Forms Flagship $59/year · $249 lifetime
Core Forms
Contact forms, registration forms, and surveys with clean markup and minimal overhead. Built because every form plugin I tested loaded hundreds of kilobytes of assets to render three fields.
Plugin Developer · WordPress.org Author
WordPress Plugins I Build, Use, and Maintain.
Five plugins on the official WordPress.org repository, six more in my shop, and dozens built for this site over eighteen years. Most are free, all are maintained on a real production site, and none load 300KB of JavaScript to do a 12KB job.
5
6
8,100+
WP 7.0
From My Shop
Free and Pro Plugins from My Shop
These ship directly from my shop: instant zip downloads, licensing handled by FluentCart, and changelogs on every product page. Four of the six are free. The two paid ones fund the maintenance of everything else on this page.
Block Editor Free
GT ACF Blocks Plugin
28+ ACF-powered content blocks: product boxes, comparison tables, accordions, CTAs, opinion boxes, and review blocks. The same blocks this site publishes with every day, packaged with automatic updates.
Page Builder Free
GT Page Blocks Builder
Build layouts inside the block editor using plain HTML, CSS, and JS in a CodePen-like UI. Works with the native Block Editor instead of replacing it. Doesn’t cost $1,299.
FluentCart $19/year · $99 lifetime
GT Extensions for FluentCart
Enhanced product displays, custom checkout fields, and better order management for FluentCart stores. Fills the gaps between what FluentCart ships and what a real store needs.
Toolkit Free
Functionalities
The 16-module toolkit for performance, security, SEO, redirects, and content management. The shop version comes with an unlimited-sites license, free for a limited time.
Affiliate Links Free
GT Link Manager
The same link manager that’s on WordPress.org, downloadable straight from the shop. Branded affiliate links, click analytics, early redirects, and CSV import/export.
Published on WordPress.org
WordPress Plugins Reviewed by the Plugin Team and Trusted in Production
Every plugin below passed the WordPress.org plugin team’s manual code review and lives in the official repository. That means free updates from your dashboard, real ratings from real users, and source code anyone can audit. No upgrade walls, no email gates.
Shortcodes WordPress.org
Dynamic Month & Year Into Posts
Drop-in shortcodes for dates, years, months, ages, and seasons. Your evergreen pages stop reading “updated in 2021” and start refreshing themselves on January 1st. Read the guide →
★★★★★ 5.0 · 17 reviews 8,000+ installs WP 7.0 tested
Affiliate Links WordPress.org
GT Link Manager
Branded affiliate links with custom database tables, early redirects, and CSV import/export. The Pretty Links replacement I built after Pretty Links pushed me to a $99 Pro plan. Read the guide →
★★★★★ 5.0 · 1 review 100+ installs WP 7.0 tested
Toolkit WordPress.org
Functionalities
Sixteen modules for performance, security, SEO, redirects, and content management in one plugin. Toggle what you need, ignore what you don’t, delete five plugins from your active list.
New on the repo v1.4.7 WP 7.0 tested
Block Editor WordPress.org
Formatting Extender
Adds badge, highlight, and other inline format buttons to the Gutenberg toolbar. The features the core editor forgot, in 12KB of code.
★★★★★ 5.0 · 2 reviews v3.0.0 WP 6.9 tested
Widget WordPress.org
Beautiful Recent Posts Widget
A clean recent-posts widget for sidebars that shouldn’t look like 2009. No jQuery, no settings overload, no nine layout choices nobody uses.
★★★★★ 5.0 · 1 review 10+ installs Classic widgets
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between your WordPress.org plugins and shop plugins?
WordPress.org plugins pass the plugin team’s manual code review and update straight from your dashboard. Shop plugins ship from my store as direct zip downloads with licensing handled by FluentCart. Functionalities and GT Link Manager live in both places; the code is the same, only the delivery differs.
Are the shop plugins really free?
Four of the six are, including GT ACF Blocks and GT Page Blocks Builder. Core Forms ($59/year or $249 lifetime) and GT Extensions for FluentCart ($19/year or $99 lifetime) are paid. The paid ones fund maintenance for everything else on this page.
How many WordPress plugins is too many?
There’s no magic number, but I aim for under 15 active plugins. Quality matters more than quantity. Five poorly coded plugins cause more problems than fifteen well-built ones. The issue is usually plugin overlap, not plugin count.
Should I use Yoast or Rank Math for SEO?
Rank Math. It includes features that Yoast charges extra for (redirects, schema, content analysis). The free version of Rank Math is better than Yoast Premium. I switched all my sites to Rank Math in 2022 and haven’t looked back.
Do I need a page builder plugin?
In most cases, no. The WordPress block editor with GenerateBlocks or Kadence Blocks handles everything most sites need. Page builders like Elementor are fine for client sites where you need visual drag-and-drop editing, but they add significant performance overhead.
Are premium plugins worth paying for?
Some, yes. Rank Math Pro, FlyingPress, and Perfmatters all pay for themselves through better performance and SEO. A $99/year plugin that saves you 5 hours of work or improves conversions by 2% is an easy ROI. But many premium plugins are just premium-priced, not premium-quality.
Do plugins slow down my WordPress site?
Poorly built ones do. Every plugin adds PHP execution time, and many load CSS/JS on every page whether needed or not. The fix isn’t fewer plugins, it’s better plugins. Tools like Perfmatters let you disable plugin assets on pages that don’t need them. I run 8 plugins on this site and still hit sub-second load times.
What should I do when two plugins conflict?
Deactivate one at a time to isolate the conflict. Check if both plugins hook into the same WordPress filter or action. Most conflicts happen because two plugins try to modify the same output (meta tags, schema, scripts). Pick the one that does it better and remove the other. Plugin overlap is the number one cause of conflicts I’ve seen across 850+ client projects.
Need Custom WordPress Development?
I build high-performance WordPress sites, custom plugins, and provide technical consulting for businesses and agencies.