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Monthly Archives: August 2015

There are hundreds of WordPress quote plugins, some of which are free and many come at a nominal price. You obviously cannot try out all the plugins or even a fifth of the options at your discretion. You need a few WordPress quote plugins that are useful and worthwhile. You can then test run them and see how they work for you. Depending on the assessment you can choose to continue using one. It is recommended that you use only one of the WordPress quote plugins. Attempting to use a few on the same website may lead to the plugins affecting the performance of one another. Here are 5 WordPress quote plugins that you cannot afford to ignore.

1. Quotes Collection

Quotes Collection

Quotes Collection uses an Ajax powered Random Quote sidebar widget that will collect and also display the quotes you want to showcase on your website. The plugin has a very simple interface, it allows you to import and export the quotes collection you have, there is support for multiple widgets and there is consistent updating of the plugin by the developers to keep the interface relevant and state of the art. You can opt for random quote generating option or you can stick with certain quotes that you want to display perennially on a website. You may also opt for a random rotation of quotes or a particular sequence that you preset and the plugin will adhere to your chosen settings. You also have the luxury to cap the length of the quotes or use certain tags which make the quotes more relevant or articulate.

2. Flexi Quote Rotator

Flexi Quote Rotator

Flexi Quote Rotator is one of the more relevant WordPress quote plugins. It doesn’t just display quotes and testimonials among other types of special mentions or statements but the plugin also attends to the rotation of the same. Having a sequence of rotating the snippets of content is quintessential when you use WordPress quote plugins. Perennially displayed quotes don’t really have much of an impact today. This plugin comes with a widget and allows you to style the quotes as well.

3. Quote of the Day by BrainyQuote

Quote of the Day by BrainyQuote

You may have heard of BrainyQuote. Quote of the Day is a plugin for WordPress sites from BrainyQuote. This plugin installs or allows you to add the Quote of the Day widget to your website, which could be on every webpage of your WordPress site or just one particular page. The widget is extremely popular. This plugin stands out from the aforementioned ones because the widget or this plugin gets you connected to the larger presence of BrainyQuote which is across various platforms or mediums. The widget sources relevant quotes from BrainyQuote and gets them displayed on your website.

You can choose the category of quotes that you want to display on your website. You may go with funny quotes, art quotes, love quotes or any other popular category. Whatever works for you is what you should go for. You may also opt for a cross-sectional approach and have different types of quotes or categories. From inspirational quotes to quotes by the rich and famous, you can get almost all types of quotes in this plugin.

BrainyQuote is the undisputed leader among quotation sites. It has the largest collection of quotes and attends to myriad audiences. It is unlikely that you wouldn’t find the relevant quotes or inventory of quotes for your purpose. With this plugin, you can have a Quote of the Day sidebar on your page, the plugin would easily adapt to the theme of your WordPress site which is an added advantage as there wouldn’t be any incompatibility or conflict and you can choose from as many as five different quote feeds. You can also opt for multiple widgets on your site or even on one webpage instead of having only one. The plugin would not be impaired if you have different settings on different widgets.

4. Quote Master

Quotes Collection

Quote Master is a very useful tool with simple but effective features. You can create or add quotes, edit them, delete them and display them in random sequence on your website using this plugin. You can also create categories for different sets of quotes, show them in accordance to their category or in any particular sequence that you deem fit and you also get a built-in widget to facilitate the display. There is a feature of adding a tweet link to the quote so your target audience or website visitors can directly share the quote from the website itself. Quote Master has a feature by the virtue of which you can avoid duplicate content. The plugin uses pull-quote for this purpose and such displays vanish automatically when you uninstall the plugin or disable the plugin.

WordPress Plugin Recommendations

Websites that have some kind of rating sections, host polls or contests and allow visitors to review or comment will need rating plugins for WordPress. It doesn’t take much time to set up such features on a WordPress site and if you choose a good plugin then the task can be made simpler and quicker. Here are the top five rating plugins for WordPress.

1. Rating-Widget: Star Rating System

Star Rating System

This plugin allows you to set up a five star rating system for posts, pages, comments, products sold via WooCommerce, BuddyPress users and activities, forum topics, replies and author reviews among others.

2. Polldaddy Polls & Ratings

Polldaddy Polls & Ratings

This plugin works with all WordPress themes without any incompatibility issues. You can create and manage polls along with the ratings with amazing ease. The plugin is available in more than two dozen languages.

