by Firefly Partners • 07.23.2014
Meow, baby! Firefly’s love of the WordPress CMS is not a secret – it’s stable, easy to use and it has a global developer community busily creating plugins for super cool new features! Features like calendars, additional security and custom forms…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Firefly’s resident WordPress Guru, Nate Allen, has just a few plugins that he includes in every new site he builds. This post will focus on 6 WordPress plugins that will help your site work in a more efficient way than it would ‘out of the box’. Before we get to the good stuff, here’s a brief definition of what a plugin is and what it does.
A plugin consists of code that creates customizations (features, functionality and enhancements) that are not part of the ‘core’ WordPress functionality. Plugins are generally free and there are thousands to choose from in the WordPress Plugin Directory. Plugins are written in PHP scripting language, and are developed to work seamlessly with the core WordPress code. Plugins are installed on your WordPress server and then can be applied to specific pages or throughout the whole website.
Now that you know a bit about what a plugin is, take a gander at Nate’s 6 required plugins:
Advanced Custom Fields
This plugin is used for creating custom fields in pages and posts. Easy to use – you’ll wonder how you created content without it!
Better WordPress Security
WordPress is a secure platform, but let’s face it – if hackers can grab data from companies like Target, they might be able to get into your site too. Use this plugin to add multiple methods of plugging common WordPress vulnerabilities.
Bulk Page Creator
In our experience, adding content can be one of the most time-consuming tasks in a site build project. Help is here with this awesome plugin! We use it for quickly creating multiple shell pages with the click of a button. Nate recommends that you uninstall after using.
Google Analytics for WordPress
You know you need this one – instead of adding the Analytics code directly into the theme, this plugin gives some control over the actual Analytics code, as well as enabling site metrics reporting within the dashboard of the website.
TinyMCE Advanced
If you use the WYSIWYG editor to manage your site, this one is for you! This plugin enables the advanced features of TinyMCE, the WordPress WYSIWYG editor. You can add new editing features (like search & replace), set font families and even move the editing buttons around within the WYSIWYG.
Widget Logic
Downloaded more than 82,000 times, Widget Logic allows you to control which pages your widgets appear on. An extra bonus included in this plugin provides an option to tweak the widget HTML so you can closely match your site theme and styles.
Ready to see plugins in action? Check out our latest WordPress site for the fine folks at American Technion Society!
Missed the memo about our fondness for the WordPress CMS? We have a slideshow with your name on it.
