Top Umbraco Plugins I Recommend to Use

My top set of plugins that helps to boost Umbraco with few clicks adding SEO capabilities, improving editor experience and simplifying development and reduce maintenance. Of course, there are many more available plugins which you can find on the community's website.

Plugins for editor

Umbraco Forms

Simple in use and powerful Forms builder plugin. It works great for creating capture form, questionnaire and other kinds of forms. Also supports advanced workflows that can send e-mails, collaborate with web services, send captured data in the CRM system, and much more.

Umbraco Courier

Content synchronisation plugin introduces a content migration workflow where content editors can prepare articles in a staging environment and then move it to live with one click.

SEO plugins

There is a set of SEO plugins recommended to installation for Umbraco to support Google Search Engine Optimization best practises.

Redirect Plugin

301Redirect plugin tracks page relocation. It renames and set up redirects automatically.

Robots.txt Editor plugin

Robots.txt editor plugin gives editors access to the robots.txt file.

Page Not Found Manager plugin

Page Not Found Manager plugins allow processing a page not found case.

Plugins for developer

The plugins listed below are popular among developers. However, editors with a technical background will also find it handy.

Config Tree Plugin

Config Tree plugin allows you to access configuration files. It is not a best practise to change them (as apparently files will be rewritten during next release), but it gives you a chance to experiment with settings making quick changes.

uLogs Plugin

uLogs plugin allows you to look through and filter Umbraco logs. If you see strange behaviour you can check the logs to find its reason.

Umbraco 8 has own pre-installed component for viewing logs.

uSync Plugin

uSync plugin prevents fields loss during the code migration from a development machine to production.

eCommerce plugins

Merchello

Free Umbraco eCommerce plugin allows adding web shop capabilities to Umbraco CMS.

You can read about Merchelo experience in the previous article.

Ucommerce

Open and extendable Umbraco eCommerce plugin. Together with Free version for small businesses it provides enterprise capabilities.

Intranet and extranet portal

Uintra

Uintra is an open source and lightweight framework for making an Extranet, Intranet or client portal based on Umbraco.

Summary

A variety of plugins widen the Umbraco capabilities making editorial, SEO and development workflow more smooth and resultative. Before starting development of your project, read also how to built great editorial experience and create top-notch sites. Enjoy!

Author: Alexander Razvalinov

CTO at UKAD