3. Yasr – Yet Another Stars Rating

Yasr - Yet Another Stars Rating

This plugin is best for review websites. You can have a simple rating system or you can have multiple sets or criteria based rating systems. The plugin is very easy to use and there is no need for coding or any extensive technicality. Yasr is available in English, Italian, German, Polish, Dutch, French, Russian, Spanish and many other languages.

4. Multi Rating

Multi Rating

Multi Rating is ideal if you have several criteria or a questionnaire and the participants or your audience is expected to consider all the options. You can have five star rating system, percentage and score results, have various criteria, drop-down lists and radio buttons, icons for the ratings as well as different kinds of images courtesy Font Awesome. You can customize the widgets and also have different level of customization for each rating. The plugin also generates daily reports on the number of entries and tracking all activities pertaining to the contests, polls or ratings.

5. kk Star Ratings

This plugin works best for blogs or content sites wherein the posts uploaded have to be rated. There is a cool feature of this plugin where the hovering of the mouse over the ratings will show the stars getting fueled up but only clicks would get the rating recorded. This isn’t an out of the world feature but it is really cool to have such a function in a rating plugin. The plugin also supports Google Rich Snippets so the ratings will get indexed in Google Search, thus helping the website in search engine optimization.

Wordpress Plugins Facts

If you have a WordPress website or are planning to develop one, then you need some WordPress font plugins. Ideally, you would need only one but since your requirements may not be the same as that of others, you do have to test run a few plugins to see which ones can satiate your needs.

Fonts are not just important for the sole purpose of appearance or design. Fonts can influence layouts, readability and also contribute to whether or not a visitor or reader would stick around on a website. It is thus necessary that you get your website fonts right. To help you in your quest, here are some of the best WordPress font plugins.

1. Easy Google Fonts

Easy Google Fonts

Easy Google Fonts work with WordPress Customizer and there is a real time automatic sync and preview of all changes you make. You can come up with custom fonts or you can use one or many from the existing inventory. The fonts you come up with using this plugin will be compatible with any theme on WordPress. This is an issue that needs more attention than it gets. Many a time, fonts don’t blend well, get changed due to incompatibility or simply look out of place with specific themes. That will not happen when you use Easy Google Fonts.

There are more than 600 Google fonts and then there are variants. You can obviously choose from this or have your own custom font. You will have complete control to the typography of the theme on your website and that is without any need for coding. You can store your custom fonts in the Customizer preview section so you can instantly make changes whenever you need or have to. You also get to preview the fonts vis-à-vis the themes you may have thought of before you go ahead to save the creations in your account. There are many other useful features of Easy Google Fonts.

2. WP Google Fonts

WP Google Fonts

WP Google Fonts stands out for two reasons. One, it brings to you the entire Google Font Directory. That itself is a huge inventory. You don’t really need any more to make a choice. On a lighter note, the more options you get the more difficult it is to make a decision. Google Font Directory is compatible with all WordPress themes and that is the second advantage. So you effectively get to choose a kind of font you want and you don’t have to worry about its compatibility with the website you have already developed or are in the process of developing. It is one of the most downloaded WordPress font plugins.

3. Use Any Font

Use Any Font

This plugin allows you to embed any font in your website. You don’t need to rely on external sources to keep using the font. The fonts are not stored in remote servers which make uptime uncertain. And you are not confined to a select or preset number of fonts. Use Any Font is very easy to use. It is compatible with all major browsers, the interface allows you to covert fronts within the plugin, you can convert fonts in formats that are not typically in use and can thus use those fonts once they are in acceptable formats (ala otf and ttf), the support for a font file is up to 10 MB which is huge and you can use multiple fonts at the same place and time. There are many other utilitarian features of Use Any Font.

4. Font

Font

Downloaded and used by thousands, Font is one of the more popular WordPress font plugins. It doesn’t need any coding and you don’t have to be a website designer or programmer. All you need is a penchant to select the fonts you think would work for your site. The plugin allows you to choose fonts, to change its size, hues and other attributes.

Other than the standard colors and sizes, you also get color picker and slider to get a unique hue or size. The slider and the color picker are very effective features as they allow you to witness the gradual change of size and color which makes it far easier to come up with unique fonts. With standard approaches of selecting fonts, what you can do at best is select something that is already in use. You cannot have that rare font. With this plugin, you can.

5. Font Awesome More Icons

Font Awesome More Icons

Font Awesome More Icons is more popular for its icons than fonts. You actually need both for an appealing website. You have three choices with this plugin. You can go with the HTML option, the Shortcode option or the new Shortcode option. This plugin is not for every webmaster or website owner as you need to have some knowledge about coding but if you do have some expertise then this can be a great tool.

