Best WordPress Plugins – Gallery & Portfolio

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WordPress is an incredibly flexible, easy-to-set-up and manage web publishing platform that has been downloaded more than 60 million times since its launch in 2003. As of August 2013, WordPress is used by nearly 19 percent of the top 10 million websites. The content management system’s popularity has spawned thousands – nearly 30,000 in fact – of plugins that expand the basic functionality of WordPress. At Connect4, we routinely use 45 WordPress plugins. We use some plugins, for security, admin, and SEO, for example, on nearly every site we create.

The problem with WordPress plugins is that many of them present as much trouble as they do opportunity on a website. Not all plugins play friendly in the same sandbox. And not all plugin developers continue to provide updates for their plugins. Plugins that haven’t been updated in a year make for a security risk. So make sure you consult with your webmaster or web developer prior to installing any of these plugins. It’s always a good idea to make sure you have a backup before trying out a new plugin.

Today we take a look at the best wordpress plugins – gallery and portfolio.

Gallery & Portfolio

Awesome Gallery 

Awesome-Gallery

  • Top priority – easy to use admin interface. No tech skills and rocket science required, just follow step by step instructions.
  • 3 layout modes – horizontal flow, vertical flow and classic grid. You can read more about them below.
  • 7 image sources. All most popular services included and counting
  • 10 style presets
  • Custom styling support
  • Load more / Infinite scroll support + easily handles hundreds of images.
  • Built-in lightbox
  • Unique builtin support
  • Responsive and Retina-ready

Next Gen Gallery

NextGEN-Gallery

 

The Next Gen gallery is the most-used wordpress gallery. It is very common because it’s easy to use and offers the following features:

  • Centralized gallery management. Enjoy a single location where you can see and manage all your galleries.
  • Edit galleries. Add or exclude images, change gallery title and description, reorder of images, resize thumbnails.
  • Thumbnail Management. Turn thumbnail cropping on off, customize how individual thumbnails are cropped, and bulk resize thumbnails across one more galleries.
  • Edit Individual Images. Edit meta data and image tags, rotate images, exclude images.
  • Watermarks. Quickly add watermarks to batches or galleries of images.
  • Albums. Create and organize collections of galleries (“albums”), and display them in either compact or extended format.

Tumblr Photoset Grid/Masonry Gallery for WordPress

Tumblr-Photoset-Grid-Masonry-Gallery-for-WordPress

  • Support batch upload, and convert the large image to small thumbnail via PHP automatically, help you to add a gallery in a minute, keep the gallery load fast too.
  • Live preview in the backend, what you see is what you get.
  • Flexibility layout, you can customize each row image number just via a number sequence.
  • Responsive, works fine in the small screen device (like iPhone, iPad) too.
  • You can drag the thumbnail to re-order the item easily in the backend.
  • Optional padding between each image.
  • Optional lightbox or image link.
  • Optional slideshow and slideshow delay.
  • Multiple and unlimited photoset instance on same page.
  • Compatible with latest jQuery and latest WordPress.
  • Enqueue the js and css only when needed. Keep WordPress page size smaller.
  • You can add/edit the chart without touching the code. Customize/update the image with WordPress backend.
  • FAQ and source code are included in the package. Free update in the future.

 GO – Responsive Portfolio for WP

go-portfolio

 

This is our favorite new responsive portfolio/gallery option for WordPress sites.

  • 4 default styles (FLEX, DOOR, VARIO, DELUX).
  • Reponsive grid layout or horizontally slider layout (up to 10 columns).
  • Flexible, percent based grid system with customizable vertical and horizontal spaces.
  • Optional responsivity with custom settings.
  • Huge Admin Panel with tons of options.
  • Unlimited portfolios.
  • Unlimited custom post types.
  • Works with your existing custom post types and regular blog posts.
  • WooCommerce support – Product showcase.
  • Advanced post query options to show posts, setting the limit and order of the posts, filtering by taxonomies and terms.
  • Different thumbnail and lightbox types:
    • Image (JPG, PNG, GIF)
    • Video (Vimeo, Youtube, Screenr, Dailymotion, Metacafe)
    • Audio (Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Beatport)
  • Thumbnail and lightbox image size selecting options using your existing images.
  • Thumbnail aspect ratio settings option to use the their default aspect ratio or a custom one.
  • Built-in Template & Style editor with adding, editing, importing options.
  • System and Google Web Font (600+ fonts) support.
  • Translation ready with .mo .po files.
  • Advanced Import & Export settings.
  • Supports all modern browsers (including IE8).

