Best 10 Free WordPress Plugins of the Month – August 2014

Another month, another free plugins list!

I’ve got a pretty nice mixture of different types of plugins this time around, all designed to make managing your WordPress site just a little bit easier. From better managing your comments to bulk managing your images, there’s a little something for everyone here. There’s even a few designed to more intuitively integrate social media and better present your content.

So yeah, you have a lot to look at and try out here. Might as well get right to it. Enjoy!

10. Ultimate Under Construction

Ultimate Under ConstructionThis simple plugin is pretty useful if you want to establish a web presence but don’t have your site completed just yet. Ultimate Under Construction lets you turn on (and off) a holding page that appears to any non-admin who visits your website. You can work on a live version of your site, without anyone you don’t want to seeing it. Customize it with a variety of background colors, patterns, and even custom HTML.

Useful For: 

Establishing your presence on the web before launch.

About the Developer: 

This appears to be Mike Morrow’s first plugin. He’s a PHP programmer and WordPress developer and you can follow him on Twitter @morrowmediauk.

Download from WordPress.org

9. Disable Google Fonts

There are some cases where you just might not be digging on Google Fonts. In these cases, the Disable Google Fonts is a good way to make sure they don’t load. Basically, it prevents certain Google Fonts like Open Sans that are included in bundled themes like Twenty Fourteen from loading. You might not want Google’s servers having access to your site or you might need to display certain characters that aren’t supported by a particular Google Font. Added security might be your priority, too.

Useful For: 

Having more control over your website’s fonts without adding any bulk.

About the Developer: 

This plugin was developed by Milan Dinic. He’s also created Spam Destroyer, Nav Menu Images, and Cache Images. You can follow him on Twitter @MilanDinicCom

Download from WordPress.org

8. mqTranslate 

If you run a multilingual website, managing your content can be difficult. While the qTranslate plugin was created for managing multilingual sites from the WordPress dashboard, the mqTranslate was designed to extend the former to add more collaborative features. Some of those features include language selection for editor accounts and the protection of edits made by two people in two different languages at the same time.

Useful For: 

Better managing sites that feature content in more than one language.

About the Developer: 

xhaleera is based in France and also developed mCatFilter and currently develops iOS apps. Follow them on Twitter @xhaleera.

Download from WordPress.org

7. Disqus Conditional Load

Disqus Conditional LoadThis plugin is unofficial but it offers some nifty features that I thought were worth adding to our list this month. For instance, with it installed, you can enable lazy loading on Disqus comments and select when and where comments are shown. Basically, it makes your site faster and that’s definitely a good thing. It supports your current comments, uses shortcodes, and more.

Useful For: 

Speeding up your site and taking control over how and when your comments are displayed.

About the Developer: 

Joel James, a blogger and developer from India, created this plugin along with a few others but this is his most successful so far. You can keep up with him on Facebook.

Download from WordPress.org

6. Quick Featured Images

Quick Featured ImagesIf you use Featured images in your posts, then you’ll definitely make use of this plugin. Quick Featured Images allows you to manage your featured photos in bulk to save time. You can also set an automatic featured image for certain post types by default. You can set, replace, or remove featured images on all your posts at once, too. This is an example of a plugin doing one thing and doing it well.

Useful For: 

Managing featured images in a fraction of the time it would normally take.

About the Developer: 

This plugin was developed by Martin Stehle, who’s also responsible for Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails and Purify WordPress Menus. You can keep up with his latest work on Facebook.

Download from WordPress.org

5. WP Tab Widget  

WP Tab WidgetWP Tab Widget is similar to other lazy load tab plugins out there but features cleaner code. It was designed to be a premium plugin but MyThemeShop decided to give it away for free. It uses AJAX so it loads quickly and won’t bog down your site. You can select from Popular, Recent, Comments, and Tags tabs, features pagination, is responsive, and more. You can select how many tabs are displayed, too. All in all, I was really impressed by how many features were jam-packed into this plugin.

