There are thousands of plugins in the WordPress Repository for various purposes and in this article, I'm going to share with you a list of the best unusual plugins that would help you achieve something unique and unusual on our WordPress websites.
I would like to shout out and thank all the folks from the Oxygen Builder Community for initially helping me to create this list by sharing the names of unusual plugins they know about, although I am not sure if all of these plugins are Oxygen Builder Compatible or not.
You may or may not find some of the plugins unusual due to various factors, but I tried my best to add only the unusual plugins to this list.
Note: However, please keep in mind that a few plugins from this list are outdated and last updated multiple years ago; therefore consider testing them first on a staging site before installing them into your production sites.
Code Snippets
Code Snippets is an easy, clean and simple way to run PHP code snippets on your site. It removes the need to add custom snippets to your theme’s functions.php file.
Advanced Scripts
If you're a WordPress professional such as a web designer or developer who doesn't like to use plugins for every small thing and also doesn't want to mess with the website backend files using child themes, then Advanced Scripts is the lifesaver for you.
Advanced Scripts is one of the best script managers in the market. Besides PHP, CSS, and JavaScript, you can also write SCSS and LESS code, use custom hooks, and all of that in a better interface.
Scripts Organizer
Scripts Organizer is one of the lightweight WordPress plugins that lets you dynamically inject scripts into different locations of any specific pages, posts, taxonomies, or post types of your website.
And the unique part which I love about this tool is that you could schedule your scripts (e.g. code snippets or promotional banners) to automatically activate and dedicate based on the predefined specific date & time.
Yoast Duplicate Post
This plugin allows users to clone posts of any type, or copy them to new drafts for further editing. Rewriting a post has always been quite a struggle on WordPress. But not anymore!
Keep your content manageable with the brand-new Rewrite & Republish feature. It allows you to seamlessly edit your content within WordPress, without taking it offline. Updating your content has never been easier!
Error Log Monitor
This plugin adds a Dashboard widget that displays the latest messages from your PHP error log. It can also send you email notifications about newly logged errors.
Broken Link Checker
Broken Link Checker monitors and tests all internal links & external links on your site looking for broken links. It helps you fix bad links to improve SEO and user experience.
Username Changer
Changing usernames should be a pretty straightforward feature. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t allow it by default. Username Changer attempts to remedy that oversight.
Auto Upload Images
When you want to save a post, this plugin searches for image URLs that exist in the post and automatically uploads and imports external images to the WordPress upload directory and adds images to the media library, and then replaces new image URLs with old URLs.
Better Search & Replace
When moving your WordPress site to a new domain or server, you will likely run into a need to run a search/replace on the database for everything to work correctly. Fortunately, there are several plugins available for this task, however, all have a different approach to a few key features.
FakerPress
Whenever you create a new Theme or Plugin you will always need to create custom data to test whether your plugin is working or not, and as Developers ourselves we had this problem quite a lot. Our goal with this plugin is to fill this gap where you have a problem with a good solution both for Developers and for Users of WordPress.
Featured Image Generator
Have you ever had a hard time looking for featured images for your website? This plug-in can search for great and useful photos with free licenses like unsplash.com and import them to your website in just one click. The tools included are layers, color adjustment & texts that can make your featured image a lot better than usual.
Temporary Login without Password
Create self-expiring, automatic login links for WordPress. Give them to developers when they ask for admin access to your site. Or an editor for a quick review of work done. Login works just by opening the link, no password is needed.
Activity Log
Want to monitor and track your site activity? Find out exactly who does what on your WordPress website. the Activity Log plugin is like an airplane’s black box that logs every activity on WordPress, and lets you see exactly what people are doing on your site.
Complianz
Complianz is a GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent plugin that supports GDPR, DSGVO, CCPA, and PIPEDA with a conditional Cookie Notice and customized Cookie Policy based on the results of the built-in Cookie Scan.
