Best WordPress Plugins You’ve Never Heard Of

Plugins are the lifeblood of WordPress — and there’s no shortage of them!

Most of us stick to a stack of the big-name plugins that make WordPress the behemoth it is.

Popular plugins are great, but one of the best feelings you can have as a WordPress developer is finding a little niche plugin that does exactly what you need right when you need it.

Unfortunately, with nearly 60,000 plugins in the repository, and only the most popular at the top of the list, it’s impossible to know what you’re missing.

I recently asked my friends in The Admin Bar community about their favorite “lesser-known” plugins in the repo — and they delivered!

Below is a list of all the plugins community members suggested, along with a link to the listing on the repo, the plugin author, the name of the community member who suggested it, and a short description.

The only qualifications for these plugins are:

• They must be the in WordPress repository
• They can’t require another 3rd party software or subscription
• They must have fewer than 5,000 active installs (at the time of this publication)

I guarantee you’ll find a few hidden gems in here!

Here’s to all the WordPress plugin developers making our lives a little easier! Enjoy!

Accessibility New Window Warnings

Plugin Author: Equalize Digital

Submitted by: Gen Herres

Adds a “opens in new window” notice to links that open in a new window — an easy accessibility win!

Admin Page Spider

Plugin Author: J7Digital

Submitted by: Doug Rider

Navigate to any page or post on your website from the WordPress admin bar.

All in One Invite Codes

Plugin Author: ThemeKraft

Submitted by: Gina Lenon Wilson

Create invitation-based registration on your WordPress website.

Bertha AI

Plugin Author: Bertha.ai

Submitted by: Andrew Palmer

Bertha uses AI to generate unique content for your website. Generate 1,000 words per month for free!

Block Visibility

Plugin Author: Nick Diego

Submitted by: Paul Jones

Dynamic visibility controls for the block editor.

BSF Docs

Plugin Author: Brainstorm Force

Submitted by: Kyle Van Deusen

Build out documentation / knowledgebase with live search functionality.

Code Profiler

Plugin Author: Jerome Bruandet ~ NinTechNet Ltd.

Submitted by: Denny Cave

Measure the performance of your plugins and themes.

Doubly

Plugin Author: Unlimited Elements

Submitted by: Yuval Geva

Cross-domain copy and paste for WordPress

Fluent Support

Plugin Author: WPManageNinja LLC

Submitted by: Donald McGuinn

Customer support ticket desk inside of WordPress

Forget Spam Comment

Plugin Author: Gulshan Kumar

Submitted by: Jon Phillips

GDPR complaint Anti-Spam plugin for the default comment system.

The Hack Repair Guy’s Plugin Archiver

Plugin Author: Jim Walker, The Hack Repair Guy

Submitted by: Jim Walker

Quicky archive plugins by moving them into a separate directory.

Log HTTP Requests

Plugin Author: FacetWP, LLC

Submitted by: James LePage

Logs all WP_HTTP requests and displays each request and runtime in a table for easy viewing.

Instant.page

Plugin Author: Alexandre Dieulot

Submitted by: James LePage

Enables instant.page to improve your page loading times.

List URLs

Plugin Author: Graphem Solutions Inc.

Submitted by: Melanie Barkdull Adcock

A lightweight plugin which exports a list of all site urls to a CSV file/

Loops & Logic

Plugin Author: Team Tangible

Submitted by: Zack Pyle

A toolset that gives you extensive control over displaying dynamic content.

Markdown Comment Block

Plugin Author: RichTabor.com

Submitted by: Alex Macondray

Add markdown style notes in the backend editor

Menu Caching

Plugin Author: Theo Gkitsos

Submitted by: Jesse Fisher

Speed up your website by caching your WP menu and reduce database requests

Multisite SuperList

Plugin Author: William Bay

Submitted By: William ‘Bahia’ Bay

Creates an easier-to-navigate list of your sites inside of a multisite network.

MRW Simplified Editor

Plugin Author: Mark Root-Wiley

Submitted By: Patrick Boehner

Removes blocks and other styling options to help editors focus.

