Seriously, un outdated and plain blog is the worst thing a blogger can afford to have these days. Because when searching the internet, people give priority to the trustworthy, accessible and functional websites. And that’s reasonable though. Why would one spend time on a blog for hours and struggle to find the info he was looking for ? That’s not an option any more!
If you’re not happy with how your blog looks and functions, and are serious on taking some steps toward improving it, I’m glad you stopped by this article. Find below a list of 10 awesome WordPress plugins that are sure to make your blog better and take it to the next level. Your visitors are going to really love your blog.
Photo Gallery
Photo Gallery plugin is one of the most popular plugins among WordPress users. The reason behind that, is its functionality and the benefits that it brings to a website. The WordPress gallery plugin allows you to create responsive photo galleries and albums within a matter of a few minutes. Its stunning Thumbnails, Masonry, Mosaic and Blog style gallery views (there are actually 5 more to find) are sure to best showcase media content on your blog. The plugin supports Youtube and Vimeo video links within the galleries, as well as slideshow view of the gallery in the lightbox.
You can add tags and captions to the images, social sharing buttons,enable/disable right click protection, etc. The galleries and albums can be added to any of your posts and pages with the available shortcodes and your theme PHP function.
Instead of having images and other media content spread out all over your website, check out Photo Gallery plugin demo and get to know about other cool features that it comes with.
Slider WD
Ever though a slider on your blog could help you to change its overall look and enhance its functionality? Well, that’s more than true and it’s all about Slider WD. It’s a cool WordPress slider plugin that brings a feature loaded slider to you blog and doesn’t ever slow down your blog’s loading speed (which quite often happens with other slider plugins though).You can add images, embed video files from YouTube and Vimeo, add social sharing buttons and hotspot, image and media layers(hotspot to the slides).
The slider is responsive, supporting unlimited number of slides, full-width view, right click protection, watermarking, 26 transition and 38 layer effects. It also supports trendy parallax, carousel and filmstrip options to have your slides look even cooler. Check out Slider WD demo to see all of its great features in use.
Form Maker
Although contact forms on a website serve as a means of getting in touch with your visitors, that doesn’t mean your options are limited to a contact form only. With WordPress Form Maker plugin you will be able to generate various kinds of forms matching any of your specific needs. This WordPress form builder can be used to generate minimalistic and multipart forms for surveys, questionnaires, registration and application forms.
Form maker comes with tons of available field options for obtaining detailed info from your visitors. The plugin is responsive and comes with 37 editable themes allowing you to adjust almost everything on the forms, such as dimensions,coloring, font styles, etc. With CSS support you can add additional styling features to the forms. It is the most powerful form builder plugin in the WordPress directory. Check out the Form Maker demo to make sure yourself.
YARPP
If you don’t recommend related content to your blog readers, the chances are most of your content is not getting enough exposure. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin will help you to introduce related content to your readers,have your blog posts go read and significantly increase their consumption.
Using an advanced algorithm the plugin determines the relatedness of the posts based on their titles, tags, categories, custom taxonomies and also post content. Moreover, YARP displays not only posts but pages and custom post types as well. You can choose between thumbnails and list view options and select one of the available templates.
Google Analyticator
You’re missing a lot of valuable data about your blog and your visitors if you’re not using Google Analyticator. It’s a must have plugin on any kind of website. What Google Analyticator does the best is providing real-time statistics about pageview counts, keyword searches,filedownloads,geographical location of your visitors, site speed, etc inside your WordPress dashboard.
The plugin comes with a widget which enables you publicly display the statistics of your blog. You can enable/disable any of its tracking features with a click. It’s easy to setup and use. Get the most out of these important stats, and easily improve your blog and better serve your readers!
Add To Any Share Buttons
There is no way to get along without social media integration. It’s the fuel to keep your blog alive and a means to obtain much more readers and visitors. AddToAny share buttons will do the trick for you and get you to the frontline of over 100 social media networks.
The buttons are responsive and can be placed in different locations throughout your blog. The plugin provides sharing stats and counts. You can give custom design to the sharing icons and choose where exactly you want the buttons to appear.
WP-PostRatings
The best way to better engage your visitors is to provide them with the content they’re really interested in. It will be to hard to guess what your readers like/dislike on your website, so this is where WP-PostRatings plugin comes in. It enables you to create rating options for your posts, such as set rating images and texts, maximum rating values, users who are allowed to rate,logging methods, etc.
There are various customizable rating templates available for different purposes, which you can adjust and use at your convenience. You can manage rating and post rating logs stats, and delete post ratings data/logs in the “manage ratings” section of your dashboard.
It’s a great way to get feedback from your readers about your posts and improve your writings to better serve them.
Disqus Comment System
Take the comments section of your blog with Disqus. It makes commenting easier and more interactive by bringing in thousands of commenters across different websites. Once you install the plugin on your blog your readers that already use this tool get the possibility to subscribe to particular comments, up/downvote the comments, mention the commenters and get notification by email as new comments are added to the thread.
The plugin uses powerful spam moderating tools, which excludes spamy comments and blacklists the spammers. As it is connected with a large discussion community, it’s proven to increase posts exposure and your readership.
OptinMonster
If you feel a shortage in visitors or email subscribers, OptinMonster is here to help. It does a great job in converting your website visitors into regular readers and subscribers, by using various opt-in and pop-up forms proven to be highly effective. Floating header and footer bars, slide-ins, sidebar forms are just a few to mention. The plugin also uses mobile specific forms targeting mainly mobile users in order not to miss them out.
OptinMonster uses advanced exit-intent technology, page level targeting and behaviorpersonalization features to provide maximum conversion results based on specific interactions and other factors. There are different form templates available for you to customize and put in use.
BackUpWordPress
To avoid the consequences of possible server crushes, external attacks and hackings, or any kind of errors, you should carefully plan your website’s backups. BackUpWordPress plugin will take care of your blog’s backups,and let you sleep with no worries.
With its automatic scheduling feature it will have your blog’s backup done on the date and time you set in advance. There are many file storage options available, such as Google drive, Dropbox, S3 service, email, etc. You can also do the backup manually if that’s the option more convenient for you.
If you’re down to going beyond the basic WordPress features, this list of 10 plugins can be a great starting point for you. Feel free to take a pick and use it to get the most out of your blog. Don’t forget to let me know if I missed any plugins also worth mentioning.
Author bio: Gayane Mar is a passionate web-blogger who started her blogging activity a few years ago. Her posts are all about web design and web development. She writes all these posts for good people who need some guidance or advice with web development. The driving force behind her writings is the great hope that her blog posts would be helpful for each and every one reading them. If you are interested you can follow her own blog wpcapitan.com