Tag Archive for: wordpress plugins

Best WordPress Plugins – Social Media

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 focus on social media plugins.

Social Media

  1. Social Author Bio
  2. Social Media Feather

Social Author Bio

Social Author Bio adds a author bio box with the author’s avatar with built-in and custom social icons on pages/posts.

social-author-bio

 

Download Social Author Bio

Social Media Feather

Social Media Feather is a super lightweight and free social media WordPress plugin that allows you to quickly and painlessly add social sharing and following features to all your posts, pages and custom post types.

Now the only social sharing and bookmarking plugin with full support for the Retina and high resolution displays as used in iPad 5 and other devices!

The primary goal behind the plugin is to provide very lightweight WordPress social sharing and following that doesn’t add any unnecessary burden to your site and especially on your users.

What sets WordPress Social Media Feather aside from the plethora of other social sharing and following WordPress plugins is its focus on simplicity, performance and unobtrusive impact.

social-media-feather

 

Download Social Media Feather

Best WordPress Plugins – Gallery & Portfolio

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 (FLEXDOORVARIODELUX).
  • 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).

How to Improve the WordPress Admin User Interface

Initially WordPress was just for blogs. But now WordPress commands roughly half of the website content management market, taking over market share from Joomla and Drupal and other content management systems. This is mainly because WordPress is so easy to use and administer. The one drawback – and a significant reason why many still use Joomla – is the admin user interface. The admin area is the heart of any WordPress-powered site – it’s where everything is controlled – posts, pages, media, comments, etc. – A site with more than 10 pages and galleries can be difficult to manage in WordPress. Difficult, that is, without adding some of the following plugins. Plugins allow you to customize only what you need.

For example, suppose you have someone on your staff composing blogs for you. The out-of-the-box WordPress admin interface does not have a robust feature for editorial control and review.

Today, we will introduce you to a number of fantastic plugins that will enhance your WordPress website in some way. These admin plugins are all free to download from the official WordPress plugin directory and will help protect your website, give you more control over users or automate the editorial process. As always, we recommend that you consult with your website administrator prior to installing any new plugins since they can occasionally conflict with each other and break your website.

Post Scheduling & Management

1. Editorial Calendar

This is the perfect plugin for managing the scheduling of your posts. Editorial Calendar adds a calendar page to the post section of your admin area. Each day shows the posts that are scheduled for that day. Multiple posts are listed in chronological order.

Watch the Video to learn more

Editorial Calendar: Download

2. Peter’s Collaboration Emails

This is a great plugin for managing the editorial flow of blog posts. When a contributor submits a post for review, the plugin emails the specified users to let them know there is a post to review. Once the post is approved, the contributor gets an email letting them know it has been accepted. If the post is changed back to “Draft,” the contributor is advised that it has not been accepted and is sent a link to edit the article.

Peter’s Collaboration Emails: Download

3. Peter’s Post Notes

On its own, this plugin adds a panel to the sidebar of the add and edit post / page screens so that users can add notes for themselves or others and keep track of these notes. Whenever you save a post, you can type a note to be displayed along with the post in the edit view. When used with Peter’s Collaboration E-mails 1.2 and up, the notes are sent along with the e-mails in the collaboration workflow. There is also a general and private notes system on the dashboard.

On the dashboard, there’s also a summary of the most recent notes. By default this shows notes by all people on relevant posts / pages. There is also a general and private notes system.

peter's_post_notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter’s Post Notes: Download

4. Content Audit

Content Audit lets you and your staff easily review old content and determine if it’s still relevant. The plugin works with posts, pages and media. You can automatically set content as outdated after a set period of time and notify post authors about it. Content can be marked as redundant, outdated or trivial. You can also mark content as needing a review of SEO or style.

content-audit

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content Audit: Download

5. Edit Flow

Edit Flow empowers you to collaborate with your editorial team inside WordPress. It’s feature rich and comes with a calendar, custom statuses, editorial comments, notifications, story budget, and user groups.

edit-flow

 

 

 

 

Edit Flow: Download

General Admin

6. Adminimize

This is a great plugin that let’s you hide parts of the admin dashboard that you deem “unnecessary”.  You can change back-end options; global options; dashboard options; write options for posts, pages and custom page types; link options; and menu options.

Adminimize: Download

Security

7. WordFence Security

This is an incredibly valuable plugin that is completely free. WordFence 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.

wordfence-security

WordFence Security: Download

Summary

The great thing about WordPress is that the default installation doesn’t overwhelm you with options. This allows users to choose the plugins that best meet our particular needs and disregard those that don’t.

You might find that some of these plugins can be disabled after you use them. I recommend reviewing your situation every month or so and remove any plugins that aren’t being used regularly. Also it’s a best practice to remove any plugins that have not been updated (by the plugin developer) in at least a year. Old plugins increase the chance that someone can hack into your site. Update plugins regularly and delete plugins that you don’t use.

Security Holes in Two WordPress Plugins – WordPress Poll and Social Articles

There is a SQL injection vulnerability in WordPress Poll. Please upgrade to WordPress Poll version 35.0 immediately which was released a few days ago and fixes this security hole. We are currently seeing exploits for this vulnerability in the wild.

The Social Articles plugin appears to have an arbitrary file upload vulnerability in the current version which is 1.4. The vulnerability is in the upload-handler.php script included with the plugin. The exploit for this security hole is already in the wild. A fix has not been released yet so we recommend that you disable and delete the plugin until a fix is released.