Best WordPress Plugins to Help With Website Design and Functionality
The great thing about WordPress is the ability to continually add new functions into your blog as they are developed. This functionality is added through plugins which can be easily added through an admin panel. As someone who uses them daily, these are the best WordPress plugins in my opinion.
Deans FCK Editor
This replaces the default WordPress editor that comes with WordPress 3.1. The main reason that I use this is for setting columns and rows inside the pages. This plugin makes it child’s play for setting pages as you can tell it to make the width 100%. The plugin then figures out the pixels for you. With different width themes this is a time saver.
All In One SEO
Setting a website without this plugin is tantamount to criminal neglect. The plugin adds fields underneath the blog post for title, description and keywords metatags. You don’t need to know code or visit metatag generator sites any more.
CBNET Ping Optimizer
During the initial set up of your website, you will probably make lots of changes to pages. This will save your WordPress blog from being tagged as spammer as it won’t post the edits only the new pages.
Contact Form 7
This allows you to set up a contact form on any page. You can create as many forms as you like for the various pages including radio buttons and drop down selections. It creates a piece of code that you can then place on the web page in the appropriate area.
Really Simple Captcha
This useful plugin allows you to have a simple captcha on your contact form above. It’s not the hardest captcha to break but it will stop a certain amount of automated rubbish traffic to your email which can be very annoying otherwise.
Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin automatically updates your sitemap and sends it to Google, AOL and Bing automatically. You need to get an API from Yahoo for it to send automatically to it. You can manually rebuild the sitemap or leave on automatic. It is a great set and forget plugin.
WP-Sticky
This allows you to make a post sticky at the top of the blog. For those who have never heard the term sticky it simply means that when you click the sticky option on a blog post it is never pushed to the bottom of the page when other posts are made.
Multi Level Navigation Plugin
This allows you to have drop downs from any top menu on your site. It allows unlimited drop down levels if you want. For SEO purposes placing too many sub levels will not be great but it’s there if you really want it.
Page Lists Plus
This allows you to create pages but not show them in the menu. This is perfect for creating privacy policy, terms of use and similar pages which you will probably want to manually add in the footer.
To add in a plugin for your blog, simply click on the plugin menu on the left in the admin section and then choose the “”add new”” option. It will then give you a search box. Type the plugin name and it will find it for you from the WordPress extension site.