21 Brand New and Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins

20+ Brand New and Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins

on Nov 23rd 2009 with 160 comments

With more than 7000+ plugins, WordPress is the most extendable Content Management System available; in fact, “WordPress is infinitely extensible” as Matt Mullenweg says. In this post, we’ll examine twenty-one really useful plugins to take your blog to the next level.

1. Drag To Share

“Drag to share is the newest trend in social sharing. Just drag an image and drop it into any social website to share the whole page in real time. Most notably, this effect is being used by Mashable. The plugin was developed with the source files created by Dan Wellman. Read more here ”

Download the plugin

2. Paginator

“Paginator is a pagination technique based on the idea of scrolling.”

Download the plugin

3. TypeKit Plugin for WordPress

“This is a convenient way for WordPress users to use the Typekit font service in WordPress web sites. This will enable users to quickly change the fonts on their sites. Further this plugin provides the ability to designate where TypeKit will be used in their site.”

Want to learn more about TypeKit? Watch our screencast.

Download the plugin

4. Custom Coming Soon Page

The “Custom Coming Soon Pages” WordPress plugin allows you to display a “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” page to normal visitors or regular members of your WordPress site, while the site administrators continue to see the fully functional website.

This will enable you to perform upgrades, fix nasty bugs or preview jazzy enhancements to your design live on your WordPress based website or blog without letting your users and normal visitors see crappy error messages or changes to the design until you really want them to.”

Download the plugin

5. Custom Class Selector

“The Custom Class Selector plugin allows users to style their post content using custom classes made available by the active theme. Theme developers can make custom style classes available within the visual editor by adding a simple function to the functions.php file included with their theme.”

Download the plugin

6. PHP-Widgetify

“Like a normal text widget, this allows you to easily post text and HTML, but now you can execute PHP too! This makes merging with other themes easier.”

Download the plugin

7. Pretty Comments

“Add some formatting capabilities to the comments textareas.”

Download the plugin

8. Custom Login Page

“With the Custom Login Page, you can change the background image of your login page, the background image/colo of your login form div, the main logo image of your login page, and add custom CSS – all through a simple interface. Remember to view the Help tab at the top of the settings page for the plugin.”

Download the plugin

9. eCSStender for WordPress

“This plugin uses the eCSStender javascript Library. This library is a parser that takes your CSS after the browser.

The library re-interprets the css using the plugins and adds new abilities to the browsers. You can for example add CSS3 Selectors support to IE6.

Download the plugin

10. Freebie Images: Free Stock Images Plugin

“Spice up your blog with high quality free stock photos & images created by professional photographers and illustrators: Easy to use search interface with advanced filtering and Drag & Drop functionality.”

Download the plugin

11. SecurePress Website Security Analyzer

“SecurePress is a “Live” patent pending security system for WordPress.
With the introduction of SecurePress, WordPress owners now have a clear choice in website protection. No more piece-meal security patches and plugins. The SecurePress widget installs enough free features to get you started towards securing your site. The ability to see and record your attacks is an excellent starting point. The free reports and statistics available within the dashboard help you to better understand the level and magnitude of these attacks. The free price tag is another excellent reason to download! When you’re ready, and after familiarizing yourself with the dashboard, you may want to upgrade to the full version to enable the vast blocking capabilities of SecurePress Pro and turn this application into a monster security shield.”

Download the plugin

12. Prev-Next Keyboard Navigation

“Prev-Next Keyboard Navigation adds JavaScript to allow moving through postings on index and archive pages using the J/K keys to skip to the next or previous post.”

Features

  1. Scrolls the current post to the top
  2. View next post with “J”, previous post with “K”
  3. After the last post on a page, continues to the next page

Photo by John Khan

Download the plugin

13. oEmbed Provider

“The oEmbed provider plugin makes WordPress an oEmbed provider, compliant with the XML and JSON specification at http://www.oembed.com.

oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly.”

Download the plugin

14. My WordPress Secure

“This plugin is very simple: it removes the WP-Version from the head of the document – thus, avoiding bad-intentioned people from knowing what version of WordPress you’re currently running. “

Download the plugin

15. Private Messages For WordPress

“This plugin allows users of your blog to send private messages (PM) to each other. The number of PMs can be controlled via the plugin’s option page.”

