Created by Ben Attenborough / @WebDesignerBen
According to the WordPress Codex:
“Plugins are ways to extend and add to the functionality that already exists in WordPress.
The core of WordPress is designed to be lean and lightweight, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins then offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs.”
There is no such thing as an essential plugin. It will depend upon your site's needs and other factors such as the hosting platform you are on.
If a plugin were 'essential' to the running of WordPress it would be already have been incorporated into the core of WordPress
Rather than asking what plugins you should use, ask yourself what functionality you need your site to have.
For anything more than a hobbyist site you should plan out what you want to achieve. Think about what the essential objectives of your site are and plan to meet those.
Beware of adding lots of bells and whistles to your site - you might end up distracting users from what you really want to achieve.
The idea of planning a site is to boil things down to the essentials and focus on your key objectives.
This will help when selecting plugins, but will also help avoid the site growing out of control. The easier it is for a user to get the information the better. Ideally the user will be able to get the information from the front page without clicking on anything...
...With this in mind think about simple ways to implement your objectives without using plugins. For example do you need a contact form on your site when a simple email address will do the job?
Develop your site locally. Spin up a test site, seperate from your main project and have fun experimenting with plugins there. Test them and make decisions there before installing on your main site.
Research your plugins. Look at reviews, number of installs etc. But also look at the level of support - check out resources such as wpmudev
Backup your database and files before updating plugins - but keep plugins and WordPress core updated
Themes do more than control the look of a site. They provide areas for posts and widgets to appear in and can affect the content of posts.
Therefore be aware that some plugins will not work with some themes, and that some themes have been written with specific plugins in mind - so other plugins may not sit happily with them.
If you are thinking of using a bespoke theme for your project you need to consider how it will affect plugin functionality. Again this comes down to planning.
The WordPress Codex is the official documentation and first port of call for probelms
www.wpbeginner.com is a great resources, for beginners especially - but also for people looking to get into development
premium.wpmudev.org has a useful blog
codecanyon.net has a load of premium WordPress plugins. These are paid for but are tested by the envato team and come with excellent support
wp-cli.org is where to go to get and find out more about wp-cli, a command line interface for WordPress
teamtreehouse.com is an excellent (paid for) series of tutorials on WordPress by Zac Gordon which will take you all the way from beginner to starting to build your own themes and plugins.
wpdevelopersclub.com is an online school for learning about WordPress - but from the fundamentals of computer science upwards. Still a new site but worth a look
Installing WP-CLI on a Mac (for XAMPP) is a quick five minute video to get you up and running with WP-CLI
wpmudev have provided a good guide to the development of WP-CLI and its possible uses
Tim Nash has a neat video series on WP-CLI, chekout Beginner's guide, Extending WP-CLI and Shell scripting in WP-CLI