Best WordPress Plugins 2014 – Admin, Backup & Security

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WordPress is an incredibly flexible, easy-to-set-up and manage web publishing platform that has been downloaded more than 60 million times since its launch in 2003. As of August 2013, WordPress is used by nearly 19 percent of the top 10 million websites. The content management system’s popularity has spawned thousands – nearly 30,000 in fact – of plugins that expand the basic functionality of WordPress. At Connect4, we routinely use 45 WordPress plugins. We use some plugins, for security, admin, and SEO, for example, on nearly every site we create.

The problem with WordPress plugins is that many of them present as much trouble as they do opportunity on a website. Not all plugins play friendly in the same sandbox. And not all plugin developers continue to provide updates for their plugins. Plugins that haven’t been updated in a year make for a security risk. So make sure you consult with your webmaster or web developer prior to installing any of these plugins. It’s always a good idea to make sure you have a backup before trying out a new plugin.

Today we are going to talk about plugins that control the WordPress backend. These are critical plugins that nearly every site should have.

Admin, Backup & Security

  1. Akismet
  2. Wordfence Security
  3. VaultPress
  4. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
  5. GZip Ninja Speed Compression
  6. Members
  7. Velvet Blues Update URLs
  8. W3 Total Cache
  9. Adminimize
  10. Page Comments Off Please
  11. Yith Maintenance Mode

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. You’ll need an Akismet.com API key to use it. Keys are free for personal blogs, with paid subscriptions available for businesses and commercial sites.

Download Akismet

Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security plugin

Wordfence Security is a free enterprise class security plugin that includes a firewall, anti-virus scanning, cellphone sign-in (two factor authentication), malicious URL scanning and live traffic including crawlers. Wordfence is the only WordPress security plugin that can verify and repair your core, theme and plugin files, even if you don’t have backups.

Download Wordfence Security

 

VaultPress

VaultPress is a real-time backup and security scanning service designed and built by Automattic, the same company that operates 25+ million sites on WordPress.com.

The VaultPress plugin provides the required functionality to backup and synchronize every post, comment, media file, revision and dashboard settings on our servers. To start safeguarding your site, you need to sign up for a VaultPress subscription.

Download VaultPress

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP  is a plugin that will display Google Analytics statistics on your website backend. Analytics data, like number of visits, provided through Google API, is integrated into a simple widget on your WordPress Administration Dashboard.

Using a widget, Google Analytics Dashboard displays detailed analytics info and statistics about: number of visits, number of visitors, bounce rates, organic searches, pages per visit directly on your Admin Dashboard.

Authorized users can also view statistics like Views, UniqueViews and top searches, on frontend, at the end of each article.

Download Google Analytics Dashboard

GZip Ninja Speed Compression

Have you been told that your website is slow? Try this very simple plugin that allows you to quickly compress and GZip your site. Only Works On Apache Servers (almost all WordPress installs are on Apache Servers). This will give you the ability to increase your speed and possibly even your rank in Google from a speed increase.

Download GZIP Ninja Speed Compression

Members

Members is a plugin that extends your control over your blog. It’s a user, role, and content management plugin that was created to make WordPress a more powerful content management system.

The foundation of the plugin is its extensive role and capability management system. This is the backbone of all the current features and planned future features.

Plugin Features:

  • Role Manager: Allows you to edit, create, and delete roles as well as capabilities for these roles.
  • Content Permissions: Gives you control over which users (by role) have access to post content.
  • Shortcodes: Shortcodes to control who has access to content.
  • Widgets: A login form widget and users widget to show in your theme’s sidebars.
  • Private Site: You can make your site and its feed completely private if you want.

