Archive for the ‘WordPress’ Category

May 1st, 2013

30 Responsive WordPress Themes

WordPress is the most sought after content management system that is being used by entrepreneurs who want to establish their online website. The two main reasons for the overwhelming popularity of the WordPress themes are its user friendly interface and dynamic functionalities.

1. Church Hope

BRWT01

Demo & Download

2. Crevision

BRWT02

Demo & Download

3. Flare

BRWT03

Demo & Download

4. Expression

BRWT04

Demo & Download

5. Freestyle

BRWT05

Demo & Download

6. Invictus

BRWT06

Demo & Download

7. Arctica

BRWT07

Demo & Download

8. Linguini

BRWT08

Demo & Download

9. Megazine

BRWT09

Demo & Download

10. Nexus

BRWT10

Demo & Download

11. Angular

BRWT11

Demo & Download

12. Aware

BRWT12

Demo & Download

13. Centum

BRWT13

Demo & Download

14. Chocolate WP

BRWT14

Demo & Download

15. Good Space

BRWT15

Demo & Download

16. Inspired

BRWT16

Demo & Download

17. Jigsaw

BRWT17

Demo & Download

18. MayaShop

BRWT18

Demo & Download

19. MetroStyle

BRWT19

Demo & Download

20. Nevada

BRWT20

Demo & Download

21. Office Responsive

BRWT21

Demo & Download

22. ProMotion Responsive

BRWT22

Demo & Download

23. Radius

BRWT23

Demo & Download

24. Risen

BRWT24

Demo & Download

25. RT-Theme

BRWT25

Demo & Download

26. Sterling

BRWT26

Demo & Download

27. Swagger

BRWT27

Demo & Download

28. Tersus

BRWT28

Demo & Download

29. Website

BRWT29

Demo & Download

30. WowWay

BRWT30

Demo & Download

April 30th, 2013

40 Best Twitter Plugins For WordPress Users

Twitter is one of the most powerful social media platforms that millions of users are using on a daily basis. With an extensive growth of social media networks, it has become one of the crucial steps in the marketing strategy of any business whether it is online or offline. By integrating Twitter into other marketing avenue, any company can easily increase its revenue. But, using Twitter for marketing your website and its good or services can be time consuming and tedious. In order to reduce this exponentially tedious task, one can take help of plugins which are designed to save your time and energy.

In this collection, we are showcasing a wide collection of 40 truly amazing and useful WordPress Twitter plugins which will help you in reducing the amount of work that you would do to integrate Twitter to your website. Enjoy!

Nextend Twitter Connect

One click registration & login plugin for Twitter? Easy installation? Is it totally free and comes with support? Yeah!

Twitter Tracker

Track Twitter search results, a Twitter hashtag, or a Twitter profile using sidebar widgets.

Skysa Twitter Follow App

Allows your site visitors to follow your twitter account with one click, without leaving your sitet.

WD Twitter Feed

Allows your site visitors to follow your twitter account with one click, without leaving your sitet.

HL Twitter

HL Twitter stores tweets from multiple accounts and displays them via widget, archives and shortcodes as well as auto-tweeting new posts.

Twitter Widget Pro

A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including parsing @username, #hashtags, and URLs into links.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

JM Twitter Cards

A plugin meant to simplify Twitter cards integration on WordPress. But this is more than just adding markup. You can customize your Twitter card.

Rotating Tweets (Twitter widget and shortcode)

Twitter widget and shortcode to show your latest tweets one at a time an animated rotation.

Twitter Plugin

Add a Twitter “Follow” button to your WordPress website.

Really Simple Twitter Feed Widget

Shows the latest tweets from a Twitter account in a sidebar widget. Twitter API 1.1 ready.

Twitter Cards Meta

The Best Way to Add Twitter Cards Metadata in WordPress Site. Enable Summary and Photo Cards Easily, With Control.

Ultimate twitter profile widget

Ultimate twitter profile widget. Plugin shows your tweets on Page/Post/Widget area.

WordPress Dashboard Twitter

WordPress Dashboard Twitter represents a Dashboard Widget for WordPress, that turns your Dashboard into a Twitter Client.

