Right off the bat, it should be said that overusing plugins on any platform is a dangerous thing to do. In fact there are many out there that would say you should avoid plugins altogether. Unvetted plugins can contain a host of vulnerabilities of which hackers can take advantage. The rule of thumb in general is to code what you can without plugins and/or only use tried and trusted plugins that are maintained by their developers. You should also keep your plugins updated by regularly checking their status in your admin. Note simply pressing the “update” button on a live server isn’t always the smart thing to do either. In some cases we might feel fine to take the chance of clicking the update button but the safest route is to keep a parallel development version of your site at a different location and do all testing and updates there first just to be as certain as you can that the update will go off without a hitch.
All that said, what are the best WordPress plugins of 2015? I recently came across a nice infographic published by the very talented Mr. Jamie Spencer at setupablogtoday.com and thought it deserved a share. It essentially lists some of the better plugins out there that can be useful for managing your WordPress website. (Jamie: I added your image here in case your URI ever disappeared, hope you don’t mind :))