PhastPress
PhastPress uses advanced techniques to manipulate your pages, scripts, stylesheets, and images to significantly improve load times. It’s designed to conform to Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix recommendations and can improve your site’s score dramatically.
Ultimate GDPR & CCPA Compliance Toolkit
The Ultimate GDPR & CCPA Compliance Toolkit for WordPress is a complete, all-in-one compliance tool for WordPress. Built specifically to ensure you comply with these new regulations, our plugin includes everything you need to make sure your website is ready.
WP-Stateless
Upload and serve your WordPress media from Google Cloud Storage (GCS) with the WP-Stateless plugin. In as little as two minutes, you will be benefitting from serving your media from Google Cloud’s distributed servers.
Custom Post Type Cleanup
This plugin provides an easy way to detect and remove posts from post types that are no longer in use. The settings page for this plugin is at wp-admin > Tools > Custom Post Type Cleanup.
BulkPress
Adding multiple categories on WordPress can be a real pain. When you want categories for every country in the world, it is a horrible job to fill out and submit the new category form hundreds of times, especially if you’re adding terms that have a hierarchy!
BulkPress makes this process much easier, by providing you with an easy-to-use interface to add categories (and terms of custom taxonomies) and pages/posts (and posts of custom post types) in bulk, giving you the option to specify a hierarchy in the added posts or terms.
Bulk Menu Creator
Bulk Menu Creator lets you create multiple menu items at once from the multiline text. You can provide menu item labels one per line. If you don’t provide URLs, then the hash is automatically generated for each label, and you can quickly delete menu items with or without all subitems.
Export Media Library
Allows users to export media library files as a compressed zip archive.
Real-Time Find and Replace
This plugin allows you to dynamically (i.e. at the time when a page is generated) replace code and text from themes and other plugins with code and text of your choice before a page is delivered to a user’s browser. Because the find and replace happens in real-time, no changes are needed to plugins or themes, which means upgrades remain easy!
Post Type Switcher
This plugin adds a simple post-type drop-down to the post editor interface, allowing you to reassign any post to a new post type. It allows you to switch post types while editing your post.
View Admin As
This plugin will add a menu item to your admin bar where you can change your view in the WordPress admin.
Switch to other users without the need to log in as that user or even switch roles and temporarily change your own capabilities.
Zippy
An incredibly easy solution to archive pages and posts as a zip file and unpack them back even on the other website!
Archive posts and pages in one click. Transfer them to the other website or simply use this feature to back up your articles on the local computer.
Ad Inserter
Ad Management plugin with many advanced advertising features to insert ad codes at optimal positions.
Supports all kinds of ads, including Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager (DFP – DoubleClick for publishers), contextual Amazon Native Shopping Ads, Media.net, Infolinks, and rotating banners.
WP Mail Logging
WP Mail Logging is the most popular plugin to log emails sent by WordPress or WooCommerce. Simply activate it, and it will work immediately; no configuration is necessary.
Quick Bulk Taxonomy Term Creator
A handy WordPress plugin for batch creation of taxonomy terms in your preferred hierarchy.
An indispensable tool for WordPress developers.
Quick Bulk Post & Page Creator
A handy WordPress plugin for batch creation of posts and pages in your preferred hierarchy.
An indispensable tool for WordPress developers.
WP Bulk Delete
WP Bulk Delete is a WordPress Plugin that allows you to delete posts, pages, comments, users, taxonomy terms, and meta fields in bulk based on different powerful filters and conditions. WP bulk delete helps in finding and mass deleting unnecessary data cleanup. It also helps in improving speed and reducing database load.
Obvious Post States
The Obvious Post States does what its name implies: makes the post states of your Posts and Pages stand out. Post states like Draft, Pending, Sticky, Password Protected, etc. will be more prominent and obvious.
Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log
Post SMTP is a next-generation WP Mail SMTP plugin that assists in the delivery of emails generated by your WordPress site. Post SMTP is the first and only plugin to support the latest security standards. With OAuth 2.0, there is no need to store your email password in the WordPress database where it might be found.
