WordPress is a powerful website building platform, and I love using it for many reasons. But today I am just going to talk about one of those reasons: the amount of free WordPress plugins available that make my life easier.
In case you weren’t aware, Wordpress.org is an Open Source project, which means that there are many, many people out there in the world who work together to create themes, plugins and extensions just for Wordpress users.
Most of the plugins I’ve listed out for you today are free, and they not only provide simple solutions for many common tech problems, but they can also can enhance your website’s security and give you the opportunities you need grow your business and brand.
Ready to dig in? Let’s get started.
WEBSITE DESIGN & CUSTOMIZATION
- Easy Google Fonts | Use Google Fonts to easily add custom fonts to your WordPress theme, no fancy coding skills needed.
- WP Post Signature | With WP Post Signature, you can create a customized signature that will show up at the end of every blog post.
- Hide Featured Image | This plugin allows you to hide a post’s featured image when it’s being viewed in full.
- Hide Title | Don’t want a page title to show up when it is being viewed in full? Then use this plugin!
SOCIAL MEDIA
- MiloTree PopUp | A popup that appears on the side of your website with the goal of encouraging readers to follow you on one of your social media profiles. I use this to get more Pinterest followers, but you can also use this for growing other social media profiles.
- Pinterest Hover Pin It Button | This plugin makes it easier than ever for visitors to pin posts straight from your website via a Pin It button that appears when they hover over an image.
- Facebook Widget | Allows you to showcase your Facebook profile in widget form.
- WP Instagram Widget | Shows recent posts to your Instagram account in a widget that can be displayed in your sidebar or in the footer area of your website.
CONTACT FORMS
- Formidable Forms | An easy-to-use plugin that will let you create different forms, such as contact forms, for your website.
SUBSCRIPTION BOXES
- MailChimp Forms by MailMunch | This Mailmuch plugin is free, and with it you can create email subscription boxes that will show up at the end of your blog posts or in your sidebar. It works with most email marketing providers. (See my resources page for a list of the top email marketing services I recommend!)
- PopUpAlly | With PopUpAlly, you can create customized email subscription pop-ups to go along with your sidebar subscription boxes. It also works with most email marketing providers!
SECURITY & BACKUP
- Wordfence | Wordfence is plugin that helps keep your WordPress website secure. There are many pros to using this plugin, but my favorite aspect of it is that it emails me every time there has been a successful login to my WordPress dashboard. This way I will know if someone else ever logs in aside from myself, and then I can deal with the problem right away.
- Updraft Plus | UpDraft Plus is a free plugin that lets you schedule automatic backups of your website to free storage sites such as Google Drive and Dropbox.
SEO
- Yoast SEO | Does SEO confuse you? If so, then I highly recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin for your WordPress website, because it will guide you through the process of learning how to use good SEO strategies for your blog.
- Ultimate Nofollow | This plugin makes it SO easy to turn affiliate links into nofollow links. Again, no coding needed. (Here’s an article that breaks this down for you in case you don’t know what nofollow and do follow links are all about.)
ECOMMERCE
- WooCommerce | A plugin that lets you set up a store to sell products and services on your website.
- LifterLMS | Instead of paying to host your courses somewhere else, use the LifterLMS plugin to host courses on your own website. The only payment you might need to make is a one-time fee for Paypal integration.
Do you have questions about any of the plugins I’ve talked about? Is there a plugin that you think I missed? Feel free to let me know in the comments below! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Bryan
September 1, 2017 at 4:28 pmI have a couple of additional recommendations for the editing side:
TinyMCE Advanced adds some more powerful formatting features. Easy access to superscript and special characters makes all the math formulas I write much easier! It also has an easy-to-use table generator, more options for lists, and font controls.
WordPress Editorial Calendar gives you a drag-and-drop scheduler if you want to manage automatic publishing for future articles. At the Christian Gamers Guild we like to have a regular posting schedule, but sometimes I want to change the order or insert an article. If I had to update all of them individually it would be very time consuming, but the calendar makes it very easy. Great for sites with multiple authors, frequent guest posts, or time-sensitive articles.
LH Dashboard Notes lets you add additional cards to your WordPress Dashboard with information you want to keep handy.