As a WordPress theme designer, plugins can make your life easier in a ton of ways. Here are 5 of my favorite WordPress time savers.
5. Contact Form 7
Creating a contact form is a mystery for some and a time consuming pain for others. Contact Form 7 makes it easy. You can set up just about any kind of form you want in a user friendly GUI environment, and it even allows you to add classes and id’s to your form fields. You can even add surrounding html tags like divs and list items. This is an extremely flexible time-saver if you’ve got a form to set up on a WordPress site.
4. Google XML Sitemaps
If you want visitors to find your website, you’re gonna want a sitemap so the search engine bots can find ya. This plugin is will let you set one up in a matter of seconds. Just install the plugin, go to settings and click build. This plugin automatically creates a sitemap that includes every page on your site, and keeps it updated in the future, so you never have to touch it again.
3. WPing.FM
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a ridiculous amount of social networking sites to keep up with, and not much time to do it. So, you get a Ping.FM account. Ping.FM will make posts to all of your social networks at the same time. But now, you have to go there and type up a post every time you make a blog entry, right? Wrong. All you’ve got to do is get this plugin, set up some options, and every blog post you make will be posted to Ping.FM, which will in turn post it to all your other social networks. Completely hands-off social networking.
2. WordPress.com Stats
Real time user stats for your WordPress site including referral sites, search keywords, and a handy graph of daily, monthly and yearly visitors. What, you want more? How about all this sitting right on your WordPress dashboard, waiting for you when you log in. I rest my case.
For advanced WordPress developers only. This one is one of my favorites. With just a little bit of modification, you can use this plugin to add the “rel” or “alt” tag to your images and galleries that are required for LightBox or just about any of its clones. When you just can’t find a LightBox plugin that appeals to you, you can install the LightBox clone Jquery of your choice and modify this plugin to call it automatically from all of your site’s images. Saves you a lot of time hacking into WordPress’s php files.
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Got something to add? What are your favorite WordPress plugins. Let me know by leaving a comment! And don’t forget to share this article by clicking on your favorite social bookmarking network below.