FluentSMTP
The Fluent SMTP plugin fixes your email delivery issue by connecting WordPress Mail with your email service providers. These integrations are native, so they will send the emails super fast. Connect as many Email Service Providers as you want and FluentSMTP will route your transactional and marketing emails automatically. This is one of the unique features that FluentSMTP has.
WP Sheet Editor
A Spreadsheet created especially for WordPress. Edit posts in bulk using Spreadsheet.
Snitch
Network Monitor for WordPress with a connection overview for controlling and regulating data traffic from your site.
WP Migrate Lite
WP Migrate Lite takes the hassle out of moving your WordPress site. It is a WordPress migration plugin that makes exporting and migrating your database easy, fast, and straightforward.
Admin Menu Editor
Admin Menu Editor lets you manually edit the Dashboard menu. You can reorder the menus, show/hide specific items, change permissions, and more.
Show Pages IDs
Show Pages IDs is a plugin that will show you the IDs of pages and posts on WordPress.
With the Show Pages IDs plugin, you will be able to view the pages and post IDs in the top admin menu bar and the back-end admin panel as well.
WP Dark Mode
Use the WP Dark Mode plugin to create a stunning dark version of your WordPress website. WP Dark Mode works automatically without going into any complicated settings.
Duplicate Menu
The Duplicate Menu will allow you to create a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) copy of an existing Menu to do with what you will. It generates the clone on a programmatic level and recreates all necessary relationships to ensure the structure is retained as well.
Export Featured Images
Export Featured Images is a great WordPress plugin that allows you to easily migrate all the featured images from one website to another with zero hassle. It's an 8-year-old plugin but still works like a charm with WordPress 6.0.
And the best part is that it automatically assigned all the featured images to the dedicated posts where it belongs to even though the post locations were changed from custom post type to default blog posts.
Default Featured Image
Add a default featured image to the media settings page. This featured image will show up if no featured image is set. Simple as that.
Limit Modified Date
Prevent the modified date from changing when making minor changes to your content. This plugin adds a checkbox to the Publish box, “Don’t update the modified date”. When checked, saving your post does not update the post modified date. Minor changes like adding tags or fixing typos won’t bump the modified date.
Bulk Move
Bulk Move Plugin allows you to move posts in bulk from one category, tag, or custom taxonomy to another. This plugin also allows you to disassociate posts from a certain category, tag, or custom taxonomy.
Taxonomy Switcher
This plugin allows you to select your “From”, and “To” Taxonomies, to convert all terms. Optionally select a parent term to limit terms to switch. Typing term names will do a live search of terms with the name you are typing AND possess child terms.
Duplicate Taxonomy Term
This plugin allows you to clone terms of any taxonomy. Duplicate any custom taxonomy term, including built-in categories and tags. Copy a taxonomy term of any type with a click – the plugin adds a quick link to each term.
Catch IDs
Catch IDs is a simple and lightweight plugin to show the Post ID, Page ID, Media ID, Links ID, Category ID, a Tag ID, and User ID in the Admin Section Table. This plugin was initially developed to support our theme's features slider. Then we thought that this would be helpful to all the WordPress Admin Users. Just activate and catch IDs in your page, post, category, tag, and media pages.
Catch Web Tools
Catch Web Tools is a modular plugin that powers up your WordPress site with simple and utilitarian features. It currently offers Webmaster Tool, Open Graph, Custom CSS, Social Icons, Security, Updator, and Basic SEO optimization modules with more added updates to come.
Conclusion
In this resource article, I have listed all the Unusual WordPress Plugins that would help you achieve various kinds of unique tasks with ease on your WordPress websites.
If you found this post valuable, which I believe you did, then please consider sharing it with your circle and community to help them discover these powerful unique plugins.
Also, if you know some of the unusual plugins that are not listed over here, then please feel free to share the names in the comment section below to add more value to the community and I would definitely add them to this article if they belong there.