Twitter Cards

Add Twitter Card markup to individual posts. Supports summary, photo, and player types.

Twitter Like Box – Like facebook box but for twitter

Display your Twitter followers anywhere in the site or use the widget to display it on the sidebar.Like Faebook’s Like Box show your followers and a button to follow you. Also you can display people YOU follow instead of followers by simple changing settings on the widget. Colors are also editable in the admin settings page.

WP Twitter

Is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account including ShareThis Buttons and Goodies Widgets.

Hupso Share Buttons for Twitter, Facebook & Google+

Help visitors share your posts on popular social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Linkedin, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and others.

WordPress Twitter Bootstrap CSS

WordPress Twitter Bootstrap CSS lets you include the latest Twitter Bootstrap CSS and Javascript libraries in your WordPress site.

Twitter Media Endpoint

The Twitter Media Endpoint plugin allows you to turn your WordPress install in to a Twitpic/YFrog like service for your mobile device.

Tweet Manager

Create Your Own Custom Twitter Application and Publish to Your Twitter account ‘Via Your Custom Twitter Application’.

TweetView-Widget

Add a widget to your sidebar to show your latest tweets.

Widget embed latest Tweets

A Widget to show your latest tweets. Use the oEmbed methode and some cache. It is simple, elegant and it works. This plugin uses the Twitter API version 1.1. You have to authentify yourself ! Visit the option page “Plugins->Widget Embed Latest Tweet” to do so.

WP to Twitter

Auto-posts a Twitter update when you update your WordPress blog or blogroll, with your chosen URL shortening service.

Twitter Badge Widget

Provides a twitter badge widget that you can place on your wordpress site to display tweets from a specific twitter user.

Twitter Widget Pro

A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including parsing @username, #hashtags, and URLs into links.

Evolution Twitter Timeline

Creates a new and simple to use widget that outputs the awesome Twitter Embedded Timeline.

Twitget

This is a simple widget that shows your recent tweets. It also supports caching, so you won’t exceed the API call limit.

Twitter Feed Widget

Twitter Feed Widget will display your tweets using ajax and jquery. It shows one tweet at a time and loops through an specified number of tweets and time interval. IMPORTANT the twitter feed currently only works with non-private(public) twitter accounts.

Live Chat – Casengo

Add live chat to your blog or website quick and easy with Casengo, so you can handle enquiries via email and live chat directly from your website. Casengo helps you to respond to customers faster than ever and improve their satisfaction with a groovy mixture of real-time chat and email.

Twitter Feed

The Twitter Feed plugin makes including and linking to tweets on multiple Twitter accounts simple and flexible.

TwitterCounter

Integrate TwitterCounter.com badges on your blog to display the number of followers you have on Twitter.

Twitter

Twitter Widget displays your tweets on your sidebar. There’s lots of switches to tuen on/off what you want to display.

WP Tweet Button

The WordPress implementation of the official Twitter Tweet Button.

Twitter Comments – Twitoaster

Twitter Comments system. Automatically retrieve Twitter Replies and/or Twitter Retweets to your Blog’s Posts using WP built-in comment system.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

TwitterLink Comments

This plugin will add an extra field to your comment form so a user can add their Twitter username. A user configured ‘follow me’ link is then displayed along with their details on all their comments.

Evergreen Post Tweeter

Evergreen Post Tweeter enables you to automatically tweet out links to old posts based upon a tag or tags.

JM Twitter API Status Monitor

A simple code which adds a widget on admin panel with updates from the Status API.

My Twitter Widget

This is the best twitter sidebar plugin widget you will find for WordPress. It easy to use, easy to install and has all the features you needs to show your twitter profile, feeds off.

April 27th, 2013

20 Superb WordPress Themes for Kid Niche Blogs

WordPress is the most sought after content management system that is being used by entrepreneurs who want to establish their online website. The two main reasons for the overwhelming popularity of the WordPress themes are its user friendly interface and dynamic functionalities. For endorsing different brands for kids many specialized and extremely attractive WordPress themes are present.

