Best WordPress plugins of 2014

One of the best things about WordPress is the fantastic WordPress plugin community. If you need WordPress to do something, chances are somebody has built a plugin that can already do it. Here we list of some of the best WordPress plugins of 2014.

We try to include a few in each category where we can. Check out this list of our favorite WordPress plugins and find out which plugins you should be using to improve your website today.

• Akismet – This WordPress plugin has to be the best protection you can have against comment spam in the blog on your WordPress website.
• WP Smush.it – This is a WordPress plugin that reduces the file size of your images and improves overall performance. It uses the Smush.it API from within WordPress. Everytime you upload an image to your media uploader this plugin will automatically compress the image without losing quality! This is a great tool for improving page load speeds, making it a must have WordPress plugin.

• WordPress SEO by Yoast – By far my favorite (and possibly the best) WordPress plugin at the moment! SEO by Yoast is an all in one SEO solution for your WordPress website: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
• All in One SEO Pack – This is an easy to use SEO plugin for your WordPress website. Install the all in one seo pack or the “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin (you don’t need to install both).
• Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. The SEO WordPress plugins we’ve listed above can also generate a sitemap for you.
• Simple 301 Redirects – When you want to manage your 301 redirects manually through the backend, this WordPress plugin is one of the best.

• Google Analytics Dashboard – This is a great WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to view your Google Analytics data in your WordPress dashboard and on the list of pages (showing traffic graphs for each page and post).

• W3 Total Cache – The fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. After you use the w3 total cache plugin you won’t go back to using WP Super Cache.
• WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

• All In One WP Security & Firewall – The All In One WordPress Security and Firewall is the ultimate security plugin that will take your WordPress site’s security to a whole new level.
• BulletProof Security – BulletProof security plugin offers website security protection against: XSS, RFI, CRLF, CSRF, Base64, Code Injection and SQL Injection.
• BackUpWordPress – BackUpWordPress will back up your entire site including your database and all your files on a schedule that suits you.
• iQ Block Country – This WordPress plugin blocks visitors from selected countries from either visiting your website or visiting the back end of your website. Very well thought through.

• Gravity Forms – Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No drudgery, just quick and easy form-building.
• Contact Form 7 – Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
• WP Contact form – WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you.

• Sociable – Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed.
• Share This – This is a very useful plugin that allows your visitors to share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
• Fat Free WordPress Social Share Buttons Plugin – This is a very simple and FAT FREE share button plugin that adds Google plus one, Facebook and Twitter share buttons to your blog posts.

• Google Adsense Plugin – Google AdSense Plugin allows you to set parameters of the ads displaying, such as format (text ad, image, text with an image or link), size, color of the elements in the ad block, rounded corners and the ad block position on the website.
• Simple Google Adsense insertion – Easy to use WordPress plugin to insert Google Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar.
• Adsense-Deluxe – Place Google AdSense ads in your WordPress Posts. Capable of handling complex adsense management.

• Simple Photo Gallery – If you are looking for an effective, reliable, yet simple to use photo gallery plugin, then check this gallery plugin out. I use it whenever I need a photo gallery plugin.
• NextGen Gallery – The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most popular plugins of all time.

• Simple Membership Plugin – The simple membership plugin lets you protect your posts and pages so only your members (free or paid) can view the protected content.
• WordPress eMember – WP eMember is a feature rich membership plugin that can turn your existing or new WordPress site into a powerful membership site.

• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin –  This plugin gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.
• WP Video Lightbox – The WordPress Video Lightbox plugin allows you to embed videos on a page using lightbox overlay display. This plugin can be used to display images, flash, YouTube, Vimeo, iFrame etc in a nice lightbox overlay.
• Ultimate Branding – This plugin makes it quick and easy to do everything, from replacing the WordPress logo with your own company logo to completely customizing the admin area, favicons, help content, dashboard and all.
• Simple Page Ordering – A great plugin that allows you to order your pages in the back end, with simple drag and drop right from the built in page list.
• Admin Menu Editor – This plugin is great if you have clients that need to see specific admin menus. The Admin Menu Editor plugin lets you edit the WordPress admin menu. You can re-order, hide or rename menus, add custom menus and more.