All plugins are not created equal in the eyes of developers! This may sound like an outrageous statement but there are WordPress plugins that score highly especially in the developers’ communities.
WordPress plugins for developers are rated highly by developers since they help make their work easier. I have researched and found these 10 WordPress plugins that stand out as the most useful plugins for developers.
Best Plugins for Developers
1) Theme Check
Theme Check is a plugin that best helps developers rate their themes against the WordPress theme coding standards and best practices. This plugin checks your new theme against the current coding standards and all the requirements for the theme to be functional. It checks the files like theme screenshots, author information, and licenses. If you want to develop themes that are up to WordPress standards this plugin is a must-have. It helps you keep up with the WordPress coding standards without worrying about likely mistakes in your code.
User switching can be described as the developer's best time-saver. Ever wondered how to quickly log in and log out from your WordPress site in order to view how other viewers see your website? You don’t have to keep logging in and out of your site, you can now use this plugin to switch between different users, saving you a great deal of time. This plugin allows you to switch between registered users without having to login in and out. When you install and activate, you will see a new menu on the WordPress admin bar called Switch off. With a click on a button, you can easily and quickly switch WordPress users.
Query Monitor is a plugin for every developer who wants to make debugging an easy task. This plugin has advanced features that you will not see in other debugging plugins and it is absolutely useful for debugging both plugins and WordPress themes. This plugin adds a toolbar on your admin bar and will continually show you query data such as Ajax calls, Php errors, and HTTP requests. You have to try this plugin to appreciate its ability to making debugging easier for both novice and experienced developers.
If you are a WordPress theme developer they may appeal to a wide range of clientele across the globe. One of the communities of users you need to pay attention to is those that read and write from right-to-left, commonly abbreviated as RTL. RTL tester was created just for this kind of assistance, this plugin adds a button to your site admin bar and you can switch the content between left and right text direction. It is useful for testing WordPress themes and plugins with right to left (RTL) text direction.
Debug bar is another exceptional debugging plugin that adds a debug menu on your WordPress admin bar that displays cache, query, and important debugging information. I like this plugin since I can tell from a single click the total queries, total queried time, and memory usage that is absolutely useful for debugging. This plugin also shows you Php warnings and notices but you need to ensure your WordPress error reporting is enabled in wp-config.php
Regenerate thumbnails allow developers to regenerate all the thumbnails from the image library in the new sizes that they prefer. With a single click, you regenerate all the thumbnails something that saves time that would be spent generating one thumbnail after another. If you are looking for a perfect solution to regenerate thumbnails as you develop themes, this plugin should be your first choice!
WordPress is continually evolving and some functions get deprecated with each WordPress version update and following all these deprecated functions can be an uphill task. After all, you have all the time to spend on this kind of task while there is a plugin that can help you know what functions have been depreciated. This plugin lists all the deprecated functions when they are found in a theme or plugin. It also offers you alternatives making it the developer’s best friend.
This plugin allows developers to see the frontend of a WordPress installation through the admin bar and has forty-nine debug modes. You can render page analysis for both CSS and JavaScript, you can debug menus, widgets, and sidebars. It has a variety of PHP modes that include defined functions, constants, classes among many more. It helps you to save time by allowing you to surface any WordPress or PHP server data without having to hardcode debug scripts or run complex tests.
This is the ultimate plugin for testing your WordPress development environment. This plugin checks and ensures that your development environment is configured correctly including the plugins, constants, and other settings. This plugin helps developers develop by optimizing their environment and ensuring essential tools and plugins are installed.
Advanced Custom Fields plugin is a perfect solution for any developer looking for a way of building a content management system on WordPress easily and fast. It helps you create multiple visual fields and you can select from a wide range of input types like text, textarea, image file, links, post object, radio buttons, date picker, gallery among many more features. This plugin helps you build a CMS without having to code many files; it utilizes native WordPress custom post type and offers a limitless solution for creating flexibility in WordPress.
There are millions of plugins out there that are useful to developers but these 10 are an absolute necessity for any WordPress developer. These plugins help WordPress developers in saving time during development and debugging. I would recommend these plugins to any developer who wants to be on top of their game. This is my list of the best WordPress plugins for developers, I would like to hear from you about plugins that you find useful in your day-to-day web development work. Please leave me a comment about your favorite plugin for WordPress development and debugging.
Really helpful, Thank you for sharing such a useful plugins list. Currently I am using User Activity Log Pro WordPress plugin to monitor and keep track of all the activities occurs on the admin side.
Check it once: goo.gl/2mioQR
Thanks for sharing this great list of WordPress plugins. I would like to suggest AMP plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/, which makes your website load faster on mobile devices. So, your website can rank higher in mobile searches.
This seems like an interesting article. I appreciate your thoughts. I have recently been switched my Joomla website to WordPress. I have been facing few problems for contact form. I found a WPForms Lite plugin. It is much easier than any contact form. Check it out:
I guess that a developer would also want to know the uptime of their website/blog right? So my advice is to also added a plugin like the Uptime Robot plugin for WordPress. It gives you your uptime stats on your WP dashboard and also can show you the response time in the admin section. You don’t wanna know how long your blog is offline, but it’s better to do so.
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Hey dude!
Take a look : https://yendif.com/wordpress/item/ultimate-newsletter.html is the best Newsletter for wordpress plugin
With free demo: http://demo.yendif.com/wordpress/ultimate-newsletter/
Recommend “ARI Adminer” plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/ari-adminer/) if need database management tool for WordPress.
Really helpful, Thank you for sharing such a useful plugins list. Currently I am using User Activity Log Pro WordPress plugin to monitor and keep track of all the activities occurs on the admin side.
Check it once: goo.gl/2mioQR
Hello Joe,
Thanks for sharing this great list of WordPress plugins. I would like to suggest AMP plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/, which makes your website load faster on mobile devices. So, your website can rank higher in mobile searches.
Hi guys! Here’s the coolest pricing tale plugin I’ve ever used for my website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/pricing-table-builder/
Hey Joe,
This seems like an interesting article. I appreciate your thoughts. I have recently been switched my Joomla website to WordPress. I have been facing few problems for contact form. I found a WPForms Lite plugin. It is much easier than any contact form. Check it out:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/
I guess that a developer would also want to know the uptime of their website/blog right? So my advice is to also added a plugin like the Uptime Robot plugin for WordPress. It gives you your uptime stats on your WP dashboard and also can show you the response time in the admin section. You don’t wanna know how long your blog is offline, but it’s better to do so.