Impressing the kids is not an easy task. Not only the web designs need to be attractive and engaging so that it can draw the attention of their junior clients, but they also need to be extra cautious while developing the interface as it should be comprehensible to the kids. Moreover, along with the kids the parents must also appreciate it. Baby products, day care centers, schools and other such institutes primarily require entertaining the kids as well as the adults at the same time. On the internet, you are going to come across WordPress templates which are especially dedicated to the kid’s website. Some of these have many alluring graphic elements in it as these elements are generally appreciated by the kids, while the others have a professional look. The enterprises and institutes can choose from these according to their own preference.

1. Wp Cartoons

VUIKWT 01

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

2. Kids website Word Press theme

VUIKWT 02

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

3. My School

VUIKWT 03

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

4. Childreness

VUIKWT 04

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

5. Mamma Press

VUIKWT 05

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

6. Cartoo

VUIKWT 06

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

7. Small Children Word Press Theme

VUIKWT 07

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

8. Colorful Baby Free Magazine Word Press Theme

VUIKWT 08

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

9. Wooden Fence (Kids) Word press Theme

VUIKWT 09

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

10. Kidolinos Magazine free Kids WordPress Theme

VUIKWT 10

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

PREMIUM THEMES

11. Pekaboo for WordPress

VUIKWT 11

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

12. Mommy Blog

VUIKWT 12

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

13. Kid’s Voice School WordPress Theme

VUIKWT 13

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

14. Cute & Sweet

VUIKWT 14

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

15. Kidz Store

VUIKWT 15

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

16. Baby Blog

VUIKWT 16

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

17. Jigo Shop

VUIKWT 17

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

18. Child care Creative

VUIKWT 18

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

19. Baby Sitter

VUIKWT 19

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

20. Kiddo

VUIKWT 20

DEMO & DOWNLOAD

In this article we are presenting before the viewers twenty WordPress themes that the web designers can use for developing websites dedicated to the kids. They can watch the demo version of these open source templates before downloading and using them. There are many customizing options in these templates which will make the website exclusive in its appearance. Enjoy!!

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April 25th, 2013

How to Create a “Sticky” Floating Sidebar Widget in WordPress

Floating elements that sticks to your screen as you scroll tend to have a higher click through and conversion rate than static objects. This is why many websites make use of floating elements through out their website. We have seen elements like header bar, footer bar, sidebar widget with newsletter optin, etc. In the past we showed you how to create a sticky floating footer bar in WordPress like we are using on WPBeginner. In this article, we will show you how to create a sticky floating sidebar widget in WordPress, so you can make your email newsletter stand out even more.

Note: This works for all type of sidebar widgets, not just your email optins. You can use it for product promotions, popular posts, flickr photosgoogle calendar, and basically anything else that you like.

Sticky sidebar floating widget demo

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Q2W3 Fixed Widget (Sticky Widget) plugin. After activating the plugin, go to Appearance » Widgets and click on the widget that you want to make sticky. The plugin adds a Fixed Widget option in all of your widgets. Check the Fixed widget box and save changes. Go to your live site and scroll down. Your fixed widget will now be a sticky floating widget.

Making a widget sticky by checking the fixed widget checkbox

Sticky Widget plugin comes with options to configure the positioning of the fixed widgets. Go to Appearance » Fixed Widget Options to configure the plugin. On this page you can set the margins, add your own HTML IDs and even disable the fixed widgets on phone and tablets.

Configuration options for sticky floating sidebar widget plugin

Sticky floating sidebar widgets can be used to boost sign ups, showcase content, and increase overall user loyalty. You can have multiple fixed widgets in a sidebar. However, these could easily get annoying and can have an adverse affect too. Keep a balance in your design, so you don’t frustrate your users.

We hope that this article helped you implement a sticky floating sidebar widget in your WordPress website. You can put a sticky footer bar, a sticky top navigation, and a sidebar widget. Which one would you rather use on your website

?

April 25th, 2013
Comments Off

Free Magazine-Style WordPress Theme

Today we are pleased to release “CreativeMag“, an new and free WordPress theme designed and built to provide a light and unobtrusive reading experience. We wanted to release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. Some time ago we showcased our concept site design of new icanbeCREATIVE, since then we wanted something more different  so we decide to code this design on the popular WordPress platform, with the help from our friends over at CodeInWp, and release it for free to download so everybody can use it.