Download the plugin

16. Simple WordPress Framework for Plugins Development

“Simple WordPress Framework is a Plugin to help you create new Plugins. Even though this is the first version (Beta), it is fully functional. It was designed using the standards and requirements specified in the WordPress Plugin API Manual and follows the correct programming structure, functions and procedures that are required to build a plugin in WordPress. In every PHP file, you will find notes and urls referring to the WordPress API articles that are relevant.”

Download the plugin

17. No IE6

“You can install this plugin to inform your users that they are running an old browser.

This is using the jReject jQuery plugin. The WordPress plugin simply uses hooks to insert the jQuery plugin into your theme.”

Download the plugin

18. S3Vault

“S3Vault is a WordPress Plugin to protect your Amazon S3 files by generating expiration links. You can post your S3 files for download, or play videos inline without worrying about others sharing your S3 file links.”

Download the plugin

19. Envato Marketplace Items

“The Envato Marketplace Items plugin retrieves items from an Envato Marketplace and API set of your choice, then caches and shows the results as a gallery of 80px square thumbnails.”

Download the plugin

20. WordPress Admin Bar Improved

“This Plugin replicates all of the menu links in your normal admin area at the top of your main site for logged in users (i.e. you). You can go right to the “Write Post” or manage options pages in one click from anywhere on your blog. No more having to go to your dashboard first. You can even have it replace your admin area menus if you want.”

Download the plugin

21. Excerpt Tools

“If you require a specific excerpt length for each post, this is the right plugin for you. It adds an excerpt box to pages and shows a customizable jQuery character counter with the ability to limit the amount of characters.”

Download the plugin


Tags: Wordpress
 
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I'm a Web Designer from Venezuela, I love Photoshop, and enjoy making website templates for ThemeForest.  

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  • http://uid0.pl uid_0

    Who uses WordPress? Drupal better …
    But nice tutorial:)

    • http://www.ashsmith-digitalmedia.co.uk Ash Smith

      I see more wordpress blogs than I see of any other system… what makes it better? I’m curious cause I haven’t used it before! Worth dabbling into it?

      Thanks in advanced!

    • http://www.damonbauer.com Damon

      Umm… 4+ million people use it :)

      Good article. Looks like some promising plugins here.

    • http://swbates.com Steve

      It was voted the best open source CMS for 2009

      • Ian

        I don’t understand how WordPress is voted the number one CMS. To me it feels so tailored to blogging. I’m tempted to start an open source CMS because I can’t seem to find any CMS that is visually appealing and user friendly like WordPress yet a true CMS… not some blogging framework that you can kinda hack to be a CMS.

        I’d love to hear your guys thoughts on this?

      • http://uid0.pl uid_0

        Drupal – is better, faster, safer.
        WordPress – has more users, has better support.
        Which better? A matter of taste

      • http://www.damonbauer.com Damon

        @Ian

        I don’t feel like you have to “kinda hack” WP to make it like a CMS. If you don’t want the blog feel, you disable comments and go on creating a normal page. I’d say removing the blog features from WP is easier than adding them to Drupal (and making that blog a nice as a default WP blog).

        There’s an argument for both sides, but since this article is about WP, I’d say it would have to win this time ;)

      • http://www.tastybytes.net brian

        Look into Silverstripe (www.silverstripe.org) its free, open source and EXTREMELY easy to use.. the way a CMS should be.

        The themeing is even easier, plenty of built in page controls etc. take a look.

        and no, I’m not associated with silverstripe at all… its just that good.

    • http://erichamby.com Eric Hamby

      LMAO: No sorry kid, WP is far better. WordPress has been kicking Drupals butt for years now. I agree that its your fair opinion to think that Drupal is better, just has i think WordPress is better. What you cant deny is the few million users WP has over Drupal.

      • Vlasnn

        Following that you can say then that windows is better than Linux just because more people use it. I would say people with better documentation and with better knowledge prefer use Drupal. The fact that be more popular doesn’t turns it in a better application.