MWW Disclaimer Buttons

Plugin Author: Jennifer Moss

Submitted by: Jennifer Moss

Adds FTC-required disclosure buttons for sponsored, affiliate, or PR samples.

Nelio Popups

Plugin Author: Nelio Popups

Submitted by: Tim Taricco

Intuitive and well-designed popup creator for WordPress.

OOPSpam Anti-Spam

Plugin Author: OOPSpam

Submitted by: Onar Alili

A new generation spam filter that uses modern approaches to combat spam.

Paste As Plain Text By Default

Plugin Author: DiviMundo

Submitted by: Johan Linder

No more unwanted formatting issues or junk code when you paste into the WordPress editor.

Post Password Token

Plugin Author: shawnparker, gordonbrander

Submitted by: Kosta

Allows you to issue secret URLs that bypass a password for password protected content.

Pretty Simple Popup

Plugin Author: 5 Star Plugins

Submitted by: Rob Marlbrough

Adds a responsive popup window for your site.

PublishPress Checklists

Plugin Author: PublishPress

Submitted by: Morten Ellegaard Larsen

Ensure your content is ready to go live with templated checklists.

Shortcodes Finder

Plugin Author: Scribit

Submitted by: Melanie Barkdull Adcock

Finds, tests, and cleans up shortcodes on your website.

Rapid Cache

Plugin Author: MegaOptim

Submitted by: John Tully

A fork of Comet Cache that focuses on new features, stability, and simplicity.

Site Speed Test – SpeedGuard

Plugin Author: Sabrina Zeidan

Submitted by: Kyle Van Deusen

Setup automated, daily PageSpeed Insights tests on your website and get alerted to performance issues.

Snitch

Plugin Author: pluginkollektiv

Submitted by: James LePage

Network monitor for WordPress with connection overview for controlling and regulating data traffic.

Stomp

Plugin Author: cubecolour

Submitted by: Melanie Barkdull Adcock

Pushes your footer element to the bottom of the visible page on short pages.

Syntax-highlighting Code Block

Plugin Author: Weston Ruter

Submitted by: James LePage

Extends the core Code block to add syntax highlighting rendered on the server.

Unbloater

Plugin Author: Christoph Rado

Submitted by: Matt Stern

Cleans up your WordPress admin dashboard and site from unnecessary items.

Wayfinder

Plugin Author: THE MOLITOR

Submitted by: Tim Taricco

Easily select nested blocks and identify block by type and class name.

Wicked Block Conditions

Plugin Author: Wicked Plugins

Submitted by: Tim Taricco

Powerful tool for creating conditional blocks based on user-defined conditions.

WordPress Default Featured Image

Plugin Author: Sanny Srivastava

Submitted by: Tim Taricco

Set a default featured image for all your posts, pages, or custom post types.

WordPress Featured Video

Plugin Author: CodeFlavors

Submitted by: Janet Barclay

Import video content from YouTube into your posts automatically, optionally replacing the post featured image.

WP Post Views

Plugin Author: Ronak J Vanpariya

Submitted by: Kyle Van Deusen

See a simple view count of all your posts and pages on the backend of your website.

WP SmartCrop

Plugin Author: Bytes.co

Submitted by: David Parrott

Allows you toset the ‘focal point’ of any image from the media library then crops via CSS rules.

WP Tasks After Install

Plugin Author: Oh! Yeah Dev

Submitted by: Craig Grant

Does various cleanups for new WordPress installs then deactivates itself!

WP Toolbelt

Plugin Author: Ben Gillbanks

Submitted by: James LePage

A collection of simple addons that provide everyday functionality with privacy and speed.

Years Since

Plugin Author: Laurence Bahirwa

Submitted by: Melanie Barkdull Adcock

Automatically updates “years since” statements via shortcode (like “I have worked for x years in web dev”)

Do you have a plugin that you think would be great for this list? Join our community and drop your comment in this thread.

Our friend Paul C over the WPTuts YouTube channel loved this thread and dedicated a video to his top 10 on this list and why he thinks you should check them out!