Whether you want to give your blog a new cool and modern look or craving for awesome usability, look no further CreativeMag is the theme for you. Great User Experience, simple way to present your content in an accessible, logical and beautiful manner are some of features that will make this theme stand from a crowd..

creativemag

This theme was designed with the main focus being on blog-magazine style, clean look and simplicity. Hopefully, you will be able to use it in your projects or at least use it as a foundation for your next projects. I really recommend using it for a web design blog. The theme is released especially for icanbeCreative and its readers.

Download The Theme For Free!

creativemag

Live Demo 

Download Theme (1.19MB)

You can use the theme for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The theme may not be resold, sublicensed or rented. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, just don’t remove the credits in your footer.

Motivation Behind The Design

Here are some insights about the design process and development. This design was a quite different challenge for me, because we wanted something simple, beautiful and user-friendly. I created the CreativeMag theme to try and pump as much style and functionality into a WordPress theme to give people something they might not expect from their standard WordPress theme.

concept-design

There really is very few limits to what WordPress handle, so we’ve built in a lot of custom features and options to give people a little taste of what is possible, and how some small functionality tweaks can make a huge difference to the overall experience of browsing a blog. On top of that we’ve wrapped all that functionality up in a really cool and modern theme, with a nice stylish colour scheme.

Being a designer, it’s not very common to me to write too much; it’s better to present what this theme offers and how one can use it.

April 23rd, 2013

4 Very Useful WordPress Plugins That You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

WordPress plugins have made our lives so, so much easier. In fact, there are already nearly 25,000 plugins developed.

And there are plenty of articles all over the internet featuring the most popular and the most known WordPress plugins that will turn your website into a powerful CMS, blog, forum, etc.

I am here to show you four lesser known plugins that are very useful.

1. Faster Image Insert

Basically this plugin moves the whole media manager over to your post or page editing interface. It is a really useful plugin mainly because you do not have to open an extra window anymore, just add an image to your content.

It is right there, below your text editor or you can drag it anywhere you want. Also, another feature I totally love is multi editing. Here is a great tutorial for you.

Download Faster Image Insert Plugin Here

2. Plugins Garbage Collector

Now, this plugin can actually make your website faster. It increases your website’s loading speed by cleaning up the database of your website.

The official description of this plugin says: “It scans your WordPress database and shows what various things old plugins (which were deactivated or uninstalled) left in it. Cleanup is available.” How does it do it?

Well, this plugin scans the whole database of your WordPress site. And then it shows all the tables from that database to you. It looks just like this screenshot below.

PluginsGarbageCollector

As you can see, there is a lot of green and a lot of red. Mainly you should worry about those red records. As they show you any tables left behind after uninstalling a plugin. Some plugins delete every data and clean up when you delete them. But some do not. So this plugin will solve it for you. Feel free to download it here.

3. Video Thumbnails

Some time ago I was maintaining a video based WordPress site for one of my clients. They were paying for a fast and spacious server.

They used to embed and publish approximately 20 videos a day. 

And the biggest and most time consuming headache they had was manually creating and attaching a thumbnail to their video posts.
I had no idea what to do about it until I found Video Thumbnails. So what does it do so good to deserve to be included in this list? Very simple…

VideoThumbnails

“It simplifies the process of automatically displaying video thumbnails in your WordPress template.”

It supports all of these online players: YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Justin.tv, Dailymotion and Metacafe.

And also this plugin’s official description says that it will work without a problem with popular video embedding plugins as: Viper’s Video Quicktags, Simple Video Embedder, Vimeo Shortcode and WP YouTube Lyte.

I have to admit – I have not tried to use this plugin together with any of the ones mentioned above.

But for your peace of mind I can assure you that the plugin descriptions are usually reliable sources of information.

Something else I wanted to mention is that this plugin even has some features for advanced WordPress users who would love to customize their theme.

Just head over to Video Thumbnails Official WP page to find out more about it.

4. Search Meter

This plugin is a great weapon to improve your marketing strategy, customer service or in any other way please your visitors.

