Top 10 Free WordPress Plugins of the Month – March 2014

Welcome to the March 2014 plugin roundup!

I’ve got an interesting selection for you this month. While it’s not earth-shattering, there are some real gems here that are worth a try. Whether you’re looking for a cleaner way to display product pricing options, you need a new maintenance mode display, or you want an RSS feed that actually works, these plugins should assist in adding real functionality to your site.

From e-commerce to social media, we’ve got a little bit of everything for you this month. Enjoy!

10. Bet on Sports

Now, this plugin is pretty niche-y but if you’re into sports and your site is related to the subject, it might be worth looking into. Bet on Sports, according to its Plugin Directory description, “shows the actual coefficients for consecutive sport events.”

It utilizes two separate widgets to run. The first, the StakesWidgetTop, shows the coefficients for common stakes depending on the categories you select. The second, StakesWidgetSports, breaks down the different types of sports by event location and tournament. It’s not for everyone but it might be right for you!

Download from WordPress.org

9. WP Construction Mode

WP-construction-mode

While there are many maintenance mode style plugins available, WP Construction Mode offers another option with an attractive interface. Once installed, you can set your entire site or just a specific page as under construction or undergoing maintenance. Visitors will be greeted with a stylish under construction screen that you can customize to relay whatever message you’d like.

Admins can still view the site as normal. I like the inclusion of social media icons on the under construction page, since it gives visitors a way to stay in touch even if the site is currently unavailable.

Download from WordPress.org

8. eCommerce Product Catalog by impleCode

ecommerce-product-catalog

Not bad for free. The eCommerce Product Catalog plugin by impleCode integrates a simple product catalog into your WordPress site with no fuss. It’s feature-rich but doesn’t let you get bogged down in the details.

Just a few of this plugin’s features include integrated SEO, the ability to add an unlimited number of products, shortcodes, 25 currencies, drag-and-drop product attributes, and a lightbox for the product images.

Download from WordPress.org

7. WPFront Scroll Top

wpfront-scroll-top

You can’t get much simpler than this and that’s why we like it. WPFront Scroll Top is a very simple button that allows visitors to your site to scroll back to the top of each page. The scrolling action features animation and you can set up the button to appear however you’d like — as an image or just text.

It works on any-sized device, sports an auto hide function for convenience, and hides on iframes, too.

Download from WordPress.org

6. Fourteen Colors

fourteen-colors

This nifty plugin makes for a convenient aesthetic add-on to the popular Twenty Fourteen theme. If you’re not digging the green and black color scheme then you can easily change it to anything you want with the Fourteen Colors plugin.

It’s streamlined and offers two color pickers that let you make changes to header color, background color, link color, link hover color, text color, and more. So, you can switch up how your site looks as often as you want and create a consistent, branded look without having to deal with custom CSS.

Download from WordPress.org

5. Super Socializer

super-socializer

Yes, there are a ton of social media plugins out there already but this one just recently leapt onto our radar, primarily because it offers the features of numerous social plugins all rolled into one.

For instance, it offers social login capability, which means your visitors can use their current usernames and passwords from the top social networks. It enables social sharing, which means your visitors can more easily share your content with their friends and followers. It also allows for Facebook commenting and the ability to post directly to a user’s Facebook feed.

Return users will be greeted with custom profile data, too.

Download from WordPress.org 

4. PDF & Print

pdf and print

If you want to make it super simple for your site’s visitors to save your content as a PDF or to print it straight from their browsers, the PDF & Print plugin is a must. It simply adds PDF and Print buttons to your content.

It offers flexibility in terms of where the buttons are placed on each post or page as well including top left, top right, bottom left, or bottom right positioning. If you want to make it clear to your visitors they can save or print your content, this may very well be the way to do it.

Download from WordPress.org

3. Easy Pricing Tables

easy-pricing-tables

If you offer a product or service on your website that requires multiple pricing options, you may find the Easy Pricing Tables for WordPress plugin useful. It makes it very easy to create, manage, and publish pricing tables to display on your site. They’re also really simple to edit, should the need arise.