        For me WP is a nice blog and if the person have the knowledge can turn it in a nice CMS, but Drupal is a CMS with a blog incorporated plus other things. The big issue for Drupal is the lack in documentation. Sadly is not as big as WP.

        Normally this kind of debates doesn’t have any good end, some people believe that a Photoshop is better than illustrator, or Dreamweaver is better than coda, etc. I would say for me the best tool is one that I know how to use it and make it do what I need.

        but that is my opinion.

    • http://gilesvangruisen.com/ Giles Van Gruisen

      1. WordPress has more users than Drupal.
      2. This is no a tutorial.

      • http://www.tomvaniersel.be Tom VI

        Let’s just say WordPress is suitable for blogs and Drupal for everything else :)

    • w1sh

      “Drupal better” – No one ever states why.

      I’ve used every CMS from here to Timbuktu. Drupal has few really nice modules (plugins) like CCK and I’m sure there’s 1 more, but in general WordPress is better in every aspect of the word.

      WordPress starts off as just a blogging platform, but you can pick from a ton of nice plugins (albeit heavily styled) to make it do exactly what you want.

      The only reason I’d use Drupal is if I were making a big website for someone who heard the buzzword in a sentence that goes like, “WhiteHouse.gov uses Drupal!”

      I can’t believe WP still catches flak from the “It’s not a real CMS”-crowd. Wtf is a CMS if not a means to organize content?!
      *cough Posts, Pages, and Categories cough cough*

      …WP isn’t a CMS in the respect that it’s core doesn’t come packed with a million useless plugins (Drupal’s color chooser) that make it hard to work with – for designers and developers.

      I mean, Christ! Have you seen how many classes are applied to every piece of Drupal’s code?! Why not combine all the CSS classes into 1 class that defined all those properties? I’ll tell you why, because Drupal ‘inserts’ those classes via hooks as it builds the page.
      It’s easy enough to theme for out of the box but try designing for something that overwrites your CSS 4 or 5 times during it’s creation.

      Bah. If you’re going to spend that much time and effort on a site and the client isn’t demanding Drupal, you should use something like Plone. Otherwise every small to medium site should be happily done in WP quickly, efficiently, and beautifully.

      Btw, when are we going to get a “How to Draw an iPhone” tut on NetTuts?!

      I’m mad now!

      • http://dicasinteressantes.com Xcobar

        Great reply! ; )

      • Joey Parshley

        Drupal is way too complicated front end maintenance of a site. Because there is so much “hooking-in” its can take too long to find where the styles are being applied.

        I woudl suspect the difference would be in how they scale??

      • Michio

        Right on, w1sh. I have also used and created websites using Joomla, Mambo, and Plone. However I’ll keep it focused to Drupal and WP and add a couple more differences between the two.

        If you create a website for a client who would like to update their own content and make additions, my clients (who are not web savvy) have found it easier to use the WP interface versus the Drupal interface. They commented that the Drupal interface is overwhelming. With that said, you can always tweak the interface to make it more user friendly but why waste time doing that for a client when you are not getting paid to do it?

        The CSS classes are overwhelmingly annoying in Drupal but when you want to control every element in the design, this is where those css classes come in handy. However, it is a very time consuming thing to configure every css class and id.

        When it comes to custom content generation, hands down I side with Drupal. But when a client who wants a simple website or blog and I am on a tight budget, WP wins hands down.

        I recommend learning both systems inside and out. They both have their specific strengths and weaknesses and if you are developing websites for clients, you know which weapon to choose.

      • Vlasnn

        One Teacher told me in a chat about Drupal and WP:

        With Wp you have a house where you can turn it in what you need, but with Drupal I’m giving you the bricks to build what you want.

        The knowledge and time depends on you, in both if you work more on them the time that you are going to spend making projects is going to be shorter than if you just starting to use it.

        In both the learning curve is exponential.

      • http://www.circuitbomb.com Dustin

        A teacher told me once that if I want something done, exactly to my standards, to build it from scratch myself.

        Drupal doesnt give you bricks, it gives you a cardboard box, crayons and a knife and tells you to cut some holes and draw some curtains, yea you can take it apart, but its gonna take tape and glue to put back together.

        WordPress gives you a cake, some icing, and says here, make this cake look nice, also check out the 7000+ recipes to make your cake look, smell and taste better.