SearchMeter

This plugin has been made to track what your readers really want, and let me tell you from my own experience, this plugin does it really well. Basically, when you head over to your WordPress Dashboard you will be shown exactly what your readers are searching for, when and how often.

Not only does it show you what terms they search for, it will even tell you if they find what they are looking for.

This kind of search statistics enables you to give your readers more of what they are already looking for and adjust your content accordingly if they are struggling to find what they are looking for.

Last Piece Of Advice

Whenever I am talking about WordPress plugins I always like to remind people that if overused, they can actually do more harm than good.

So please make sure you install only the most essential plugins, instead of any plugin you think will make your site better.

April 21st, 2013

Tips For Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

Site speed is an increasingly important consideration for web designers. While it’s well known among marketers and SEO experts, site speed has often been overlooked in the world of design. And it’s time for change.

Studies show that just a few seconds, or milliseconds, off your upload time and you’ll see lower bounce rates, improved conversion rates and happier users in general. Based on their own research, in 2009 Google decided that site speed would factor into their search rankings. So not only will your page upload times affect the reception of your site among users, it could also make a difference to their ability to find it in the first place.

The time has come for designers to turn their attention to site speed, and there are many ways to do this.

Cut Time-Consuming Plugins

How To Find Out Which WordPress Plugins Are Making Your Site Slow
How To Find Out Which WordPress Plugins Are Making Your Site Slow

There are some WordPress Plug-ins that will help optimize your site speed but most will increase page-load times in a big way. If you can live without them, cut them. If you rely on them, look for another way. Many plug-ins can be replaced by using PHP to write their functionality into your theme. Alternatively, you could look for a different theme that already contains coding for the kinds of functionality your site requires.

Use Speed-Friendly Plugins

w3-total-cache-plugins-for-speeding-up-wordpress

Some plug-ins, however, are designed to make your pages load faster. A caching plugin, such as W3 Total Cache will allow files from your site to be stored on users’ browsers, so that when they visit again loading times are reduced.

Integrated into W3 Total Cache is the Meta CDN plugin for WordPress. This gives you access to MetaCDN’s overlay, improve access speed for your users world-wide via their international CDN service. Full instructions on how to integrate the plugin can be found here.

(You’ll find more speed-friendly plugins below.)

Optimize Content and Data

A Detailed Look Into WordPress Database Optimization
A Detailed Look Into WordPress Database Optimization

Data: Start with the WordPress database, where all site data is stored. The WP DB Manager plugin will do the hard work for you. This handy tool will also clear your database of unnecessary old drafts of posts that were written and then rewritten, saving you an extra few milliseconds.

Content Style: The trend for minimal web design is great news for site speed. Keeping a clean layout with well spaced content, few graphics and simple, straightforward text is a stylish way to boost site speed, while also being in vogue. Need further inspiration? Lookhere.

Images: Large image files are one of the biggest challengers to your site speed. Always optimize image files prior to upload. Or use another WP tool: WP Smush.it will automatically optimize your images as you upload them, which saves you the trouble of doing it manually in PhotoShop.

In Conclusion

Great site speed is easily achievable for websites of all shapes and sizes and is one of the simplest, most effective ways to give your site’s overall performance a boost. Getting your website running at speed makes your brand look more professional, increases customer/user confidence and could get you more than a few places higher on Google’s search rankings. Get to it.

November 10th, 2011

A Responsive Portfolio WordPress Theme

I’m happy to announce the launch of our latest WordPress theme at Theme Trust. It’s called Infinity, and it’s a responsive portfolio theme with a minimal style design and layout. With this theme your work will be front and center and look great across multiple devices and screen resolutions. Infinity comes with a number of useful features like project filtering and a TouchSwipe slideshow. Keep reading to see more features and to try out the demo.

At Theme Trust when you buy one theme, you get another free. Just add any two themes to your shopping cart and then enter the code “1free“.

