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10 Essential WordPress Plugins (mid-2015 edition)

Tony Cecala, Ph.D. Digital Media Consultant

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What’s the Big Deal about Plugins?

Extend the functionality of WordPress. Connect external services to your site. Make your site faster. Make your site more secure. Create a Web Application, not a Static brochure.

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How Do I Know if a Plugin is Any Good?

Use the WordPress.org/plugins/ Repo Look at the Star rating Read the reviews Is the documentation is well-written? Read the “Changelog”

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What about Third-Party Plugins?

Themeforest.net and CodeCanyon.net WPCore.com Reviews/Comments Is the documentation well-written? What is their History of abandoning Code?

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And now, the List…

What makes these special? Longevity Quality Functionality

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Contact Form 7

Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7

Plugin #1

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WordPress SEO by Yoast

Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin. http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo

Plugin #2

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Google Analytics by Yoast

Track your WordPress site easily with the latest tracking codes and lots added data for search result pages and error pages.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress

Plugin #3

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Widget Logic

Widget Logic lets you control on which pages widgets appear using WP's conditional tags. It also adds a 'widget_content' filter.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/widget-logic/

Plugin #4

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Widget Logic

Widget Logic lets you show and hide Widgets based on page types and other if/then rules https://wordpress.org/plugins/widget-logic/

Plugin #4

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Soliloquy Lite

The best responsive WordPress slider plugin. Made lite and free.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/soliloquy-lite/

Plugin #5

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Sucuri Scan

The Sucuri WordPress Security plugin is a security toolset for security integrity monitoring, malware detection and security hardening.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/ http://j.mp/fixhack

Plugin #6

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Disable Title

Disable the title per page/post https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-title/

Plugin #7

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WP Email Login

Use your email address instead of a username to log into your WordPress.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-email-login/

Plugin #8

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Scroll Triggered Boxes

Call to actions for engaged visitors, a less obtrusive alternative to pop-ups.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/scroll-triggered-boxes/

Plugin #9

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Simple Custom CSS

Add Custom CSS to your WordPress site without any hassles.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-custom-css/

Plugin #10

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3 Bonus plugins…

Special use cases Travel Photography User Interface Mods

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Nomad World Map

Create your own custom travel map. Link locations on the map to blog posts and share your travel plans. https://wordpress.org/plugins/nomad-world-

map/

Bonus Plugin #1

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TwentyTwenty

Show before-and-after pictures in your blog, with an interactive slider that allows users to compare them.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/responsive-menu/

Bonus Plugin #2

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Menu Image

Adds a field to load the image in a menu item and displays the image inside the link in the menu before the text.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/menu-image/

Bonus Plugin #3

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3 More Bonus plugins…for Optimization

Too many plugins and features can impact server performance and make a site load slowly.

So, of course, there’s a plugin for that!

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W3 Total Cache

Easy Web Performance Optimization (WPO) using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Bonus Plugin #4

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Better WordPress Minify

Allows you to combine and minify your CSS and JS files to improve page load time.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bwp-minify/

Bonus Plugin #5

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Lazy Load for Videos

Speed up your site by replacing embedded Youtube and Vimeo videos with a clickable preview image. Visitors simply click on the image to play the video

https://wordpress.org/plugins/lazy-load-for-videos/

Bonus Plugin #6

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Thank you.you can find this presentation online at: http://www.slideshare.net/networker/