There are so many WordPress plugins available, it’s actually pretty hard to sort through them all and figure out what the absolute must haves really are. Depending on what you’re looking for, there are often half a dozen (or more) plugins available that claim to do exactly what you need … Here are 12 must-have WordPress admin plugins that will solve all of these shortcomings :

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

All admin links available in a neat horizontal drop down menu. Saves lots of screen real estate!

Fluency Admin

Fluency Admin gives the standard WordPress admin a little lift and adds a handful of handy features to make /wp-admin an even better place to be.

Visual Composer for WordPress

Visual Composer for WordPress will save you tons of time working on the site content. Now you’ll be able to create complex layouts within minutes!

Advanced Custom Fields

Fully customise WordPress edit screens with powerful fields. Boasting a professional interface and a powerfull API, it’s a must have for any web dev

Admin Management Xtended

As a whole, the new WordPress Admin panel is organized fairly well, however when it comes to editing posts or pages quickly without having to open each post or page in a new tab or window, it isn’t a very efficient process. For those who are using WordPress as a CMS, it’s important to be able to manage contents easily and quickly. That’s what this plugin helps to do.

Visitor Maps and Who’s Online

Displays Visitor Maps with location pins, city, and country. Includes a Who’s Online Sidebar to show how many users are online. Includes a Who’s Online admin dashboard to view visitor details. The visitor details include: what page the visitor is on, IP address, host lookup, online time, city, state, country, geolocation maps and more. No API key needed. Easy and Quick 4 step install.

Search and Replace

A simple search for find strings in your database and replace the string. You can search in ID, post-content, GUID, titel, excerpt, meta-data, comments, comment-author, comment-e-mail, comment-url, tags/categories and categories-description. It is possible to replace the user-ID in all tables and the user-login for more security in the WordPress-Application.

WP Security Scan

WP Security Scan checks your WordPress website/blog for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions such as:

• Passwords
• File permissions
• Database security
• Version hiding
• WordPress admin protection/security
• Removes WP Generator META tag from core code

CMS Tree Page View

Adds a tree of all your pages or custom posts. Use drag & drop to reorder your pages, and edit, view, add, and search your pages.

WordPress Download Monitor

Plugin with interface for uploading and managing download files, inserting download links in posts, and monitoring download hits.

Download Monitor is a plugin for uploading and managing downloads, tracking download hits, and displaying links.

GD Press Tools

GD Press Tools is a collection of various administration, seo, maintenance, backup and security related tools. This tools can be integrated into the various WordPress admin panels, can perform maintenance operations, change some aspects of WordPress, see detailed server settings and information. Plugin can also track posts and pages views for various popularity lists.

Simple Tags

Simple Tags is the successor of Simple Tagging Plugin This is THE perfect tool to manage perfectly your WP terms for any taxonomy.