online store that meets your exact needs.
Thanks to additional features, such as the Product Badges Manager, Popup Builder, Coupons Manager, Pixel Tracker, Product Tabs Manager, Product Purchase Notifier, Checkout Fields Manager and many other, you can not only eliminate the need for 15+ other plugins, but also make any of your products pop, increase conversion and boost your store’s visibility.
Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, Ocean eComm Treasure Box streamlines the process, saving you time and effort while delivering a high-quality, fully functional eCommerce site.
Bonus #2: Site Booster
Ocean Site Booster is a premium WordPress plugin designed to elevate your website on all levels, offering a comprehensive set of tools to enhance performance, SEO, and user experience.
With its easy-to-use features, it helps white-label WordPress CMS, optimize every page to perfection, customize the admin area, increase website’s security, control inbuilt WordPress features, assist caching plugins to perform better, and more.
Ocean Site Booster provides everything you need to give your WordPress website a significant advantage.
In short, it helps you debloat, speed-up, secure and streamline websites by disabling unnecessary or unused features and assets.
Final Thoughts
As a WordPress developer or designer, knowing the right plugins to use can make a significant difference in your workflow, website performance, and overall user experience. These 17 plugins cover everything from design and performance optimization to security and SEO, providing you with the tools to build, manage, and maintain high-quality WordPress websites.
By integrating any of these plugins into your WordPress toolkit, you can streamline development, enhance site functionality, and deliver exceptional results for your clients.
What plugins are your primary website building tools and the main ingredients? Let us know in the comments.