WordPress Facts and Stats

The main menu or the submenus of a website and on every webpage plays an extremely influential role in determining the browsing experience. There are many websites that don’t have very engaging menus and they suffer as a result of that. If your website has to gain substantial traction and the target audience has to enjoy the browsing experience then you must use some effective WordPress menu plugins. Here are some of the most popular WordPress menu plugins that are being used by tens of thousands of users.

1. Max Mega Menu

Max Mega Menu

Another simple and easy to use plugin is Max Mega Menu. It gives you a drag & drop menu builder, you can display widgets in your menu, have a theme for your menu which you can choose from hundreds of options within the plugin and you can customize them as well. There are various menu and submenu styles, you can choose the manner in which the menus would open, bring in some slide or fade transitions, have icons for your menu items and titles, hide or disable texts and links or other options depending on the menu item and the plugin is responsive which allows you to design mobile friendly website menus as well.

2. Custom Menu Wizard Widget

Custom Menu Wizard Widget

With this plugin, you can display the whole menu or choose to display parts of it according to some strategy. You can have one branch or multiple branches of the menu displayed at a time. You can add filters and also determine the outputs based on the conditions or factors chosen. The plugin also supports widgets in menus.

3. Admin Menu Editor

This plugin allows you to create, change, manage and organize menu titles, icons, URLs and you can use the simple drag and drop feature which makes operating the tool all the more simple. Changing settings or moving one menu to another submenu, all such tasks become a cakewalk with this tool.

4. Nav Menu Roles

Nav Menu Roles offers an expansive interface that makes management of your menus and submenus easy and informed. You can edit the menu items according to their appearance or based on what kind of access you intend to provide to different users. You can customize a role according to your needs, you can keep all menus and submenus visible to every visitor or you can offer partial access as well.

Top Business WordPress Plugins

If your website has a provision of allowing downloads, then you need WordPress downloads plugins. It could be images, videos or just textual contents, a download plugin or manager can work wonders. It is the subtle way to show that your website is professional and well equipped to offer a completely satiating browsing and using experience to your target audience. Here are some of the most downloaded WordPress downloads plugins.

1. WordPress Download Manager

WordPress Download Manager

With this plugin, you can come up with custom post type and taxonomy, drag and drop to upload a file, there is support for Google Drive and Dropbox, users can download files directly or open the content in a new tab or window, you can control who has access to the contents, the download speed can be controlled, you can protect contents with password, have a download counter, create a custom link icon for download and have design widgets for top downloads, searching downloads and new files among others.

2. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads

This plugin provides a cart system for downloads, you can have a promotional code system, have payment gateways integrated to the download feature and have complete payment histories. This plugin is best for ecommerce sites or websites that offer paid products and services. The plugin is available in as many as 26 languages.

3. Simple Download Monitor

Simple Download Monitor

This plugin allows you to manage all files that can be downloaded and you can monitor all downloads as well. You also have the option to protect downloadable files with a password so a user or visitor will need that kind of access to be able to download the content. You can also design your own download interface using this plugin. You can also keep a track of the IP addresses of the people who visit your site and download content.

With Simple Download Monitor, you can design an interface of your choice, upload and manage all contents available for download, manage and monitor as well as track the downloads, add or edit and remove contents for download, there is a drag and drop feature for all files, you can tag and categorize downloadable contents, design download counter for every file, keep a record of date and time along with IP addresses for all downloads and there are numerous other features. The plugin is available in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Dutch among others.

Top WordPress Plugins for Blogs

A food blog is incomplete without recipes and if you have a WordPress website or blog then you should use some WordPress recipe plugins. Before you try out any of the plugins, mentioned here or elsewhere, you must know that multiple plugins can render a website inefficient.

You should not use multiple or too many plugins at the same time. There are many WordPress recipe plugins which aren’t very useful. That is precisely why we are talking about utilitarian WordPress recipe plugins here. Before you finalize on using a particular plugin, you can test run a few to know how they actually fare when installed and used. Check out some of the most utilitarian WordPress recipe plugins.

1. Recipe Card

Recipe Card

Recipe Card also has an impact on the search engine optimization of the page. But it is more enticing because of its ability to generate nutritional facts about every recipe you come up with. The presentation of the recipes as facilitated by this plugin is also handy. It is easily readable, printable and reviewable. The plugin allows you to blend in over a hundred colors, layouts, fonts and various templates that you can use for different recipes. There is a template editor that allows you the power of customization. This plugin also uses schema.org regulations for better exposure in Google Recipe Search. Recipe Card also has the feature to allow multiple recipes in the same post.

