Welcome to our best plugins for the month of September! As always, I searched high and low for top of the line freebies to share with you and I think I came across some pretty impressive ones this month, I’ve got to say!
There’s plugins for ramping up your social sharing and plugins for increasing site speed. I’ve even got a plugin that adds voice-over tutorials to your dashboard, which is pretty damned cool if you ask me.
Okay, enough chit-chat. Here’s this month’s selection! Enjoy!
10. OnePress Image Elevator
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could paste images straight into the WordPress editor from your clipboard? Well, OnePress Image Elevator makes this entirely possible. Once installed, you can easily copy images from Photoshop, other websites, and from your hard disk and paste them directly into posts. No more searching around for files. It works with most major browsers and is super easy to setup.
Useful For:
Saving time during the blog writing process. Streamlining publishing.
About the Developer:
This plugin was developed by OnePress, which also offers a premium version. You can keep tabs on its latest projects on Facebook.
9. WP Optimize By xTraffic
If your site could use a little extra SEO help, then you might want to check out WP Optimize By xTraffic. This plugin sets internal links and focused links automatically to help lengthen visitors’ on-site time and to increase your search engine rank. It also optimizes your images by adding alt tags, automatically applying a watermark, and improving image quality. Finally, you can expect improved site loading performance thanks to a few speed boosters like minifying HTML and Javascript and combining CSS.
Useful For:
Quickly optimizing your site’s internal links and images.
About the Developer:
WordPress user pep.vn created this plugin. Keep up with him at his blog or on Twitter @xtraffic_pep.
8. Easy Facebook Like Box
I realize there are numerous Facebook Like box plugins out there but I really like this one because of its simplicity. With minimal setup, you can display posts from your Facebook Fan Page, a like button, and/or your current connections. Adjust the height and width of the widget, enable or disable responsive mode, change the color scheme, add a header and a border, and more. It’s customizable and free. What more could you ask for?
Useful For:
Adding a Facebook Like box to your site in any widgetized area.
About the Developer:
The Easy Facebook Like Box was created by J Web Solutions, who design and develop websites across a variety of industries and aesthetics. Follow their progress on Facebook.
7. Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator
If you’re looking for a simple way to create and install a favicon on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows 8 devices, this plugin ought to do the trick. Instead of creating just one favicon that’s then stretched to fit the platform on which it’s being viewed, this plugin generates several so the right icon is pulled up for optimum viewing on each device. It’s easy to use and easy to implement right away and offers a quick solution to a very specific design problem.
Useful For:
Quickly creating and installing a favicon across all platforms.
About the Developer:
This plugin was developed by web developer Phillipe Bernard. It’s currently his only plugin. Learn more about him on Twitter @RealFavicon.
6. Speed Booster Pack
This plugin is designed to help you improve your site’s speed so it performs better on popular speed testing services like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. Once installed, you can select from a variety of features designed to speed up your site like minifying HTML and Javascript, lazy loading images, removing junk header tags, deferring parsing of Javascript files, and more. It’s a simple way to see improved site performance without having to get bogged down with the details.
Useful For:
Improving site performance with just a few clicks.
About the Developer:
Speed Booster Pack was developed by Tiguan Design. Founded by Liviu Costache, the company specializes in WordPress theme development and website design. You can follow him on Twitter @tiguandesign.
5. Sidekick
Once you install the Sidekick plugin, you’ll gain immediate access to a wide variety of tutorials. But these aren’t just a matter of watching videos. Rather, you get to experience guided narration through the WordPress dashboard. It’s the ultimate learn by doing process. It also includes walkthroughs of certain supported plugins and themes and adds hotspots to your screen with helpful reminders of how to complete certain tasks. A pro version is also available.
Useful For:
Integrating voice-based WordPress tutorials into your Dashboard. Providing interactive training for your team.
About the Developer:
Sidekick was developed by Bart Dabek, Ben Fox, and Andy McIlwain of FlowPress, Inc. Keep up with the latest company happenings @sidekickhelps or follow the team individually @bartdabek, @benjaminefox, and @andymci.
4. Master Slider – Responsive Touch Slider
The Master Slider is responsive and works on touch devices, making it the perfect free slider choice for modern sites. It supports swipe gestures and can be created using a drag-and-drop interface. Other features include auto crop, loop sliding, shortcodes, SEO compatibility, six skins, and auto play. It’s also designed to be SEO friendly and is translation ready. Add the free price tag to it and this slider becomes an ideal choice.
Useful For:
Adding a responsive, touch-sensitive slider to your site.
About the Developer:
Averta is a web design, game development, and interactive media company. Beyond client work and the Master Slider plugin, the company also created the Lotus Multipurpose Theme.
3. Cookie Notice
It’s the law in the EU that you must inform website visitors if your site uses cookies. That’s where this plugin comes into play. It lets you easily display a message to visitors that the site uses cookies without being overbearing or breaking your chosen aesthetics. You can easily customize the message that’s displayed, set a cookie expiration, add animation to the cookie acceptance box, and more. You can also select from a variety of button styles, text colors, and bar background colors for further customization.