Download Members

Velvet Blues Update URLs

This is one of those plugins that you might use very rarely, but is still unbelievably valuable.

If you move your WordPress website to a new domain name, you will find that internal links to pages and references to images are not updated. Instead, these links and references will point to your old domain name. This plugin fixes that problem by helping you change old urls and links in your website.

Features:

  • Users can choose to update links embedded in content, excerpts, or custom fields
  • Users can choose whether to update links for attachments
  • View how many items were updated

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download Velvet Blues Update URLs

W3 Total Cache

There are quite a few caching plugins out there. W3 Total Cache is recommended by web hosts like: Page.ly, Synthesis, DreamHost, MediaTemple, GoDaddy, HostGator and countless more.

Trusted by countless companies like: AT&T, stevesouders.com, mattcutts.com, mashable.com, smashingmagazine.com, makeuseof.com, yoast.com, kiss925.com, pearsonified.com, lockergnome.com, johnchow.com, ilovetypography.com, webdesignerdepot.com, css-tricks.com and tens of thousands of others.

W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

Download W3 Total Cache

Adminimize

This is a great plugin. As WordPress becomes a more complex content management system (particularly once you install all of these plugins), the dashboard gets cluttered. Not all of your users need to access to all of the backend features. Adminimize visually compresses the administrative header so that more admin page content can be initially seen. The plugin also moves ‘Dashboard’ onto the main administrative menu because having it sit in the tip-top black bar was ticking me off and many other changes in the edit-area. Adminimize is a WordPress plugin that lets you hide ‘unnecessary’ items from the WordPress administration menu, submenu and even the ‘Dashboard’, with forwarding to the Manage-page.

Download Adminimize

Page Comments Off Please

This is another great simple plugin for anyone using WordPress as a content management system. You can manage page and post comments (and their defaults) separately.

Download Page Comments Off Please

Yith Maintenance Mode

If you’re working on your website and would like to make it known to your visitors, install the plugin YITH Maintenance Mode to quickly set a lovely customizable page to let your visitors know the site is closed for maintenance.

Download Yith Maintenance Mode

Ten Website Design Trends for 2014

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Website Design trends are constantly changing. Every year brings new standards. This year’s website design trends include unique typography, flat design, large hero areas, mobile, videos instead of text, long scrolling sites, simple color schemes, simple content, no sidebar, and new technology. Some of these website design trends will stay and others will go but this post gives you the scoop on what we predict the top ten website design trends will be in 2014.

1. Unique Typography

For many years websites have used standard serif and san-serif fonts like Helvetica.  In 2013 there was a shift to more unique fonts with personality. This trend is definitely going to continue in 2014.

2. Flat Design

You can thank Apple for this one. With the release of iOS7 came the design aesthetic most commonly known as “flat design.” While eliminating drop shadows and gradients might seems like a good idea in some cases to give a more updated look to things, Apple took it to a whole other level by dropping pretty much any design element it could.

Apple has for a long time been a trendsetter, and what Apple does, the rest of the world seems to follow. iOS7 has been out for a while and already there are a flood of sites coming online every day with new “flat” designs.

3. Say Goodbye to Sliders and Hello to Large Hero Areas

Large hero areas (the “intro” area, often an image with a little amount of text, at the top of a website – a borrowed term from print design) on website home pages are very popular right now. Look at Line25’s Sites of the Week for the first week of January and you’ll see that almost all of them reflect this change in design.

4. Greater Focus on Mobile

Now that responsive web design is more commonplace, developers and designers are focusing more attention on the mobile audience (which is growing constantly). Integration with social media, asking for email subscriptions, long scrolling sites (see below), and fast loading sites all help make the mobile Web a more friendlier place in 2014.

5. Videos in Place of Text

Why read about something when you can watch it? In 2014, you will start to see websites with large videos in the hero area. The cost of video production is going down and they are increasingly easier to share online and on social media.

6. Long Scrolling Sites

Sometimes these are called one-page sites. This is a design feature that has come full circle. Websites used to have way too much content on long scrolling pages and then there was a shift to more complicated menu structures and additional pages. Responsive design and designing for a mobile audience has led us back to the idea that it’s actually comfortable to scroll down through content. The difference that 2014 brings is a greater attention to design – look for long scrolling sites with plenty of white space, unique layout, and fonts.