2. Easy Recipe

Easy Recipe

Easy Recipe stands out for its automatic customization or optimization of a post in accordance to the needs of Google’s Recipe View. It can attend to live custom formatting, complete with preview buttons, ratings and images. Not only does this plugin allow for easy, ready to publish creation of recipe posts but editing existing recipe posts is also a cakewalk.

3. Zip Recipes

Zip Recipes

This is a plugin that has been proven to help bloggers and webmasters rank their websites higher by the virtue of information and relevant images. Zip Recipes makes the whole task a little simpler. The plugin allows you to create recipes even if you are not very aware of the popularly accepted formats or methods of presentation. The tutorial really helps. The plugin uses Schema Recipe Support which allows your recipe to be indexed accordingly so the post can be easily found by people looking for the particular recipes. The plugin has Recipe Image Support which is really helpful.

You can Copy/Paste Recipe Ingredients which is handy if you are into writing many recipes in a short period of time. You don’t need to manually write down or enter every ingredient when you already have a source and can extract the details from there for the appropriate ingredient sections. There are many useful features like Auto-Populate Recipe Name, Add Links to Recipe Ingredients, Instructions or Other Recipes, Bold and Italicized Styling for your Recipe, Incorporate Recipe Images into Instructions, Recipe Notes Field, Enhanced Recipe Printing Capabilities, Multiple Paragraph Support in Summary Section of a Recipe and more.

4. Recipe Hero

Recipe Hero

Recipe Hero is one of the more efficient WordPress recipe plugins, primarily owing to its hassle free interface and the speed at which it operates. In addition to ensuring that the post adheres to the formatting needs of Google Rich Snippets, the plugin also prepares the post for Pinterest Rich Pins. Recipe Hero comes with several other extensions that make this plugin all the more helpful. You get Recipe Hero Labels, Recipe Hero Print, Recipe Hero Video, Recipe Hero Likes and Recipe Hero Submit among others. Some of these are free while some are only available for premium users.

The free features in Recipe Hero include Custom Post Type for ‘Recipes,’ Recipe Details, Ingredients & Instructions; Instruction Images; Recipe Reviews / Ratings; Completely Responsive; Settings Panel; Intuitive Admin / Editing Experience; Templating Engine; Display with easy [recipe] & [recipes] shortcodes; Valid schema.org Markup; Ingredients checkboxes (users can check off ingredients as they use them); Inherits Your Theme’s Styles Automatically; Image Lightbox; Recipe Gallery; Custom Ordering and Translation-Ready.

5. Yummly Rich Recipes

Yummly Rich Recipes

Yummly Rich Recipes primarily makes creating a recipe post a cakewalk. You don’t need to care about structures, you don’t have to adhere to any stringent line-wise description and basically you don’t have to worry about how your recipe would be presented. If you have the details then this SEO friendly plugin will do the rest. Yummly Rich Recipes comes with an Integrated Recipe Box, Schema.org’s Recipe/hRecipe Support, Recipe Image Support, Copy/Paste Ingredients feature, Auto-Populate Recipe Name, Add Links to Ingredients or Instructions feature, Bold and Asterisk Styling, Modified Image Display, Include Images in Instructions feature, Notes Field and Improved Printing Options among others.

Any need you may have will possibly be satiated by one or more of these WordPress recipe plugins but be sure to test run them to know which ones will be more suited for you.

SEO vs Social Media WordPress Plugins

Integrating Flickr to your website is a rational move. Flickr is one of the largest image and video hosting cum sharing platform. Recently, Flickr had announced an exponential increase in its storage which makes it all the more enticing. There is some debate as to whether Google’s new Photos service will give Flickr a run for its money, especially with its larger storage and given the clout of the search engine giant, but it is safe to infer that Flickr will remain relevant and very useful for webmasters and companies all over the world for now. Integrating Flickr to your WordPress website is very easy. All you need is one of the many WordPress Flickr plugins. Here are some of the best WordPress Flickr plugins for you to choose.

1. Slickr Flickr

Slickr Flickr

Another simple plugin, Slickr Flickr allows you to host a gallery with all your Flickr photos and you can have slideshows, posts loaded with such photos or even sidebar widgets displaying the images. The plugin is useful for different kinds of text widgets, supports photos of various sizes and resolutions including landscape and portrait frames. You can have all your photos sorted with title, description and date.