Theme Features

Here’s a run down of the key features included in Infinity:

  • Responsive Layout
  • Twitter like Infinite Scrolling for Posts
  • Smooth Portfolio Filtering Animations
  • 3 Built-in Background Textures
  • Google Web Font Integration
  • TouchSwipe Slideshow Shortcode
  • Custom Options Panel
  • Custom Post Type for Easy Portfolio Management
  • Widget Ready Sidebars
  • Archive Page Template
  • WordPress 3.0 Custom Menus
  • Set Your Own Colors
  • Post Thumbnails
  • Built-in Lightbox
  • Upload a Custom Logo
  • Upload a Favicon
  • Threaded Comments
  • Twitter Integration
  • Flickr Integration
  • Button Shortcodes
  • Column Shortcodes

November 8th, 2011

New WordPress Theme – eList

eList is a unique theme that opens up some cool possibilities. At its core, it is a “directory” theme, meaning simply that it can be used to store a database of user-generated listings. The purpose of your site, and the type of content being submitted by your users, is entirely up to you. eList could  easily be used as a local job board, where business pay to list their available positions in a relevant category, or where residents pay to place their resumes. Perhaps it is a local real estate listings directory, where agents pay to list their properties for locals to see. It could also, very simply, be an online directory of business or websites that you curate and charge (or don’t charge) for inclusion.

eList creates a front-end submission form that your visitors can use to submit their own listings. This form can be customized from within wp-admin to include whatever fields you like. You can then choose to charge your visitors to submit their listings, or allow them to post for free.

Live DemoFeatures Info

 

eList Features

 1. Unlimited ColorSchemes – eList includes our CSS control panel, allowing you to adjust the background and font color of your theme. This allows for unlimited possibilities when comes to color combinations, and also includes various background textures.

2. Classic Directory Structure – eList includes the classic directory structure, where your homepage is based off categories rather than recent listings. Each category is displayed, along with a description, post count and thumbnail image.

3. eCommerce Integration – eList allows you to place your listings behind a pay-wall. You can charge  a fixed rate for each listing, as well as an additional fee to have the listing “featured” on the homepage and relevant categories. All payments are handled via PayPal, and the theme uses IPN to automatically verify listings once they have been paid for. If a listing is not paid for, then it will remain a draft in the system and will not be published.

4. Custom Drag-and-Drop Form Builder – The eList listings submission form can be completely customized to fit the purpose of your website. We have created a custom form builder that you can use to easily customize your submission form, adding any additional fields that you require.

5. Front-end Listing Submissions - eList has its own front-end login and submission page, allowing your visitors to publish new listings without ever having to log in to the WordPress Dashboard. This creates a seamless experience for your customers.

6. Featured Listings – You have the option of allowing your visitors to pay additional fees to be “Featured.” When a users pays to be featured, their listing is rotated on the homepage and category Featured Slider for a limited amount of time. You can change how long listings stay “Featured” from within ePanel.

I hope that everyone enjoys the new theme! It was a challenging one to create, but I think it turned out quite well. :)

August 10th, 2011

15 Most Popular WordPress plugins

image

WordPress has been the ultimate platform for blogging in 2010 and it has also evolved into many other areas where people have a need for publishing content. Just to mention a few areas that have previously been covered here on tripwire magazine – WordPress is now used for Question and Answer solutions, for portfolios, as a website CMS, for mobile devices, for membership sites, for making money and much more. With all this popularity there is a really strong community around WordPress creating tons of valuable themes and plugins. Not all of the plugins created are essential for running a blog, Not all of the WordPress plugins created are essential for running a blog. I have compiled a list for you with the plugins most bloggers use right now. 

1. Fast Secure Contact Form

Fast Secure Contact Form

This is an advanced customizable contact form that enables your visitors to send you email, but blocks all automated spammers. The Plug-in helps to prevent spamming to a large extent. The plug-in has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. It also has a number of other interesting features.

Requirements:

  • WordPress 2.6+ but WordPress 3.0+ is highly recommended
  • PHP 4.3.9 or above with GD2 library support. PHP5 is highly recommended.
  • PHP register_globals and safe_mode should be set to “Off”.

2. NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery is a complete Image Gallery plug-in with advanced options for WordPress. It has a plenty of features like option to add custom template to theme, you can copy or move images between galleries, option to create your own set of albums, water mark function etc.

Requirements:

  • WordPress Version: 2.9 or higher Compatible up to: 3.0.1

3. WP-PageNavi

It adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress site. Page navigation is customizable with this plug-in.