Useful For:
Lets you be upfront with site visitors about your use of cookies.
About the Developer:
This plugin was developed by dFactory, a WordPress development team devoted to creating plugins to fulfill a variety of needs. Besides Cookie Notice, this company also created Responsive Lightbox and Image Watermark. Keep up with their latest on Facebook.
2. CMS Commander Client
If you run several websites, you might want to take a look at CMS Commander Client. This plugin enables you to manage several sites at once all from within a single admin interface. So, you can install plugins, create new posts, install updates, and backup your content across all of your sites at once. It also comes equipped with 20+ APIs for adding images, videos, affiliate ads and more.
If these features sound familiar, don’t worry, you’re not losing it. CMS Commander Client is a decent free option of the services ManageWP offers. However, we take these basic features and bump them up to the next level by including more robust site monitoring, two factor authentication, and much more. We’re confident enough in the quality of our service to mention this here, knowing that we have a great deal more to offer. Best of all, if you manage less than five websites, you can use ManageWP free of charge! Find out more here.
Useful For:
Managing your WordPress sites from within a single dashboard.
About the Developer:
CMS Commander Client was developed by Thomas Hoefter, who is based on Frankfurt, Germany. Watch for updates @cmscommander.
1. Share Button Mashshare
If you’ve been looking for a way to improve social proof but weren’t sure how, this plugin might be a good solution for you. These share buttons display your total share counts across Facebook and Twitter, which looks more impressive than if they were displayed individually. It also inserts nice-looking buttons at the top and bottom of your blog posts to help increase the total number of shares you receive. It’s very much-so inspired by the share buttons Mashable uses adding to the appeal here.
Useful For:
Adding simple social share buttons to your WordPress site that look very similar to Mashable’s.
About the Developer:
This plugin was developed by Rene Hermenau. He also created the Google AdSense Click-Fraud Monitoring Plugin. You can learn more about him on Google+.
Anoop Bhandari
Thanks for such a great list of wordpress plugins, but I want to know that how much plugins we can install to the wordpress blog as people says that more plugins will slow down the speed of blog.
Kenneth E Sweet
This is great. I just signed up with you guys and love all your content!
http://LeadWebsiteDesign.com (Affordable Website Design and SEO Services)
Steve Humleker
Thanks.
Nargish
The post is so helpful for me.Thank you for share us.
John
Thank you Brenda for that cool list! Are you planning to publish an update of this list soon?
We recently released a FREE plugin which allows to add social icons to a website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/
We think it’s the best one on the market and user feedback seems to confirm that: in less than 4 months we got over 60k downloads, >280 5-star-reviews and an overall rating of 4.9/5.0.
If you also like us – why not include us in your (future) list as well? 🙂
Thank you!!
John
Igor Kolosov
We won’t be publishing any new Top lists for the month, either in Plugins or Themes section. We believe that the Plugins list on ManageWP.org is a much better resource and it is constantly up to date. Feel free to take a look: https://managewp.org/plugins/best
Nick
Take a look at Simple tasks and todo’s as well, a new plugin which creates a task-list overlay on top of your website and wordpress admin. Very handy for development, to keep track of things to do! https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-tasks-todos/screenshots
Travis
There are some great plugins here for sure !
Have you guys ever tried out landing pages? wpleadrocket is a paid plugin that is PROVEN to increase your opt-in rates… by having a great landing page its not only the first thing your visitor will see but you’ll actually capture that persons email addy which gives you the affiliate marketer or blogger! the ability to launch products and promotions, new blog etc. which will therefore generate you more money ! from newbies to pros its so simple to use and there are a lot of youtube demos how to set up and use, read the reviews for yourself and happy blogging/ marketing.
Happy holidays everyone!
Ashish Ajani
I have looked at several “best wordpress plugins” lists and this one is pretty good because it narrows things down to a few best plugins for every type of functionality.
ali
Thank you for this entry
*from iran*
Milton Ayala
Real nice post. I will be trying out speed booster pack and cookie notice thanks to your awesome article. Way to GO!
BTW. This is my first time on Manage WP and I’m hooked already. You guys and gals are good.
milind
awesome collection of nice plugins. I like mashshare plugin for sharing articles..fantastic collection.
thanks
vernal
The Image Elevator is amazing. I’m impressed they pulled that off. Hats off to them.
tüp bebek
really good quality plugins…
yerevdekor
çok güzel bir eklenti biz paravan blog websitemiz de kullanıyoruz tavsiye ederiz.
Erdem
nice work
Alex
This list was very useful for me
Mark
Nice that you are willing to list a competitor but I am not switching from ManageWP. Works for me
Buka Info
plugin is very interesting and the latest for the month of September, I will try it if it matches with a template that I use