Really Awesome WordPress Plugins You Should Know About

N E W A N D A M A Z I N G W O R D P R E S S P L U G I N S

R O C K Y O U R B L O G / W E B S I T E W I T H

Angela Bowman aka Ask WordPress Girl - AskWPGirl.com Custom Themes and Instruction askwpgirl on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

A P I C T U R E I S W O R T H A T H O U S A N D S W O R D S

E N V I R A G A L L E R Y

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/envira-gallery-lite/

• Envira Gallery is the absolute easiest, fastest and most efficient gallery plugin for WordPress. Creating galleries is intuitive using all native WordPress features, and your galleries are responsive right out of the box.

E N V I R A G A L L E R Y M O S A I C D I S P L AY

Responsive! Images re-arrange and resize

for screen size!

N E X T G E N G A L L E R Y• https://wordpress.org/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

• The most robust image management plugin.

• Great for photographers and people who have to manage hundreds of images and have lots of control and features.

• New version has user-friendly interface for inserting galleries on pages and posts. Recommend Plus upgrade.

N E X T G E N G A L L E R Y P L U S D I S P L AY S

R E V O L U T I O N S L I D E R

• http://codecanyon.net/item/slider-revolution-responsive-wordpress-plugin/2751380

• Responsive full-width slider with drag-and-drop interface for layering elements on the slide such as text, buttons, other images, etc.

S O L I L I Q U O Y S L I D E R• https://wordpress.org/plugins/soliloquy-lite/

• “The best responsive WordPress slider plugin. Made lite and free.” Made by a lead developer at WordPress.

• Interface almost identical to Envira Gallery, but this is a slideshow not a gallery.

E N H A N C E D M E D I A L I B R A R Y

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/enhanced-media-library/

• Create and assign categories and/or taxonomies to your WordPress Media Library images. Finally! You can organize your images!

E W W W I M A G E O P T I M I Z E R• https://wordpress.org/plugins/

ewww-image-optimizer/

• Reduce file sizes for images in WordPress including NextGEN, GRAND FlAGallery and more using lossless/lossy methods and image format conversion.

• $1/month for lossy methods

• Alt: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/

I M S A N I T Y

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/imsanity/

• Imsanity automatically resizes huge image uploads down to a size that is more reasonable for display in browser, yet still more than large enough for typical website use. The plugin is configurable with a max width, height and quality. Not

working with iPhone - bug. Might need to be sure that Jetpack plugin is connecting to servers correctly and JSON API is working.

• Only works on upload and with images inserted into posts, not images in galleries.

C O N T R O L Y O U R D A S H B O A R D

C M S T R E E PA G E V I E W

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/cms-tree-page-view/

• Adds a tree view of all pages & custom posts.

• Get a great overview + options to drag & drop to reorder & option to add multiple pages.

D I S A B L E V I S U A L E D I T O R

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-visual-editor-wysiwyg/

• Disable the visual editor for selected page(s)/post(s)/custom post types to keep HTML in tact.

R I C H T E X T TA G S• https://wordpress.org/plugins/rich-text-tags/

• Allows you to edit tag, category, and taxonomy descriptions using WordPress' built in WYSIWYG editor making your archive pages much more interesting!

• You will need to add this code snippet to your archive.php, category.php, or taxonomy.php file to show the content of the description: <?php echo category_description( ); ?>

M I G R AT E C O N T E N T W I T H E A S E

D U P L I C AT O R

• Use the Duplicator plugin to quickly and easily migrate a WordPress site from one host to another or from localhost to web host

• Easy interface

• Only need to set up new, blank database at host and upload two files

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/

W P A L L I M P O R T

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-all-import/

• WP All Import can be used for everything from migrating content from a legacy CMS to WordPress to building a store with an affiliate data feed to displaying live stock quotes or sports scores to building a real estate portal.

I M A G E T E L E P O R T E R

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/image-teleporter/

• Turns images that are hosted elsewhere into images that are now in your Media Library, and the code on your page is automatically updated!

A U T O P O S T T H U M B N A I L• https://wordpress.org/plugins/auto-post-thumbnail/

• Generates a post thumbnail from first image in post or any custom post type. If the first image doesn't work it will automatically search for the next one and so on until the post thumbnail is inserted.

