Some advice for WP Plugins

I am using the Astra theme, and if anyone has any advice/opinions on free plugins for the following purposes:

- Editing head tags for individual pages, (WPCode doesn't offer this in the free version)
- Adding a grid layout for posts on the blog page
- Adding random posts (instead of recent articles) at the end of each article
- Displaying "last modified" instead of the date the article was written
- Option for clicking on an author's name to open a page with their biography instead of a list of articles they have written.

natew said:

- Editing head tags for individual pages, (WPCode doesn't offer this in the free version)

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https://wordpress.org/plugins/tag-manager-header-body-footer/ does this I believe
I use Elements that is from GeneratePress

natew said:

- Adding a grid layout for posts on the blog page

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Query Blocks will do this
No need to get another plugin, it's standard
https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/query-loop-block/If you really want something
I used this before it became standard https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-show-posts/
Festy showed me this in the past aswell https://www.essential-grid.com/ It's pretty decent

natew said:

- Adding random posts (instead of recent articles) at the end of each article

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I use YARPP, it's pretty decent and smart enough until an AI plugin takes over
https://wordpress.org/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

natew said:

- Displaying "last modified" instead of the date the article was written

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CSS edit it out & use function.php
or guide here https://kinsta.com/blog/last-updated/

natew said:

- Option for clicking on an author's name to open a page with their biography instead of a list of articles they have written.

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Set up a redirect Page URL -> Page instead and make it a bio. I highly doubt you will have more than 10 of these pages so...
IMO better than setting up a bloated plugin

Sure, My Advice is:
1. always choose quality plugins i.e. Yoast SEO, WooCommerce or Jetpack.
2. if there is any update so Keep your plugins updated.
3. Test you plugins before deploying.
4. The most important avoid Plugins Overload because overload leads to slow down the speed of your website.