My favorite FREE WordPress plugins

Blog post grid

Essential Addons for Elementor
- use Blog instead of Post Grid
  - for Post Grid, you need to tab twice to get to the post
  - setting up is a lot more work

Countdown

Finale Lite by XLPlugins is my favorite countdown plugin because it looks pretty and is easy to use.

Here is a detailed tutorial by the developer:

Header footer codes

Code Snippets

Login attempts

Limit Login Attempts Reloaded

comes with one click to activate GDPR compliance (which is not really relevant to login)
start watching at 0:55 to see how to set up

Search bar

Compared to other search plugin I have installed, Ajax Search Lite is extremely easy to set up. I also like how it comes with many customizable options so I can style the search bar and choose how I want the search results to be displayed.

Here is a tutorial (you can start watching at 02:20):

Optimize image and site speed

WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache

Seraphinite (seems good but clashes with some themes)
- faster load time as it optimizes everything on your website
NOTE: after installing the plugin, you need to download and upload the latest version