Topic
Plugins worth installing, and the ones worth removing.
Themes
Divi is a theme and a page builder sold as one product on an unusually generous licence. Both halves of that sentence explain why people stay with it and why leaving is expensive.
Plugins
Most "top plugins" lists are a shopping trip. A new site needs four jobs covered, and every plugin past those four should have to justify the maintenance it creates.
Plugins
2FA is the single highest-value security change on most WordPress sites, because it defeats the attack that actually succeeds: a correct password someone else has.
Plugins
Every builder can drag a column onto a page. The differences that matter are what they do to your markup, what happens to your content when you stop paying, and whether the block editor was already enough.
Plugins
Every popup plugin can show a box with an email field. The differences that matter are targeting rules, what the script costs on mobile, and whether the plugin respects the intrusive-interstitial rules that affect rankings.
Website Building
Membership is three separate problems: recurring payment, access control and member communication. Decide how each one works before choosing a plugin, because the plugin choice is hard to reverse.
Plugins
The real question is not which CRM plugin is best but whether customer data belongs inside WordPress at all. Get that wrong and you inherit a slow admin and a database you cannot leave.
Plugins
A donation is not a purchase, and treating it like one costs you money at the form. The categories differ mainly in how they handle recurring giving, receipts and donor records.
Plugins
Database plugins fall into four groups that solve unrelated problems, and the cleanup category is the one most likely to break a site. Know which job you are doing before you install anything.
Plugins
A coming soon page and a maintenance mode page look identical and should behave completely differently. Getting the HTTP status wrong is how a pre-launch site disappears from search for months.
Plugins
Most people shopping for an LMS actually need access control, and most people shopping for a membership plugin actually need course structure. Work out which problem you have before comparing feature lists.
Plugins
Banner means a hero image, an announcement bar, an advertising slot or a consent notice, depending on who is saying it. Four unrelated plugin categories answer to the same search, and three of them will not do what you came for.