        PHP, CSS, JS, HTML, ASP etc… are the bricks and mortar, you know how to use them and it doesnt matter what CMS you use.

      • http://mhuntdesign.com Matthew Hunt

        WordPress vs Drupal is subjective and it depends on the project at hand. These two systems are probably the two best ones in the open source community. There’s no sense in saying which one is better. It’s usually about which one is better for the job. WordPress is not a CMS only because it isnt marketed as one. But yes, it is whatever you want to make it. In fact it has been used for everyone from buddypress installs to project management portals to invoicing systems. Drupal is very powerful and scalable, highly configurable, but sucks as a blog ( unless you put tons of effort) and lacks very good usability out of the box. Not to mention its very steep learning curve. It’s just going to take a lot longer to fully understand how to use Drupal efficiently. For those who say WordPress is better, there is a strong chance they never worked with Drupal past the brick wall that everyone hits when they start, whereas with WordPress you’re on a rocket up and running in no time. Sad to say this, but it is ignorance for the most part. These two systems should not be judged in the same category. I work with both systems everyday and It has taken me more than a year to feel really good about working in drupal. That’s pretty much how front-end coders and designers are going to feel. That’s why designers choose wordpress, that’s why more programmers may choose Drupal. Drupal hasn’t been good to designers until recently. Lastly, drupal can accommodate big-budget projects with heavy functionality requirements. Whereas WordPress will be more appropriate for smaller businesses, blogs of any size and low-budget projects. At least people are comparing these two and not joomla or silverstripe. Sure they are great, but I personally do not like them..

    • http://www.zainals.com/blog Moe web

      I look at it a a flavour selection, i partially agree with Vlasnn.

      for your kind information, wordpress won the best CMS award 2009 :-)

      good post!

    • http://www.semutdesign.com/ Semut Design

      I do and I love it. But Drupal… I use it too. So what?

  • http://hontap.blogspot.com Rilwis

    Thank you for listing my plugin (Private Messages For WordPress) :)

    • http://ivorpadilla.net iPad
      Author

      Awesome plugin by the way. :)

    • Dasani

      oh yah! good job man!

  • Simon

    What about the Elastic plugin?

  • http://www.conceptdezain.com.ar Franco

    Some awesome plugins here!!!. Thanks for the post!

  • http://webdesignfan.com Tomas

    A lot of useful plugins, thanks.

  • http://wwww.wppanda.com Enk.

    Awesome List, wow thanks..
    Some very new and great plugins I’ve seen ! :)

  • http://dyvantity.com Dany

    Thanks, very useful!

    @dyvantity
    (http://twitter.com/dyvantity)

  • Alex Hughes

    Great List :)
    Thanks allot!

  • http://www.ashsmith-digitalmedia.co.uk Ash Smith

    Niice list, I’ve been dying to find this drag to share plugin!

    The idea to block IE6 users actually made me laugh (out loud)! Brilliant stuff.

    Thanks, great work!

  • http://www.geekeemedia.com Nick

    Thanks for the post! Didn’t know about a few of those.

  • http://www.ouchh.com Ouchh.com

    Wonderfull plugins. Thank you very much for sharing.

  • http://www.what-a-geek.com Adit Gupta

    nice collection!! :)

  • http://www.teographics.com Teodoro Lopez

    this is an awesome article, love the plugin for typekit and the custome login page!!

  • keefers

    Word Press is the truth! Alway good to see up to date plugins. Maybe nettuts can design a WP Framework of its own in the future? I would buy it in an instance.

  • jodu38

    Who posts this kind of comment ? Better when a useful one …
    But nice troll:)

  • http://blog.bradgrier.com Brad Grier

    How cool, new plugins for me to try, except for the Typekit plugin — which rocks! Clean, designy, efficient too!.

  • http://www.imblog.info Muhammad Adnan

    good share, I will use drag share in my blog ;)

  • http://vector.laroouse.com esranull

    very usefull collection thanks

  • http://www.weighttrainingforwomentoday.com kathy

    will def have to implement a few of those! love the noIE6 idea. come on people that was so 2006.

