Transparency is one of the principles of this blog, I was motivated to share with you which plugins this site uses by this blog: blog.spiralofhope.com
Let’s begin with the Security Category, and I have recommended some plugins in the past:
Security
Wordfence Security
This plugin is the most popular plugin for security, it actually is a complete security solution. First of all it is a Firewall, and constantly scan the site and tell you if there is some change in a theme file or plugin. Also it protects your login page from brute force attacks. As I already told you in another post, I also use it as a honeypot applying some blocking rules. Thus, I blocked the traditional login form and created a fake directory that I listed in my robots.txt, in consequence, the bad robots are instantaneously blocked out.
Inactive Logout
If you have a WordPress site, what are you looking for? This plugin allows you to automatically log out yourself after the time that you specify. And it only allows to use one session at time because each time your sign in your site, a new session is created, and it can be stole by someone that takes control over your computer like a hacker, a thief or maybe a mischievous friend or children.
Companion Auto Update
It auto-updates the plugins of your site, it is not recommended since your site can behave unexpectedly , but I don’t care. I like to update a plugin as soon as possible. Maybe it is a loss of stability, but it’s a gain in security.
UpdraftPlus
It allows me to do backups very easily and automatically. Also it can upload the backup in Google Drive or Mega. It’s special useful because it backups the database in a daily basics.
Oath Login
I use it for login in the site using a third party service such as Facebook, Google, etc…
Performance
Jetpack
This is another popular plugin, it’s a pretty bad choose for privacy since all the visits and information of the site is shared with wordpress.com. However, it has many useful features: It accelerates the loading of pictures using it’s own CDN, it monitors your site ( that is really easy to do with cron; but I think that it is worth since I have to pay attention to many other things). Brings the share buttons (I’m not using them), and it allow people to subscribe to the blog via email. Finally it’s useful to automatically share the post in the social networks.
I use it mainly for performance and social networking. I really would like to focus in privacy, but SEO is the survival of the fittest. The truth is that WordPress is pretty slow. If privacy is the most important thing, then you need Jekyll with a VPS, so you can focus in privacy instead of security and performance.
Jetpack includes security features, but it requires to upgrade to a paid plan, so it is a good idea to use both Wordfence and Jetpack for free. However you will miss the anti-spam premium feature. I manually authorize comments, in that way I get rid of the spam. Remember that Google is strict about the spam and performance. Spam is not as innocent as it seems since it really damage your site, it requires a firm resolution.
WP Fastest Cache
It is the fastest and best cache plugin. It includes pretty advanced features to optimize the site, it’s very important to optimize your site as I said, because the top results in Google are the fastest sites, and WordPress is too slow.
WP Smush
Pictures cannot be underestimated and we have to take specially care of them since them can slow too much a site. First of all, do not use big pictures, it’s wise to prefer jpg instead of png. And WP Smush is a good plugin to optimize the pictures.
PNG to JPG
It’s a good complement for the WP Smush plugin. It does as it says, convert the PNG pictures to JPG.
Optimize database after deleting revisions
The revisions of a post are always saved, but when the post is published are not longer required.
Features
Tumblr Crossposter
With this plugin, my post are published in Tumblr too, I do so because some people say that I should have only one blog, and I think that that’s an interesting possibility, and so in princess.cool you can see the contents of all my blogs.
WP Photo Album Plus
I used to have an specific site for my screenshots gallery, but with this plugin I do not need an additional site, my gallery is here.
Post Archival in the Internet Archive
With this plugin, my post are automatically archived in the archive.org site, so that they become available to the posterity.
Q-translate-x
This plugin allows my site to be multilingual. It is not that easy and magic, you have to read carefully how to use it.
Q-translate-x Separate Comments
The comments are not separate by language, so this plugins is a complement of the last one.
Ultimate Category Excluder
I use this plugin for creating a separate session about the websites, because I used to have a separate site for talking about the websites, but I realized that was more convenient to merge both sites.
BBSpoiler
Allows me to add spoilers or hide content.
All in One SEO Pack
It bring me many SEO options.
Yuzu -Related Posts
This plugin show related posts, it is also possible with Jetpack, but actually I having issues with the multi-language setup so I installed this plugin instead, and I love it , I think that is better than the one included with Jetpack.