Features
Built-in vs plugins
If you've built WordPress sites, you know the routine: install a plugin for forms, another for SEO, another for redirects, another for cookie consent… Timber includes the common ones, designed to work together.
The plugin checklist#
| You'd normally install… | Timber has it built in |
|---|---|
| Contact Form 7 / WPForms / Fluent Forms | Forms — builder, inbox, autoresponders, webhooks |
| Yoast SEO / Rank Math | SEO & Metrics — per-page SEO, OG, JSON-LD, sitemap, robots |
| Redirection | Redirects & short links with hit counts |
| Complianz / CookieYes / Cookie Notice | Cookie banner with Google Consent Mode v2 + consent log |
| WP Mail SMTP / Post SMTP | Email — SMTP, Gmail, Brevo, logs |
| Maintenance / Coming Soon plugins | Maintenance mode with countdown |
| Insert Headers and Footers / Code Snippets / Simple Custom CSS & JS | Blocks + global CSS |
| Header/footer builders | Global Header & Footer blocks |
| Mega-menu plugins | Menus with mega menus |
| File manager plugins | File Manager |
| Code editor plugins | Monaco code editor |
| Notification bar plugins | Site notice |
| Staging plugins | Playground — private versions and preview links |
| Duplicate Post | Duplicate pages/posts/versions |
| UpdraftPlus (basic backup) | Export/import as a zip, file-level backups |
| Basic page builders | Builder editor and reusable Blocks |
| RSS / sitemap plugins | **/feed.xml, /sitemap.xml** |
| WP-CLI migration tools | WordPress migrator wizard |
What's not built in#
Be aware of the other direction too. You'd still reach for something else for e-commerce, memberships, comments, multilingual sites, multiple user roles or a particular third-party plugin your project depends on. See Timber vs WordPress.
Why built-in beats bolted-on#
- One design language. Forms look like your theme because they're rendered by it.
- One data model. The inbox, email, redirects and sitemap all read the same files.
- Fewer updates. There's no plugin to go out of date with a core release.
- Faster pages. No plugin queries, no extra stylesheets or scripts loaded "just in case".
- Fewer surprises. Features are tested together.