  • http://www.freshclickmedia.com Shane

    Most of these were new to me. Thanks for sharing!

  • http://www.robmcguire.net Rob McGuire

    It’s amazing how fast and how often new plugins for WordPress come out. Most would probably get lost in the shuffle if it weren’t for posts like this.

    The private message plugin looks like it could become quite useful on a few of the blogs I have, might have to give it a go.

  • http://anime2.kokidokom.net Eugen R.

    Nice post, some really useful plugins are those.

  • Fábio Antunes

    Just great. I’m looking forward to write a Worldpress blog. And this are what i been looking for. And I’m really intrigued by this one: “PHP-Widgetify” i will see how it works.

  • http://www.farthingpoodles.com/ Poodle Breeders

    Great plugins. Thanks for sharing

  • http://sonergonul.com Soner Gönül

    Great..!

    Thanks..!

  • http://designinformer.com Design Informer

    This is awesome!

  • http://www.madamelolo.com lolo

    Thanks, very usefull

  • http://missioncommunicate.com Tim

    superb. will employ a few of these in the ongoing work of spreading WordPress website goodness! particularly like the custom css selector – will give a number of these a good test!

  • http://interactive.finelight.com srilatha

    Thanks a lot. Good plugins.

  • http://mimik.in Mimik

    sweet and fresh list of plugins! ty

  • JakeHardy

    cool collection… thanks!

  • http://pcw.me philip

    The S3Vault plugin will come in handy as I just started implementing Amazon’s S3 service into my websites.

  • http://graphicagenda.com Greg K

    Great Round Of Plugs. Doin’ the CMS just got easier

  • http://www.curiousromain.com Romain

    Yçu should use the extended version of drag to share plugin : http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dragtoshare-extended/

  • http://earthtoblog.com Justin L

    This is proper linkbaiting ;)

    Actually, it’s a great article and these are some damn nice looking plugins. (I’ve also never seen most of these before)

    Great work!

  • http://www.lonegrainger.com/ Brandon Grainger

    Thanks for making this great collection of wordpress plugins. Thanks.

  • http://blog.amonle.com amonle

    sweet

  • http://www.designfollow.com/ designfollow

    great

    thank you

  • http://www.veronicawong.ca Veronica

    I’m not sure if it’s just me, but the Prev-Next Keyboard Navigation plugin link doesn’t lead anywhere?

  • http://twitter.com/z0r z0r

    Number #17 is Number #1.
    No more IE6

  • http://benje.epyks.net Benje

    Some great plugins, thanks for the informative post!

  • http://anakbangsa.web.id LiliekS

    Wow great article, thanks. I’ll definitely try it!

  • http://www.virtualpreacher.org Yohan Perera

    Superb list… Thanks for the intro going to download Free Stock Images Plugin and SecurePress Website Security Analyzer

  • http://www.proofofbrain.com Scott Ring

    Thanks! I added drag to share and custom style. Should be helpful.

  • http://www.combatspecops.com hiro protagonist

    the ‘theme my login’ plugin is more professional imho for a login page than the custom login plugin – it styles your login page appropriate for the theme that you are using, which is important if you are looking to make your site consistent (eg for a client).

    admin bar doesn’t play nice with other css in wordpress, and completely broke the layout of my site when it was enabled (pushed other content out of the way). nice idea, but needs to be done in a less intrusive manner.

    the custom css one is useful, as wordpress tries to pretend like behind the scenes formatting like css doesn’t exist (which is good for clients that just want an easy to use cms for their sites), but it’s nice to have options ;}

  • http://codyrapol.com Cody Rapol

    I’ll have to try the drag to share one, looks interesting :)

  • http://motyar.com Dharmveer Motyar

    usefull…

  • http://ajaxmint.com Raja

    Great collection..Thank You

  • http://brianswebdesign.com Brian Temecula

    Gotta love the No IE6 plugin. Best of the bunch.

  • http://digithrive.com Phelan Riessen

    Awesome post! I like shiny new toys for WordPress.

    Number 12 Prev-Next Keyboard Navigation is an incorrect link. Here’s the correct one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/prev-next-keyboard-navigation/

    And an alternative to the Paginator plugin:
    WP-Paginate http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-paginate/

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