When building a pricing table, you’re walked through each step with conversion in mind. And once you’re done creating it, you can insert it wherever you like with a shortcode. It promises to work with any theme is pretty flexible in terms of the amount of content you can include. You can add an unlimited number of rows and up to 10 columns, so you can detail numerous pricing plans.

Drag-and-drop reordering and the ability to highlight one column round out this plugin’s feature set.

Download from WordPress.org

2. WP Inject

wp-inject

If you’re like most bloggers, the process of finding free images to use in your posts can be daunting and time-consuming. But that’s what WP Inject strives to remedy. This plugin makes it simple to search for and insert photos into your posts without leaving your dashboard.

Use whatever relevant keywords you want to search creative commons images. Pick the one(s) you want and insert them into your post. The plugin’s description promises it only takes 3 clicks to insert an image.

Once the plugin is installed a search metabox is added to your Editor. Search for your photos from here and you’ll have a visually-inspiring post in no time. It even automatically attributes posts for you. You can’t get much easier than that.

Download from WordPress.org

1. WP RSS Aggregator 

wp-rss-aggregator

WP RSS Aggregator was my hands down favorite plugin this month because it’s simple yet extremely powerful, especially for those who are in the business of content. With it, you can display RSS and Atom feeds on your site from multiple sources.

In the admin panel, you can input as many feeds as you want, including source information and dates. Then, using a shortcode, you can insert the feed anywhere you want on your site. In also includes pagination, an option to select the number of posts per feed you want to display, and more.

Several premium add-ons are available as well that allow you to add image thumbnails to the feed, use a feed to populate individual posts, post from categories, and use keyword filtering.

Download from WordPress.org

Tom Ewer

Tom Ewer is the founder of WordCandy.co. He has been a huge fan of WordPress since he first laid eyes on it, and has been writing educational and informative content for WordPress users since 2011. When he's not working, you're likely to find him outdoors somewhere – as far away from a screen as possible!

19 Comments

  1. Annie Martin

    Hi,
    I would like to suggest you to go ahead and try Blog2social, this is my personal favorite, not only you have a single dashboard which will help you post across platforms but also it requires no cron job done. You just have to simply install and activate it.

  2. Milly

    Hey Tom! Thank you for this article, was very useful!
    I’d like to share with you the pricing table plugin I’m using now and I’m quite pleased with it. It’s easy to use and gives a great support! Check it out: https://wordpress.org/plugins/pricing-table-builder/

  3. Jesson

    Thanks for information,

    I like WP Inject. because free image searching consume lot of time , it could be a huge time saver.

  4. kksilvery

    My brother wanted to run a service ,which needed price table, You have solved my price table issue. Thank you tom ewer.

  5. Danny

    Hi Tom, thanks for sharing this post. Was very helpful.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      You’re welcome Danny!

  6. Siraj.M

    Thanks for sharing useful post actually wp inject i usually used 🙂

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      You’re welcome!

  7. Rokas

    5 plugins were installed after reading your post! Thank you! Needfull plugins, especialy, scroll to top and pricing tables. Thanks again!

  8. Virendar Warwal

    Thanks! for sharing such a great list. It helps me a lot.

    1. Tom

      You’re welcome Virendar!

  9. Ranjana Sharma

    Thanks lot to share list of free plugin.. its really helpful.

    1. Tom

      Thanks Ranjana!

  10. Charlie

    Like the idea of WP Inject. Seems like it could be a HUGE time saver. Trying it out now. Thanks for the great site!

    1. Tom

      Good Luck Charlie!

  11. @WiseRiseInfo

    Really great list. I’ve been using WP inject for a couple of weeks. Very very handy!

    1. Tom

      Great to hear! Thanks!

  12. Champ

    Thanks a lot to mention my plugin (Super Socializer) here.

    1. Tom

      You’re welcome!

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