WordPress offers a vast diversity of
plugins that can enhance your website. But those same plugins often
suffer from technical errors and weak support. There are a lot of okay
plugins floating around out there, but you shouldn’t settle for
mediocrity – if you’re going to put the time and effort into creating a
website, you should strive to find only the best.
Luckily, there are a lot of good choices out there. Many of
them are well-known plugins and themes. However, if you dig a little bit
deeper you cad find some real the diamonds in the rough.
In this post I cover twelve of these stellar plugins. They have all
only been downloaded a few thousand downloads, and you may have never
heard of them, but once you do you’ll no doubt want to try a few out for
yourself.
1. Evergreen Post Tweeter
While blog posts gain their greatest exposure after being initially
published, old posts can still hold a lot of value, especially for
people who may not have been around a blog long enough to have seen them
when they first went public.
Because of this, I wanted a way to tweet links to old posts automatically. That’s why I teamed up with the awesome Tito Pandu Brahmanto to develop Evergreen Post Tweeter.
It allows you to schedule regular tweets containing links to randomly
selected older posts. You can tinker with a wide array of options to
make sure that you’re only tweeting the posts that remain relevant.
2. Widget Importer & Exporter
The Widget Importer and Exporter is a neat little plugin that you can use to create files containing your widgets that can be shared and uploaded to other WordPress sites.
It has a variety of practical applications. It can aid in the process
of moving widgets from one site to another and it can also make your
life easier if any theme changes mess up your plugin settings (with
Widget Importer & Exporter, you can re-import them en masse and save time).
Unlike some more popular plugins in the same niche, Widget Importer
and Exporter actually does what it claims to do. That would explain why
it has quite positive reviews.
3. All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets
Rich snippets are unique additions to your site’s link in search
results. This plugin will add an author pictures, a star ratings, and an
image.
All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets will enhance your search engine
visibility by including interesting, interactive aspects in your search
results. Such additions can help you stand out from the competition. This can strengthen your page’s ranking and will boost your click through rate.
It works for Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It can even direct Facebook towards the right info to display when people post links to your site.
4. Image Wall
Image Wall displays pictures that function as links to your posts and
pages. It presents them randomly and allows for infinite scrolling.
Images are a great way to hold visitors’ attention in today’s day and
age, when time spans are short and there’s no lack of competing content
to browse through. Using Image Wall to display the picture links can help drive some traffic to old posts. It also doesn’t hurt that it looks good.
Still a bit confused as to what it does? They say that a picture is
worth a thousand words (sorry, I couldn’t resist). But really – have a look for yourself.
5. Flexible Posts Widget
A lot of people like to incorporate a short sampling of recent posts into their sites’ sidebar. Flexible Posts Widget takes that to the next level, enabling you to customize a wide variety of options.
You can choose to display posts of certain types, or set it up so
that only posts from specific categories will appear. These options give
you far greater flexibility than you generally have with any recent
posts widgets. You can even choose to manually enter in a group of post
IDs, should you need to do so.
The plugin will also leave the standard options open to you: you can
choose how many posts will appear and whether the links will include
feature images.
6. What The File
What The File will add a section to your admin toolbar that displays
the files and template parts that the current page utilizes.
This plugin could easily come in handy if you need to know what files
are influencing a post’s appearance. Once you install What The File,
you’ll have no trouble finding and fixing relevant files. All you’ll
need to do is hover over the section on the admin toolbar.
7. Avatar Manager
Avatar Manager gives users the option of selecting a Gravatar
image or uploading their own avatar picture. They can do this right
from their profile, meaning that the plugin integrates seamlessly with
your existing site.
You’re also able to set custom user permissions and determine some basic settings like the default size of avatar images.
8. AddThis Welcome Bar
If used strategically, this plugin can help you expand your reach
with social media. It adds a welcome bar to the top of your web page
where you can urge people to take certain social media actions.
AddThis Welcome Bar’s greatest strength lies in its ability to detect visitors’ social network preferences. That means that you can tailor your site to a number of different social media demographics.
There are also some cool options to customize. You’ll be able to pick
which social buttons to display (for instance, you can choose a sharing
button for a welcome bar). You also have the chance to customize the
color scheme for your bars.
9. Testimonials by WooThemes
This great plugin comes straight from WooThemes itself. It’s an easy-to-use testimonial manager.
Testimonials features intuitive fields of info that you’ll need to
enter: things like the person’s name, their testimonial itself, a
byline, and a URL. For images, it’s easy to grab the person’s picture
from Gravatar. If that’s not an option, then you can just upload one of your own.
There are a few ways that you can ultimately display your testimonials.
- Widgets. Once you install the plugin, you’ll see “Testimonials” pop up in the widgets list.
- Shortcode. You can easily insert a small bit of generated code into any post or page on your website.
- Template tag. This option can help with more dynamic displays.
I need not delve extensively into the benefits of showing
testimonials of the work you’ve done. Suffice it to say that if you can
build credibility, you’re doing yourself a huge favor. There is also decent documentation meant to introduce you to the basics.
10. Our Team by WooThemes
Our Team is a system for managing profiles in WordPress. One of the
best things about it is that it is clean, simple, and easy to use.
With the plugin in hand, you can easily display all of your team members on WordPress.
Much like WooThemes’ Testimonials plugin, there are separate fields
available to enter in all relevant information. Then, you have several
choices about how to display your team members to your visitors.
There is another cool thing that you should consider trying with this
plugin. You can organize team members categorically, which may prove
useful if you are with a large organization that has different divisions
or departments.
11. WP Job Manager
Job boards are a key source of information for those seeking
employment on the Internet, and with this plugin, incorporating a job
board into your own site should be pretty easy.
The key to WP Job Manager is that it is lightweight – it won’t suck away your resources or drastically overburden the server.
Given that the plugin is implemented with shortcodes, it will be easy
to integrate your job board, regardless of the theme that you have
chosen.
The plugin is nice because it focuses on the needs of both the job
listers and the job seeker. On the front end, your jobs board will boast
a searchable directory of past job listings. Behind the scenes, job
listers will get the full complement of reasonable, professional
services that they have a right to expect.
12. Features by WooThemes
Much like the other awesome WooThemes plugins on this list, Features
does the good work of lending you a hand with inputting and displaying
information. In this case, you can enter in the features or benefits that your company or service can offer to customers.
The information can be displayed without the loss of copyright.
The interface for managing this plugin is refreshingly simpler, too.
If you need to lay out some features for your visitors, this plugin is a
great way to do it.
Cheers !!
No comments:
Post a Comment