V E LV E T B L U E S U P D AT E U R L S• https://wordpress.org/

plugins/velvet-blues-update-urls/

• If you don’t use the Duplicator plugin, this plugin can be used to update all urls and content links in your website if you change URLs for the site (such as from staging to live)

G E T B O O T S T R A P P E D !

W H AT I S T W I T T E R B O O T S T R A P ?

• The most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web. Details: http://getbootstrap.com

• Created at Twitter in mid-2010 by @mdo and @fat.

• It has buttons, accordions/toggles, tabbed content, lightbox, icon lists, columns, grids, button groups, alerts, popups, modal windows, table formatting, and more!

W O R D P R E S S B O O T S T R A P C S S

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-bootstrap-css/

• Include the latest Twitter Bootstrap CSS and Javascript libraries in your WordPress site.

• Required for the following plugin to work if you don’t already have a theme using Bootstrap.

B O O T S T R A P 3 S H O R T C O D E S

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/bootstrap-3-shortcodes/

• Implements Bootstrap 3 styles and components in WordPress through shortcodes.

B E T T E R F O N T A W E S O M E

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-font-awesome/

• A suite of cool vector icons.

• Automatically integrates the latest available version of Font Awesome into your WordPress site.

• Required for the following plugin to work. Not required if your theme already includes Font Awesome. http://fontawesome.io/icons/

F O N TA W E S O M E S H O R T C O D E S

• http://www.wordpress.org/plugins/font-awesome-shortcodes/

• Great interface for listing and inserting Font Awesome icons on your site.

L E T ’ S PA R T Y !

T H E E V E N T S C A L E N D A R• https://wordpress.org/

plugins/the-events-calendar/

• The best calendar plugin EVER! Grid, list, and calendar views.

• Customizable templates and CSS.

• Integrates with Easy Digital Downloads for ticket sales.

E V E N T E S P R E S S O V E R S I O N 4

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/event-espresso-decaf/

• http://eventespresso.com

• Full featured event management plugin. Challenging to set up but tons of options!

• Free version (decaf) has recently been updated, thankfully, so it’s not as clunky.

!

E V E N T S M A N A G E R

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/events-manager/

• Robust plugin that I found surprisingly competitive with Event Espresso for out-of-the-box features with excellent documentation and sensible templates.

G O I N G A P E S !

W P M A N D R I L L

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpmandrill/

• Routes all of those WordPress emails through Mandrill, giving you deliverability, tracking, reporting, and peace of mind.

• Avoids server confusion with MX records hosted elsewhere.

• Get free API Key at https://mandrill.com/.

• Create new API for each website.

E A S Y M A I L C H I M P F O R M S

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/yikes-inc-easy-mailchimp-extender/

• Easy MailChimp Forms allows you to painlessly add MailChimp sign up forms to your WordPress site and track user activity with interactive reports.

E N G A G E Y O U R A U D I E N C E !

S O C I A L N E T W O R K S A U T O - P O S T E R - “ S N A P ”

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-networks-auto-poster-facebook-twitter-g/

• Automatically publishes posts from your blog to your Social Network accounts, including: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and many more!

• Technical to implement as you need to set up API from some networks but tons of options for how/what posts.

J E T PA C K

• http://jetpack.me/

• Loads of features for engagement. Easier to set up auto publishing than SNAP but no options for what displays.

• Includes: social sharing, social publishing, blog email subscriptions, likes, enhanced distribution, contact form, and more!

• You need to sign up for free WordPress.com account to activate.

S C R O L L B A C K T O T O P

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/scroll-back-to-top/

• This plugin will add a button that allows users to scroll smoothly to the top of the page.

U LT I M AT E P O S T S W I D G E T S

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-posts-widget/

• The ultimate widget for displaying posts, custom post types or sticky posts with an array of options.

U B E R M E N U• http://wpmegamenu.com/

• The most exciting thing since sliced bread!

• Put anything in a big drop down menu: latest posts, images, category list, custom taxonomy list, and more!

• Relatively easy to set up and mobile friendly!

I C E G R A M• https://wordpress.org/plugins/

icegram/

• http://www.icegram.com/demos/

• Popups, Action Bars, Sidebar popouts, Notifications, Messenger, Inline Messages, Badges, sooo freakin’ cool!

• Integrates with Mail Chimp

C O N TA C T A N G E L AAngela Bowman • AskWPGirl.com

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