Useful For: 

Adding tabs to your site, anywhere, improving site speed, and presenting your content in a more user-friendly way.

About the Developer: 

MyThemeShop created this plugin and so many more, including WP Review and New Google Plus Badge Widget. They also have a free theme available, called Point. Keep up with their latest @mythemeshopteam.

Download from WordPress.org

4. WP Twitter Feeds

WP Twitter FeedsIf you need a straightforward way to display tweets on your WordPress site, then you might enjoy WP Twitter Feeds. Add tweets any place there’s a widgetized area. This saves you the trouble of having to login to Twitter and copy and paste its code manually. You can also select the number of tweets you want displayed, use a slider effect, and more. What I like is that you don’t have to enter your Twitter password. So if you change your Twitter account details at some point, you won’t have to go in and change anything with the plugin.

Useful For: 

Easily integrating tweets into widget areas without logging into Twitter.

About the Developer: 

Vivacity InfoTech is responsible for a whole host of plugins and themes, including WP Facebook Like Button, WP Facebook FanBox, and the theme Vivacity. Learn more about what they do at @VivacityIT.

Download from WordPress.org

3. Bootstrap Shortcodes for WordPress

Bootstrap Shortcodes for WordPressIf you’re using a theme based on Bootstrap 3, this plugin gives you access to a whole slew of shortcodes that you can use. After install, a new button will appear above the TinyMCE editor that when clicked displays shortcode examples. You can even just click a link and have these examples automatically entered into your posts and pages.

Useful For: 

Integrating Bootstrap shortcodes and their documentation into your WordPress editor.

About the Developer: 

This plugin was developed by WordPress users filipstefansson, nodley, and foolsrun, the latter of which also created Font Awesome Shortcodes for WordPress.

Download from WordPress.org

2. Portfolio Gallery by Huge-IT

Huge IT Portfolio GalleryThis plugin lets you add portfolios and galleries into your posts and pages with ease. You can add descriptions and titles to them. You can also add as many as you want on different pages. So, you could feasibly add a portfolio, an image gallery, a slider, and so forth. It comes equipped with seven view options, text and color options, drag-and-drop functionality, and more. It even comes with sample galleries to give you a concrete idea of what this plugin is capable of.

Useful For: 

Setting up a portfolio or gallery for your site with minimal fuss.

About the Developer: 

Huge-IT also made the Lightbox plugin and the Slider plugin that we featured here back in June.

Download from WordPress.org

1. WP Clean Up

Topping our list this month is WP Clean Up. It’s simple and does one task really well, which is what I look for when putting together these lists. This plugin helps you to clean up the WordPress database by getting rid of a variety of unnecessary information that is very likely slowing your site down. This information includes: Revisions, Draft, Auto Draft, Moderated Comments, Spam Comments, Trash Comments, Orphan Postmeta, Orphan Commentmeta, Orphan Relationships, and Dashboard Transient Feed. After install, it just adds a settings page to your Dashboard. From there, you can clean up your site and optimize it for speed in a matter of seconds.

Useful For: 

Getting rid of useless information and streamlining your database.

About the Developer: 

WP Clean Up was created by boliquan, who’s also responsible for WP Anti Spam, WP SMTP, WP Code Highlight, and WP Slug Translate. Keep up with this developer’s latest on Facebook.

Download from WordPress.org

Brenda Barron

Brenda is a writer from southern California, a WordPress enthusiast, and Doctor Who addict. She contributes to several business and technology blogs, including her own, Digital Inkwell. You can follow her on Google+.

5 Comments

  1. Anna

    Amazing post!!!!!! 🙂 really useful

  2. Frank

    Great post.
    Thanks for sharing this post .

  3. Danny

    Thanks for sharing… I didn’t know about WP Tab Widget plugin.

    1. Brenda Barron

      Author

      It was news to me, too!

  4. susanmarshallva

    On the WP Clean Up plugin, isn’t that a function we have in our ManageWP service? If not, how is it different?

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