Greetings, Wordpress Wizard

List of WordPress plugins that I find nice and useful

Updated: 8.september 2026

List of amazing plugins that I often use to supercharge, speed up, and improve different WordPress sites for my clients.

Protecting your login form

There are two plugins that I use. Both do pretty much the same thing: display a simple CAPTCHA code that you have to enter when you log in. I believe that helps a little bit with brute force against the bots. Fingers crossed. Always feels a little bit safer and better with it than without: Captcha Code and Simple Login Captcha

Cleaning and optimizing database

Over time your WordPress database becomes a little bit messy: some transients, some old reviews, revisions. The MySQL database tends to grow in size. Running a regular check and optimization, as well as deleting unnecessary data, makes it lighter and faster. Definitely helps on old sites, big sites, any sites. There are many plugins that do this. I find Database Cleaner simple, neat, and working well for me.

Visitor stats

I tend to use Google Suite since it will add all the tricks, bells, and whistles that Google will tend to use. Google Suite is one thing but besides that, Statify looks like such a beautiful thing that I have to mention it.

Caching, object caching, speedup, and optimization

This is indeed a very tricky and broad topic to discuss. And this is where I would love to hear some suggestions and ideas, especially unpopular ones - so please send me an email. But coming back to what I use and what works for me, the best combo is LiteSpeed web server plus LiteSpeed caching plugin plus any type of object caching. That could be Redis, SQL cache, file caching, or database caching, anything that works. The main thing is the combo: LiteSpeed, LiteSpeed cache, object cache. That works really good!

I am definitely not a big fan of HTML, CSS, JavaScript minimization, and all those very complex and big caching plugins. They all are big and heavy, in my opinion, and it's just not clear what they are doing. It's just a lot of code. Whatever code it is, it is code that has to run.

I've been trying static cache plugins, those which generate and store your pages as static HTML files. In general it's not bad but with all this I cannot point out any specific one. Probably needs more testing, more checking, and more experience. Of course it really depends on what kind of site you have. The more dynamic, the less caching will actually work for you. On the other side those dynamic ones are those which need caching and optimization the most.

If you can - get hosting with a Litespeed web server, install the Litespeed caching plugin and add any type of object cache: Redis object cache (if you have it), SQLite Object cache (if you have nothing), Docket cache (file-based object caching - not the fastest one). This will be a good combo for you.

Analysis and debugging

Quite often it is not clear what slows down your WordPress. It can be the theme, a plugin, or something else. For that there are three plugins that can help and each of them covers its own side of the story:

• WordPress Hosting Server Benchmark: This will benchmark server hardware. If it is slow the server will have a tendency to be slow or not be as fast as it could be. There is not much you can tune or do about it except ask your hosting provider to upgrade to a better server or change hosting providers.
• Code Profiler: An amazing plugin which will measure the time spent by the theme and each plugin that you have. Even the free version is quite amazing and helpful for targeting the slowest element of your WordPress.
• Query Monitor: an amazing plugin that will measure basically everything: - number of queries; - queries themselves; - external requests; - memory usage; - and much more... Amazing extensive tool!
• Snitch is a simple plugin that will log any external calls. It will just monitor and log any requests that your WordPress might be making to other sites. Very useful for debugging and a little bit of forensic inspection. The plugin also allows you to block such requests, which sounds like a quite interesting idea.

If you struggle with configuring your server, I can help. As well as I am very open for suggestions and comments on this topic - please don't hesitate to contact me.