20+ Brand New and Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins
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 ”
2. Paginator
“Paginator is a pagination technique based on the idea of scrolling.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
7. Pretty Comments
“Add some formatting capabilities to the comments textareas.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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
- Scrolls the current post to the top
- View next post with “J”, previous post with “K”
- After the last post on a page, continues to the next page
Photo by John Khan
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.”
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. “
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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By Ivor Padilla
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Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for, especially the WordPress admin bar. There is one plugin that I’d still like to add. I’d like users to be able to login using a Twitter, Facebook, Openid, Google, etc credentials to post comments, but I haven’t been able to find one I like yet. Does anyone have suggestions for the best plugin for this purpose?
Cool post. You have just made me install the CJ Coming soon plugin over at jqueryshowcase.com. Thanx :)
Thanks for using Custom Coming Soon Plugin.
If you need any help or have some suggestions please let us know via our official support forums http://support.cssjockey.com.
There appears to be some great Plug ins here, covering all manner of functions and uses! It’s clear from these and the overwhelming amount of plug ins available that WordPress is now the leading CMS platform.
It’s nice to see Internet Explorer 6 being addressed again here, this certainly looks a useful plug in to get users to make a much overdue update. Typekit also appears to be a very good plug in to allow greater flexibility in design, and I think is a sign of the next stage of development in web design as more advanced design capabilities become a reality.
Thanks for this useful list, I will be bookmarking it and referring to it in the near future!
Nice to see a new set of WP plugins!! Thanks!
Good post, a useful list of plugins. I particularly like the IE6 one!
Its the greates yet useful set of plug-ins i ever seen !!
i’m already useing 5 of them !!
Thanks for including my plugin! And for the users of DragToShare, soon a new version will be released so follow your WP admin panel for any updates.
Hi,
Thank you for listing our plugin (Custom Coming Soon Pages) – We feel so honored to have our WordPress plugin featured on Tuts Plus network.. I am really glad that you liked our plugin, found it useful and worth mentioning here. Thanks again !
–
Regards,
Abhinav Sood,
Lead Developer, Designer and Social Media Expert
CSSJockey.com
I’m glad you like the round-up guys / gals :)
I’m sure you might be tempted to try all these fantastic plugins but make sure to DELETE the unused plugins once you deactivate it. Your blog will perform better without those deactivated plugins under the plugins folder. Just a reminder.
How much time was spent making this list anyway?
Here is a much better list for people who want to be cool.
Fluency Admin Skin: Hotkey navigation – http://deanjrobinson.com/projects/fluency-admin/
Sniplets: let you put any script – PHP included – anywhere (Pages, Posts, Widgets, etc) – http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/sniplets/
WP Paginate: A lightweight alternative to Paginator (who has 1000 pages of posts to skim through anyway?) – http://www.ericmmartin.com/projects/wp-paginate/
My Page Order: Drag and drop organization of pages (there are ones for Categories and Links) – http://geekyweekly.com/mypageorder
Anyone else find some plugins recently they’d swear by.
Great article. Do you know of any plugins that can allow for custom sidebars for each page? I don’t like creating tons of page templates. It would be nice to select which widgets you want to be active for each page within the page dialogue itself.
Thanks!
Nice Post Ivor! Some incredible plugins out there I had no idea they existed.
Paul
Thank you for sharing these great plugins. WordPress is a great blogging platform and the users on make it better!
Very nice list of plugins. I’ll have to try some of them out for sure.
Really Good..!
Very Good…!!!
Thanks……
Great collection…. thankyou….
nice list Ivor!
Thanks Mark :)
Ah, was wondering about the drag and drop when I noticed it on abduzeedo and another blog I visit, will be sure to have a mess around with it, see how it can be customized!
Neat collection of plugins!!!! Do check mine out too :) Eventify – designerfoo.com/custom-wordpress-development
Thanks for adding my plugin :D (eCSStender for WordPress)
I’m honoured to appear once on this website.
It’s a great source for me since years
By the way. thanks for the plugins. I already see where I can use some of them.
And the other question, the debate Drupal / WordPress for me the two are very good. But it really depends on what we want to do with the website.
For a website managed by dozens of people and generating massive datas, i’d rather use drupal.
And for middle sized websites with a blog and other things. I would clearly use WordPress.
But in the end, it’s all a matter of taste
Man, I don`t know.. It doesn`t work for me…
Thank you for listing our Custom Coming Soon Pages Plugin here.
Great list … but this would be even more helpful if youl linked to pages where you could see these plug-ins in action.
I guess this is why you have ScreenShots sections and other info on WordPressOrg – it is up to the authors to put it.
I am going to add this list to my arsenal of plugins. I’ve got some clients who are going to love a couple of them.
Thanks for posting them!
This list is awesome. I’ve been using wordpress for my orchestral music, and it’s a fantastic option! These plugins are all very handy, and I’m excited to see the next wave of plugins from developers. Great post!
Awesome plugins..Thanks for share it…
I think wordpress is the best CMS.. Thanks for sharing about this plugin. I like Custom Coming Soon Page. This is great plugin !
“I like Custom Coming Soon Page. This is great plugin !”
It’s perfect, I can’t agree more :D
:D yeah i agree with you. this is perfect.. :)
Awsome list, but there is an alternate way to get rid of the WP current version without any plug in, just put this in your functions.php (i found it somewhere but i can’t remember where…sorry for that).
remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’);
I’m glad you like it :)
By the way – WordPress is best! ;)
yeah, i agree with you again.. :)
Bookmarked this page.
Thanks putting these list together.
Interesting debate — but, at the end of the day, the reason why WP is so popular is because klutzes like me can use it and create something relatively professional looking without spending huge amounts of cash on an outside developer.
As a small business owner (and advisor), cash is king and social media is a cornerstone of my marketing.
Thank you for the update on plug-ins. Some of them are beyond my current level of technical expertise, but some address issues that I’ve been wanting to “fix” (i.e. fonts).
Thanks for the list! As a new subscriber, I’ve found tuts to be a much valued resource.
Great list of new plugins. Thanks for the links. The one plugin to remove your WordPress version number though seems a little silly. It’s just as easy to paste in one line of code into your functions.php file to remove your version number as it is to find, install, and activate a plugin.
But I suppose for newbies plugins might seem easier.
This could possibly be THE BEST LIST EVER!!!!
I like the drag to share thing!
Noticed few interesting plugins.
Thanks!
Great post. These will be very useful. What do you think of the latest “Drag n’ Drop” SM sharing trend? Do you think this is really that useful?
Plugins for WP has really been picking up in quality and creativity
Wow, I will use the security plugins .Thanks for the article
I tried out drag to share this morning, but it only works with 3 social sites. Its a tremendous idea and I think it will become mainstream when more social sites are available. IE6 is a mess…I’m either going to add the IE6 plugin to future sites or stop support for that browser.
Quite an extensive and interesting list. Thanks for sharing these, there really are some very usefull new plugins in there, that I will download and try right now!
Thanks! I found (and intalled) a few very different and useful plugins I found here, that I didn’t know about before. Great list!
Thanks! I found
THanks you Betafully
I love your comments section…. is this a plug-in?
I’d love to know how you created your comments section too.
It is lovely and clean with a simple modern twist.
Hannah
p.s. I’m a ‘WordPress Groupie’ and proud of it
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Thanks for sharing this information. I found it very informative as I have been researching a lot lately on practical matters such as you talk about it..
Hey, ok, I get it, I guess – but does this really work?
ultimate collection