WordPress.com is the overwhelming favorite for bloggers for it ease of use, backend support (such as SEO and social media integration) and site stats. Now WordPress.org is on its way to reign supreme as the content management system of choice for websites (and blogs too). There are unlimited themes to get the right look and feel and coding skills are not required, making it an affordable option for small businesses.
Plugins are a great way to expand the functionality of your website/blog and insert tools for specific features. They can also add depth to the design. There are more than 35,000 WordPress plugins and while there’s an app for that is much catchier phrase, there’s a plugin for that is quite accurate. We’d like to give you a list of five of our favorites and a couple we’re eyeing.
What the developer says: The best WordPress button generator.
What we say: This is a great plugin to use for white papers or other things you’d like to share or link to. There are lots of customization features for the colors, it’s easy to use and it looks nice.
HelloBar for WordPress
What the developer says: Easily add your HelloBar to your WordPress Blog!
What we say: It’s great for websites too. It can be used in the header or footer and is great to highlight important items, collect email addresses and more without the intrusion of so many other pop-up notes.
Easy Media Gallery by GhozyLab
What the developer says: Displaying your image, video (MP4, YouTube, Vimeo) and audio mp3 in elegant and fancy lightbox very easily. Allows you to customize all media to get it looking exactly how you want.
What we say: This turns an ordinary page into something truly unique.
UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore
What the developer says: UpdraftPlus brings reliable, easy-to-use backups, restores and site copies (clones/migrations) to your WordPress site. Take backups locally, or backup to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, (S)FTP, WebDAV & email, on automatic schedules.
What we say: As far as we’re concerned, you can never have enough backups. With hackers and cyber hijackers lurking, this provides an easy way to set a schedule to back up your website and to restore it, if needed.
Jetpack for WordPress.com
What the developer says: Jetpack adds powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users including customization, traffic, mobile, content, and performance tools.
What we say: There are so many different tools to activate in the Jetpack, such as stats, security and carousels. This is an absolute must.
Here are two plugins we’re checking out:
WordPress SEO (by Yoast)
What the developer says: Improve your WordPress SEO. Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin.
What we say: With more than 13 million downloads, if you have yet to join this party, now’s the time.
What the developer says: The Themify Builder is the most powerful and easy to use page builder for WordPress. Design any layout that you can imagine, bring it to life using the drag and drop interface and watch it come to life right in front of your eyes with live preview. Drag, drop, select and you’ve built beautiful pages – without any coding.
What we say: It promises easy creation of custom pages for any WordPress theme.
Three quick caveats before you install:
- Be selective and use plugins that have lots of subscribers, have frequent and recent updates and are compatible with your version of WordPress.
- Check your theme to see if it provides the same function and if so use your theme instead.
- For security purposes, update your plugins, as urged below by Darnell Smith, Master Web Developer and a guest on The Marketing Mojo Show.
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Leisa Chester Weir
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We use Themify Builder on our website. Yoast SEO don’t “see” the text, what we have written. Is there a solution for it? Thank you for your help.