7. Simple Color Schemes

In 2014, we will see a lot more website with very simple color schemes. And by simple, we mean really only one or two colors.

Take for instance the UIKit site above. That site has only one hue: blue (in design and art, white and black aren’t considered colors, but neutrals). The use of a more simple color scheme seems to come with flat design (discussed above), but not always. The site above uses blue predominantly throughout the design, but it is the only color you see.

Some websites being launched now are using very little color, or even forgoing color all together. White, black, and everything in between are popular color schemes now, and adding just a hit of another color, such as red, adds drama and impact – all things that garnish attention when used in the right way.

8. Simplified Content

Simplified content means short bursts of content, a la Twitter style. Over the years as a population, our attention spans have become shorter, so designers have compensated for that by putting content in short bursts instead of long narratives. Not many areas (aside from blog posts) have more than 250 characters. This is because readers are scanning as a new way to consume content.

9. Dropping the Sidebar

You see this more in magazine and news sites, but many are experimenting with dropping the sidebar altogether. This allows for a more visual with content.

10. Manipulated Imagery

In 2014, we are going to see sites with images that have color overlays, blurred images, or even images that are reminiscent of Instagram images with filters.

11. Bonus – Cool New Website Technology

We are going to continue to see websites experiment with cool new HTML5-driven technology. For example, Tobi’s Story’s website is a great use of really cool things done in a great way.

 

MOOCs – New Players in the World of Online Learning

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One of the greatest benefits of the evolution of the internet is the appearance of the MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses. Want to learn a new programming language? Is your Spanish a little rusty since high school? Want to really unlock the potential of Microsoft Word or Excel? There are a number of new players in the world of online learning. I review each of them below.

Here are six online learning sites that help you learn without leaving your laptop.

Khan Academy

Founded in 2006 by Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, this non-profit now boasts thousands of educational videos covering topics from finance to animation to art history. Each video is about ten minutes long. All resources are available for free to anyone around the world. Khan Academy reaches about 10,000,000 students per month and has delivered over 300,000,000 online learning lessons.

Skillshare

Skillshare proposes a new model for online learning – anyone can sign up to learn and anyone can sign up to teach. Their mission is “Reunite learning with education and make it accessible to every single person on this planet. Anyone can learn anything, at any age, at an affordable cost, anywhere in the world.” Classes are $25 and under and range from advertising to business to design to photography and technology. The most popular class right now is taught by Seth Godin and is titled: The New Business Toolbox: Help Your New Business Do It Right The First Time.

Codeacademy

“Education is broken. Come help us build the education the world deserves.” This is Codeacademy’s mission statement. As you’d expect, Codeacademy is all about learning how to code, whether it’s web fundamentals, PHP, JQuery, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, or more. Classes are free and you can start learning something new in about three clicks. You don’t even have to register.

Lynda.com

For $25 a month, users can get unlimited access to lynda.com’s online learning library of over 1,800 video courses covering a variety of subjects. The site’s software tutorials are particularly useful when trying to brush up on a program you haven’t used in a while or learn the particulars of a newly released version of an old favorite.

Edx

Founded and run by educational powerhouses Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EdX features “learning designed specifically for interactive study via the web.” The site currently offers online courses from Harvard, MIT, Berkley, University of Texas, Georgetown, McGill, Cornell, Boston University, and about twenty other colleges or universities worldwide.

Gibbon.co

Gibbon’s tagline is “Playlists for learning: almost all the knowledge is available on the web, all you need is someone to guide you to it.” In that spirit, you register for the learning categories that interest you and the amount of time you want to dedicate to learning something new each week. Then Gibbon emails you once a week with a playlist of courses. Each course tells you upfront the amount of time that’s required – and it’s usually very palatable at 10 or 15 minutes. The user interface is appealing and there’s no rigid structure. You are part of a learning and teaching community and you can learn and teach at your own pace. Most courses are focused on design and technology.