By - Nick Harrison
Category - WordPress Development
Source - http://www.chicagobusiness.com
Having developed with CMSs (content management systems) ranging from
Drupal, ExpressionEngine, Joomla, etc., I have grown to love Wordpress
for its versatility, power and its community of developers. Wordpress
allows small businesses with smaller budgets the ability to increase the
functionality and features of their websites and blogs via powerful and
not so powerful plugins.
Although Dashal (our site uses Wordpress) creates custom plugins all the time for our clients, depending upon their needs, we can often rely on an existing pre-built plugin from the Wordpress community saving our clients, in some cases, several thousand dollars.
The best part about a lot of these plugins is that as a small-business owner you can often implement them by yourself or with little outside development work.
Here is a list of 15 killer plugins that can improve your site and/or blog.
1. Excluding pages from navigation: A fair amount of Wordpress sites that are developed have dynamic site navigation based on the pages you create. What that means is, if you create a new page, it will automatically show up in your site navigation. There are times when you don't want a page to appear there.
2. Google sitemaps: Google sitemaps help Google and other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing index your pages and posts; it can also let them know when new pages or posts have been added. Install this plugin for it to be automated.
3. Breadcrumbs: Help your users know where they are and their path.
This can help especially when users want to click on the category a post or page is under.
4. All in One SEO Pack: One of the most popular SEO plugins, this is a plugin I normally install for all of my clients' websites. It allows you to add specific titles, META tags and more to your pages/posts.
5. Gravity Forms: Building forms can be incredibly time consuming and technical. Gravity Forms allows non-developers the ability to create several different types of forms. It also comes with email functionality and the data can be stored on your database that you can download from the Wordpress admin section.
6. Social Connection: This plugin allows your users to sign-in to your site using their favorite social media accounts. This is becoming more and more popular. It makes it easier for users than having to always remember passwords, etc., to your site. http://www.oneall.com/
7. User management: This robust plugin allows you to set permissions for your users, allowing certain users to access content that others cannot. It can also confirm registration, and send notification emails and more.
8. Pagination: By default, Wordpress's navigation to go from one page/post to the next isn't really the most functional with the two options to go to the previous or next. This plugin will allow you to have page numbers at the bottom that will allow users to navigate easier and skip ahead.
9. Article 2 PDF: This plugin allows users the ability to turn your post/page into a PDF file that they can download and read or print.
10. WP Polls: People love filling out polls and giving their opinions. Polls can allow you to both gather information and engage the user.
11. Sharebar: Since Mashable started having its social media sharing options follow you down the page, more and more sites have adopted it. This nifty plugin allows website owners an easy way for users to share their content.
12. Google Analyticator: This plugin is terrific because it lets you view Google analytics results right in your Wordpress admin. It is helpful for website owners who are busy or forget about checking out their stats from Google.
13. WooCommerce: E-commerce can be extremely expensive when shopping carts come into play and the development work that goes into them so they are functional on your website. For the small business, the people at WooThemes have made this much easier by not only having themes that have e-commerce capabilities, but a plugin that allows you to integrate it into your existing website much easier than ever before.
14. Related Posts: Users can become more engaged with your site by visiting more than one blog post and seeing more content that they like. With this plugin, you can give your users other posts they might be interested in. And if you sell advertising space, the more post views normally mean the more money you can receive.
15. Wordpress Backup: Although most server hosts backup their databases, it doesn't mean it will always work. I have known several people throughout the years who have lost all of their data. This neat little plugin will backup your Wordpress site should you break it or lose all of your data for some reason.
There are literally thousands of Wordpress plugins out there that you can use to save you both time and money and take your website or blog to the next level.
Category - WordPress Development
Source - http://www.chicagobusiness.com
 |
| WordPress Development |
Although Dashal (our site uses Wordpress) creates custom plugins all the time for our clients, depending upon their needs, we can often rely on an existing pre-built plugin from the Wordpress community saving our clients, in some cases, several thousand dollars.
The best part about a lot of these plugins is that as a small-business owner you can often implement them by yourself or with little outside development work.
Here is a list of 15 killer plugins that can improve your site and/or blog.
1. Excluding pages from navigation: A fair amount of Wordpress sites that are developed have dynamic site navigation based on the pages you create. What that means is, if you create a new page, it will automatically show up in your site navigation. There are times when you don't want a page to appear there.
2. Google sitemaps: Google sitemaps help Google and other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing index your pages and posts; it can also let them know when new pages or posts have been added. Install this plugin for it to be automated.
3. Breadcrumbs: Help your users know where they are and their path.
This can help especially when users want to click on the category a post or page is under.
4. All in One SEO Pack: One of the most popular SEO plugins, this is a plugin I normally install for all of my clients' websites. It allows you to add specific titles, META tags and more to your pages/posts.
5. Gravity Forms: Building forms can be incredibly time consuming and technical. Gravity Forms allows non-developers the ability to create several different types of forms. It also comes with email functionality and the data can be stored on your database that you can download from the Wordpress admin section.
6. Social Connection: This plugin allows your users to sign-in to your site using their favorite social media accounts. This is becoming more and more popular. It makes it easier for users than having to always remember passwords, etc., to your site. http://www.oneall.com/
7. User management: This robust plugin allows you to set permissions for your users, allowing certain users to access content that others cannot. It can also confirm registration, and send notification emails and more.
8. Pagination: By default, Wordpress's navigation to go from one page/post to the next isn't really the most functional with the two options to go to the previous or next. This plugin will allow you to have page numbers at the bottom that will allow users to navigate easier and skip ahead.
9. Article 2 PDF: This plugin allows users the ability to turn your post/page into a PDF file that they can download and read or print.
10. WP Polls: People love filling out polls and giving their opinions. Polls can allow you to both gather information and engage the user.
11. Sharebar: Since Mashable started having its social media sharing options follow you down the page, more and more sites have adopted it. This nifty plugin allows website owners an easy way for users to share their content.
12. Google Analyticator: This plugin is terrific because it lets you view Google analytics results right in your Wordpress admin. It is helpful for website owners who are busy or forget about checking out their stats from Google.
13. WooCommerce: E-commerce can be extremely expensive when shopping carts come into play and the development work that goes into them so they are functional on your website. For the small business, the people at WooThemes have made this much easier by not only having themes that have e-commerce capabilities, but a plugin that allows you to integrate it into your existing website much easier than ever before.
14. Related Posts: Users can become more engaged with your site by visiting more than one blog post and seeing more content that they like. With this plugin, you can give your users other posts they might be interested in. And if you sell advertising space, the more post views normally mean the more money you can receive.
15. Wordpress Backup: Although most server hosts backup their databases, it doesn't mean it will always work. I have known several people throughout the years who have lost all of their data. This neat little plugin will backup your Wordpress site should you break it or lose all of your data for some reason.
There are literally thousands of Wordpress plugins out there that you can use to save you both time and money and take your website or blog to the next level.
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