Requirements:

  • Required WordPress version: 2.8 or higher
  • Compatible up to:  3.0.1
  • Php 5 is required since version 2.70

4. Maintenance Mode

Maintenance Mode

The Plug-in adds a splash page to the blog that lets visitors know that the blog is under maintenance. Visitors will be shown a message like “Maintenance Mode – SITE is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance”

Requirements:

  • WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher Compatible up to: 3.0.1

5. W3 Total Cache

This is the fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plug-in available, it can easily optimize the speed and user experience of the site with caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.

Requirements:

  • WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher Compatible up to: 3.0.1

6. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

It is an anti-spam Plug-in for wordpress. The Plug-in ensures that the comment form, registration form, login etc are spam protected. The user has to type in the code shown on the image in order to post comments or register, thus prevents spam from automated bots. It is completely WP, WPMU, and BuddyPress compatible. Requirements: WordPress Version: 2.6 or higher Compatible up to: 3.0.1

7. Platinum SEO Pack

The Plug-in offers complete onsite SEO solution for WordPress blog. Platinum SEO Plugin offers all the functionalities of All In ‘One SEO pack’ and optimizes wordpress blog for search engines. Requirements: WordPress Version: 1.5 or higher compatible up to: 3.0.1

8. Sexy Bookmarks

Sexy Bookmarks

The plug-in adds an attractive social book marking menu to your posts, pages or index. Recently the plug-in has been updated to make it more efficient.  Some recently added sites are yahoo mail, Gmail, hotmail and Buzzster.

Requirements:

  • Requires WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher Compatible up to: 3.0.1

9. Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in

The Plug-in gives the reader a list of posts and/or pages relevant to the current entry thus introducing him/her to other relevant content on the site.

Requirements:

  • WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher compatible up to: 3.0.1

10. Tweet This

The plug-in provides “Tweet this” option so that the readers can share posts with one click and the plug-in automatically tweets new posts via OAuth. It allows user to publish and schedule tweets from a new “Write Tweet” page and it supports 10 URL shorteners like Bit.ly, Su.pr, and TinyURL etc and also includes options for 20 social networks including Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace.

  • Requirements: WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher compatible up to: 3.0.1

11. Wordbooker

This plug-in allows cross-post blog posts to your Facebook Wall. You can also “cross pollinate” comments between Facebook and WordPress blog.

  • Requirements: WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher compatible up to: 3.0.1

12. Secure WordPress

The Plug-in secures WordPress Installation with small functions. It removes error-information on login-page,  the wp-version, except in admin-area, removes Really Simple Discovery, Windows Live Writer, core update information for non-admin, removes plug-in-update information for non-admin and theme-update information for non-admin (only WP 2.8 and higher) It adds index.php plug-in-directory (virtual), hides wp-version in backend-dashboard for non-admins, adds string for use WP Scanner, Blocks bad queries.

  • Requirements: WordPress Version: 2.6 or higher compatible up to: 3.1-alpha

13.  WP-FB-AutoConnect

The Login-Logout widget with Facebook Connect button offers hassle-free login for readers, the plug-in is clean and extensible and also Supports BuddyPress, Similar “Facebook Connect” plug-ins do exist, but most of them are either too complex and difficult to customize, or fail to provide a user-friendly experience for new visitors.

  • Requirements: WordPress Version: 2.5 or higher compatible up to: 3.0.1

14. WordPress Download Monitor

Download Monitor is a plug-in for uploading and managing downloads, tracking download hits, and displaying links.

  • Requirements: WordPress Version: 2.5 or higher compatible up to: 3.0.1

15. Exclude Pages

This plug-in adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus” which is checked by default, if you uncheck this option, the page will not appear in any listings of pages.

  • Requirements: WordPress Version: 2.2.3 or higher Compatible up to: 3.0.1
Please share in a comment what you think is the most popular plugins this year and if you think there are new interesting plugins are worth paying notice to.

Author : Dustin Betonio

Andrew Paul, BDM with WordPressintegration.com, company with a team of experts specialized in PSD to WordPress conversion and integration.