WordPress basic functionality can be almost be infinitely extended through the addition and use of what are called plug-ins. You can add functional capability with just the click of a button and because WordPress is opensource software there are thousands of developers around the globe who develop plug ins. In fact WordPress.Org website is now reporting that there are over 17,186 different plug-ins and if you’re like me it’s like being a chocolate addict in a Godiva store.
The beauty of all this is that (and excuse me if I keep repeating this) is that you can add, configure and manage just about all plug ins directly from your WordPress dashboard without ever having to worry about code and there’s pretty much a plug in for just about anything you want, or need to do. Here’s list of 10 of our favorite plug-ins, which is not exhaustive and you can see some of these WordPress plug ins in action if you want.
Some of our Favorite WordPress Plug-Ins
- Yoast SEO – If you’re site is going to be successful you’re going to need traffic which means the search engines need to like you and this plug in guides you through creating content that is search engine friendly. It will even tell you if your writing is too complicated and hard to read.
- Aweber Forms – Love this plug in because it allows people to subscribe to your list when they leave comments on your site. So rather then having to display a form you give them a checkbox option to opt in to your list. This is great for lead generation and if you want to show them a form you can do it without (again) mucking with code.
- Dynamic Content Gallery – The Dynamic Content Gallery allows you to display a rotating gallery of pictures on your home page or just about any page you want. Each picture can be associated with an article so it’s a great way to invite your audience to read what you’ve been writing. It’s easy to setup and use.
- Event Calendar – There are a number of different event calendar plug ins and you can even add your Google calendar with little effort if you’re using one, but we like this all purpose calendar because you can tie it to a post. This means if you’re having a special event on a given day, you can write about it, schedule it and then have it show up on the calendar for that day.
- Wishlist Member – Membership sites equals residual income and who doesn’t like that. Wishlist Member is not a free plug-in but it makes building a membership site pretty easy. We have extensive experience with Wishlist and use it on a number of different sites.
- Lightbox Plus – See the picture above? If you click on it you’ll notice how it is displayed in a little nicely framed popup box and if you have multiple pictures in a post, of a page you can click through the entire collection. It’s an attractive way to present photos as part of your content.
- Simple Facebook Connect – So yes, Facebook is the rage and with 700 million users why not? This plug in allows you to seamlessly integrate your site with Facebook. You can allow visitors to login, or comment using their Facebook credentials, you can add a FAN Box as we’ve done ehre and you can set it up so everytime you write something it automatically goes to your Facebook profile or fan page.
- Twitter Tools – Ok, a good part of marketing in this day and age is building an audience a-la Facebook and Twitter. This plug in allows you to create a tweet from a post, or to create a post from a tweet. You even tweet from your phone and have it show up on your site!
- Sociable – See the little icons at the bottom. These took all of 5 seconds to add and it gives visitors the opportunity to share any content they find on Facebook,Twitter etc.etc,etc which is good.
- WP-Touch- Make your website phone compatible for free. There are other premium plugins when you want to make your site completely mobile enabled but this plug in gets you started so people browsing with a phone can check you out
- Genesis Simple Sidebars -The name of the game is targeting content. The Genesis Simple Sidebar is only available for the Genesis themes (which we use) and it allows you to stipulate what shows up on a sidebar for a give page, or a category.
Speaking of phone compatibility. Let’s say your in an airport and you want to work on your site You can do it from our phone or your mobile device.
Keeping WordPress Technically Current
Technology changes pretty quickly and you might be concerned about WordPress staying current with changes in the world of technology. This is the beauty of open source and the 1000′s of developers who write code for WordPress and of all the open source applications WordPress has the largest number of developers writing plug ins so I”m pretty confident and comfortable that it will stay current over time.
With all the plug ins that are available there’s very few restrictions in terms of how you are able to present data and information to your audience. When we set your site up we install all the necessary plug ins (the top 10 above and more) and if you need functional capability beyond our base set of plug ins we’ll help you find and install it. In addition our customer training library has many training videos on the plug ins so you can login and get help (or you can call us) when you need.