9 Must Have Free Plugins For WordPress Developers To Make Development Workflow Faster & Better

In this article, AnthonyPham has curated a list of 9 must have plugins for WordPress developers to make their development workflow faster and better.

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There are many helpful plugins available for the developer to make their development workflow faster and better.

Choosing right WordPress plugin is the best way to save time and improve the quality of the final product.

Here is a list of some must have WordPress plugin for the developers.

1. Regenerate Thumbnails

Regenerate thumbnails allow developers to regenerate thumbnails after changing the thumbnail sizes.

It is a must use plugin when you change the dimensions of images or change to a new theme with different featured image sizes.

However, it may take a while depending on a number of your images. Regenerate thumbnails have over a million downloads for now.

2. Theme Check

Before uploading themes to Themeforest or WordPress.org, we often use this plugin to ensure all things are correct and there isn’t any issue with our theme to save the time for the reviewer.

This plugin checks your new theme against the current coding standards and all the requirements for the theme to be functional. Theme Check helps you make sure your WordPress themes are up to the mark.

3. WordPress Reset

While developing the themes for WordPress we must test how a theme works from installation to activation and using with sample data.

WordPress Reset helps you to reset WordPress to its defaults. It will remove the previous contents, additions, and customizations from the database only, your theme or plugin still be save when reset.

This plugin is very helpful for plugin and theme developers.

4. WP Fastest Cache

When a page is rendered, PHP and MySQL are used. Therefore, system needs RAM and CPU. If many visitors come to a site, the system uses lots of RAM and CPU so a page is rendered so slowly.

In this case, you need a cache system not to render page again and again.

Cache system generates a static HTML file and when other visitors visit the same pages, this static page is served.

Setup of this plugin is so easy. You don’t need to modify the .htacces file. It will be modified automatically.

5. Duplicator

Duplicator gives WordPress administrators the ability to migrate, copy or clone a site from one location to another.

The plugin also serves as a simple backup utility. Duplicator can also eliminate repeat site configuration work if you have a favorite theme, set of plugins or content you install on all sites.

Instead of manually configuring these over and over, with Duplicator you just need to configure a single site which you then bundle up into a package.

6. Yellow Pencil: Visual CSS Style Editor $12

Yellow Pencil is a useful CSS customization premium WordPress plugin that you can use with any theme to make personalizing your website much easier. Simply install the plugins and get started!

7. KingComposer

Kingcomposer is a new page builder for WordPress community.

From within both the frontend or backend area of a page, post or custom post type, KingComposer can be easily launched allowing users to immediately start designing with all the pre-packaged elements bundled with KingComposer and modify any styling settings available within a clean floating pop-up styling window.

KingComposer supports the popular drag & drop function and allows the user the ease of being able to create and duplicate rows and section content, and then to drag and place that content anywhere within your page layout.

KingComposer also allows for the creation of custom template sections for repeat use throughout your site. Modify these in your template manager area and the change is reflected site-wide.

The team has also integrated some well-known keyboard shortcuts like CTR+ S for saving and Ctrl+ Z for undo.

Such shortcuts combined with its extremely intuitive user interface only goes further to help you build out your page content quicker and with more confidence, leaving you to concentrate on the real job of design.

8. WP Mail SMTP

Some WordPress hosting providers do not support mail function of PHP, that is the cause of your WordPress emails may not get delivered.

To solve this problem you would need WP Mail SMTP plugin. It allows you to use an SMTP server to send your WordPress emails.

9. Meta Box

Meta Box plugin is a powerful, professional solution to create custom meta boxes and custom fields for WordPress websites.

The plugin has a large collection of actions and filters which help developers to add more functionality to the plugin or change its behavior.

It reached to 200k+ users active some month ago.

Some plugins features:

  • Easily register multiple custom meta boxes for any post types
  • Supports more than 35 field types and more
  • Uses the native WordPress meta data storage and functions for ease of use and fast processing
  • Built-in hooks which allow you to change the appearance and behavior of meta boxes
  • Easily integrate with themes and plugins
  • Compatible with WPML multilingual plugin

Final Words

We hope this article is helpful for developers to improve their skill and these plugins will be useful to finish project or theme quickly.

If you think, there are some other Must have WordPress plugin for developer should be included in this list, add your comments below and share your favorite development plugins with us.

About Author: Anthony Pham

I am a WordPress Developer and an accidental writer. I love to write, talk, build, and share everything about WordPress. I am working on the KingComposer page builder project.

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