Mark Westguard is the founder of WS Form, a robust and feature-rich WordPress form plugin. With a web development background of more than 25 years as a successful web agency owner, Mark has transitioned his passion towards becoming an avid advocate, dedicated contributor, and generous sponsor within the vibrant WordPress community.
His commitment to empowering others and enhancing the WordPress ecosystem has made him a dedicated community member and fierce champion of the platform’s growth and development.
1. Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) is an indispensable plugin that I incorporate into every website I build. It empowers us to create tailor-made fields for different post types, and recently, it even enables us to generate custom posts.
Whenever our clients require a unique post type to manage tabular data or any other custom content, ACF proves to be a game-changer, offering immense flexibility in implementation. The benefits of ACF are truly remarkable and undoubtedly justify its worth over and over again.
2. Admin Columns PRO
WordPress does an admirable job in presenting posts in a table format. However, when it comes to custom fields, ACF combined with Admin Columns PRO becomes an essential duo! Without fail, we integrate Admin Columns PRO into every project we undertake.
The plugin not only provides robust support for a variety of complex field types but also offers a delightful inline editing feature. This allows us to effortlessly modify post meta values directly within the table itself, streamlining our workflow.
3. Automatic CSS (ACSS)
Automatic CSS (ACSS) is a WordPress plugin that provides a utility framework for WordPress site builders such as Oxygen, Bricks, and even Gutenberg. It was developed by Kevin Geary, who I am an avid supporter of. His products are clean, well thought out, and have been exceptionally well received by the WordPress developer community.
Moreover, ACSS seamlessly integrates with WS Form, adding an effortless touch to form styling. Together, these tools empower us to create stunning and functional websites, providing an exceptional user experience.
4. BlogVault
You can never have enough backups! On top of hosting backups and manual backups that we do on a frequent basis I also like to install BlogVault to add another layer of protection against data loss. I love the ease at which BlogVault works, to the extent that I can pretty much forget about it.
It sits there silently, and I have to occasionally nudge it to make sure it is still doing its job, which inevitably it always is. I also like how BlogVault emails you if it cannot reach your server to perform a backup.
5. WS Form
There is a reason I started WS Form. Our agency found building forms challenging. We often had to install (and purchase) several add-on plugins, write custom code, and spent hours going through deeply nested code to get forms styled properly.
Now we use WS Form. Yes, it’s our own product, but the rate of productivity has increased significantly when it comes to form development. In particular, the debug console rapidly speeds up our form testing processes. In a single click, we can populate and test a form, saving us a considerable amount of time. Integrations are quick and easy to establish, and building truly responsive forms is a drag and drop experience.
WS Form serves its intended purpose – the rapid development of simple and complex forms. The support is pretty good too 😉
More Plugins that power my online business
Our WordPress plugin stack goes beyond these five. We often install Yoast for SEO, WooCommerce for E-Commerce, Atarim for client feedback, as well as using plugins such as those from Barn2 to add specific functionality we need.
I would also encourage all WordPress developers to look beyond the big names out there. There is so much talent out there producing some truly remarkable plugins. Check out some of the smaller WordCamp sponsors for ideas and inspiration.