You may also choose to have captions and links that can connect your album, gallery or the webpage back to Flickr. The slideshows can be automated or you can opt for manual browsing. Slickr Flickr is compatible with various other apps including Evolution LightBox, Highslide, FancyBox, LightBox Plus, Slimbox, Pretty Photo, ShadowBox, Thickbox and Shutterbox.

2. Flickr Photostream

Flickr Photo Album

Flickr Photostream is now available as Flickr Justified Gallery. This is one of the finest apps to organize the manner in which your photos would be displayed. The fine grid like system that the plugin facilitates is easy on the eye and quite appealing at the same time. The plugin comes with photosets, group pools, galleries, tags and a layout that you would instantly start to like. The entire grid like system of displaying images is customizable. You can choose everything from the size of the grids to the height of the rows or placement to the number of images being placed in every row.

The latest version of this plugin has a similar layout as you would find on Google+ or Flickr. You can configure this layout as well. The lightweight plugin smartly categorizes or clubs images that have similar tags or as you would want to arrange the tags, there can be multiple galleries on the same page, images of different sizes and resolutions would be managed differently and you can customize this setting as well, the titles of the images are displayed when one hovers the mouse over it, the URLs and tags can be optimized to meet SEO requirements and the plug-in is available in English as well as Italian.

3. FlickrRSS

FlickrRSS is one of the simplest and lightest WordPress Flickr plugins. There’s no fuss or complication. It is a simple plugin that allows you to put up your Flickr photos on the website or blog. You can have user generated content, connect your Flickr galleries or albums and you can have community photostreams.

4. Flickr Photo Album

This is one of the simplest WordPress Flickr plugins. It allows you to sync your Flickr account or photo page with your website gallery or album. You can have your Flickr photos or photosets and have them displayed as albums or galleries on your WordPress website. The plugin comes with a template that can be customized entirely so you can have some uniformity in design, font, color and other visual elements.

You may also choose to use the template just as it is. You can use the photos from your Flickr profile or you can source the photos from the website to your Flickr page. This vice versa correspondence and sync is really helpful. You can use back-links to have your photos on the website connected to the album page or you can have viewers get redirected to your Flickr page and you can also get visitors from your Flickr page get redirected to the album or gallery on the website, using the same Flickr Photo Album plugin.

Best Plugins for WordPress

The sidebar is an important space for any website. Gone are the days when you would have some empty spaces on either lateral side of the website’s layout. Sidebars are becoming increasingly populated and that too with relevant info. From having sitemaps to blogrolls, active updates of social media posts to showcasing snippets of information pertaining to the website’s activity, sidebars are being used in myriad ways. Any website that doesn’t use its sidebars properly or optimally is certainly wasting a useful space and not endeavoring enough to have an effective outreach.

There are many sidebar plugins for WordPress that can make your life easier. You don’t have to come up with special templates or write any specific codes for this purpose. All you need is one or few of these popular sidebar plugins for WordPress and you are sorted.

1. Custom Sidebars

Custom Sidebars

Custom Sidebars allows you to create your own widgets and you can also define or mark the specific areas where these widgets would be displayed. You can choose the pages and the specific zones along the sidebars as well. You can come up with simple designs or layouts and you can indulge in some complex layout or themes as well. The plugin has more than 400,000 users.

2. Simple Page Sidebars

Simple Page Sidebars

Simple Page Sidebars is extremely popular among those who don’t want to indulge in any fuss or hassle while customizing their website. This plugin doesn’t interfere with the template or the theme that you have on your website or webpage. It simply lets you play around with your sidebar and the content you want displayed there.

3. Content Aware Sidebars

Content Aware Sidebars

This plugin is a step further. You can not only create the sidebar widgets and also demarcate the area where you would have these displayed but you can also opt for content specific sidebar widgets. You can decide what kind of custom sidebar which page would have based on the content that is posted on that webpage. This plugin is available in dozens of languages.

4. Easy Custom Sidebars

Easy Custom Sidebars

If you are looking for a simple easy to use plugin that doesn’t require you to write any code and yet manage, create and monitor all your sidebar widgets and contents within the ambit of WordPress then this plugin might suffice.

5. Multiple Sidebars

Multiple Sidebars

The name says it all. If you need to create and manage innumerable sidebars, then this is the plugin you should lay your hands on.

Most Popular WordPress Plugins