My Favourite Plugin was the topic for the WordPress Cambridge Meetup on 8th November 2021. Here’s my take on the subject.
59,330 plugins available from wordpress.org/plugins on 7th November 2021.
In the world of WordPress, there is a top 12 list that I've been charting for some time. A coupla month's I've missed.
Top 12 WordPress plugins by total downloads as of the 7th November 2021

I've considered how they help my site with function-al-it-y And how they slow it down as well… Not a good thing to see.

- Don’t give me popups on every admin page.
- Don’t load JavaScript and CSS on every single page.
- You’re not the only plugin in this site!
Some of the top 12 plugins have certain stuff I like. To others I'm prepared to say "just go and take a hike".
I do use: WordPress SEO, Jetpack, WordFence.
I don’t use: Elementor, Google Analytics for WordPress
I started writing plugins with the brand name oik; a 3 letter recursive backronym I thought people would loik.

- oik-bwtrace
- oik-css
- oik-privacy-policy
I want to tell you briefly, about my latest work to improve my Core Web Vitals, or prove that I'm a jerk.
You want your website user to become your best friend. So invest a little effort to speed up the front end.
That includes Google’s crawler… it’s looking for nice quick websites.

Test your page - prove it still works - then run performance traces. With luck your numbers will be met with happy smiling faces.
For some results see oik-unloader: WordPress performance improvement plugin

Some plugins are resource hungry, others a little less. You may find more improvement using WebP Express.

Other favourites
- My Favourite Theme
- My Favourite Theme – Cover version
- My Favourite Block
- My Favourite Block – annotated
Other plugin related poems
- Twelve plugins of WordPress
- allow-reinstalls – The WordPress user’s lament
- Disappeared without a trace