These are the WordPress plugins that, in my opinion, are worthy of being called top 10. I’m not putting them into any particular order.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a must have for anyone! If configured to, WP Super Cache will generate static files which the web server will serve before serving PHP. This drastically speeds up your website and increases the performance of your web server. I’ll also be demonstrating a way to balance your load across multiple nginx servers using WP Super Cache in a later blog post.

TinyMCE Advanced

TinyMCE Advanced enables more features to your post/page editor in WordPress. These changes include a lot of the formatting options not readily available in the default editor.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is probably the best SEO plugin that I’ve ever used. I’ve got several pages and posts on first page of Google for my keyword(s). Yoast also adds metadata for Facebook’s Open Graph, and Twitter cards. I absolutely live by this plugin.

Disqus Comment System

Disqus allows visitors who are authenticated with Disqus (eg- Signed in with Twitter) to comment using their social media accounts. You can allow unauthenticated comments and you are given many moderator options. Most of the configuration is done on the disqus website where you will be able to moderate your comments.

Redirection

If you’ve ever moved content, you know what a pain it can be for visitors to still be going to an old url. Luckily Redirection is here to redirect old post urls to the new post url. Redirection also has the ability to filter by regular expression, meaning you could even move something like a category and all the posts within it and very easily redirect it.

Wordfence Security

Wordfence is awesome for protecting against unauthorized bots, vulnerability scanners, and brute force attacks against login. Wordfence can be a WAF for your WordPress website if configured properly. The possibilities of what you can do with this plugin, as far as your security goes, are endless.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) adds a few related posts just above comments on your WordPress posts. This can help reduce your bounce rate so you can retain more visitors to your blog.

Strictly Auto Tags

Strictly Auto Tags will try and find keywords in your posts and place them as tags.

Crayon Syntax Highlighter

When I’m displaying code in a page or blog post, this plugin is awesome. Just take a look! The themes are highly configurable, and when placing into a page the on the spot options are also highly configurable.

<?php
    function helloWorld()
    {
        echo "Hello World!";
    }
    
    helloWorld();
?>