Top 10 Free WordPress Plugins of the Month — November 2013

Plugins of the Month

Welcome to the latest edition of the ManageWP Plugins of the Month series! While the pool of available plugins wasn’t as deep as it has been in previous months, that made no difference to the quality — they are all still excellent.

This month we have plugins that will allow you to make dramatic changes to the look and feel of your website. These range from simple pagination and code additions to remarkably flexible page design options. You will also find a selection of plugins that are designed to give you greater user engagement and social interaction.

There is something for everyone in this month’s plugin selection. As always I leave to hear your thoughts about the plugins we showcase here, so let me know what you think about them in the comments. Enjoy!

10. Page Navi Slider

page-navi-slider

Page Navi Slider is a fully customizable and responsive plugin that allows you to build better pagination links.

Instead of having the simple page numbers available for you to click on, this plugin creates a slider with jQuery that allows you easily navigate back and forwards through the pages.

The slider works on your desktop and is also fully touch screen compliant, enabling its usage on tablets and smart phones.

Download from WordPress.org

9. ezPHP Plugin for WordPress

The ezPHP plugin for WordPress allows you to add PHP code snippets into your post, pages, and text widgets.

This plugin is more useful for developers and those who like to add additional functionality to specific areas of your site. Using this plugin allows you to add this additional functionality to posts and pages without having to alter the theme templates.

Download from WordPress.org

8. Awesome Weather Widget

Awesome Weather Widget

The title of this plugin says it all really.

Awesome Weather Widget allows you to add extremely clean and easily customizable widgets to you your site to show weather forecasts and information about any city in the world. The widgets change color based on the temperature of the city being displayed.

It can be added to your site with the built in widget or by using a shortcode that allows you to display specific information. It updates its data from http://openweathermap.org/ on an hourly basis.

Download from WordPress.org

7. Compact WP Audio Player

The Compact WP Audio Player plugin is a hybrid between HTML5 and Flash and allows you to embed an MP3 file on your site using a simple shortcode.

The player is very small and compact so it won’t take over the post or page you embed it on. It has been built to work well with major browsers including IE7 and upwards.

It is a great little plugin for people who like to podcast or want to share their music with their community or fans.

Download from WordPress.org

6. Convertable Contact Form Builder Analytics and Lead Management Dashboard

Convertable

Convertable is a marketing platform that automatically tracks the source of conversions from the moment a lead uses your contact form, all the way through your sales funnel.

This plugin won’t be for everyone, but it is a great way to track potential customers as they interact with your site. This is especially useful if you are selling a product or service from your website.

This is a web-based system that will require you to create a free Convertable account so that you can use it.

Download from WordPress.org

5. Smart Layers by AddThis

Smart Layers

Smart Layers allows you to add easy-to-use buttons to your content that can increase your visitor engagement. You can add social share buttons, follow buttons, or recommend additional content to your visitors with this plugin.

These social buttons work as layers that overlay your site design and can be turned off for specific content. They also come in three distinct styles: light, dark or transparent.

Download from WordPress.org

4. Advanced Comments Moderation

Advanced Comments Moderation

This is one of my own plugins that I’ve developed with the always awesome Tito Pandu Brahmanto. I use this plugin religiously on Leaving Work Behind to moderate and respond to comments — it makes my life a lot easier.

The plugin adds additional features to your comments moderation window that allow you to hide author comments, pingbacks and comments that have already been replied to. You can also dismiss comments that you don’t want to see again.

In a nutshell, Advanced Comments Moderation allows you to get to “Inbox zero” on your WordPress comments screen. It’s a huge time saver and perfect for people who receive a large number of comments on their site.

Download from WordPress.org

3. OSE Firewall Security

OSE Firewall Security

WordPress security is very important and should never be taken for granted. There are a lot of security plugins out there and we’ve featured a few of them before.

OSE Firewall Security is part of the Better WordPress Security Project and is designed to protect your website from attacks and hacks. It has a built in Malware and Security Scanner that helps you identify risks and vulnerabilities on your site.

I highly recommend you take a look at this plugin.

Download from WordPress.org

2. Zedity

Zedity is a powerful and extremely easy to use HTML5 design editor.

The plugin is remarkably flexible and allows you to create page designs any way you want. It gives you complete design freedom with drag and drop functionality. This is a truly excellent design tool that will allow you to make each page on your blog completely unique.

Download from WordPress.org

1. Evergreen Post Tweeter

Evergreen Post Tweeter

Yes, I have included a second plugin of my own this month and given it the number one spot. Call me biased but I think it deserves its spot 🙂

I’ve featured the Evergreen Post Tweeter on the monthly plugin lists before, but it’s recently been updated with an awesome new feature that has made it a real game changer for a lot of people.

Evergreen Post Tweeter allows you to schedule and automatically tweet out links to old posts on your blog. This lets you expose your twitter followers to old content they may not have seen before and boosts twitter referrals and blog engagement at the same time.

The plugin now has the feature to schedule your tweets with a Buffer-style day and time selector. This makes scheduling even more functional than it was before: want to promote old posts every day at 5pm, or every Wednesday at 1pm? No problem!

If you haven’t taken a look at this plugin before, now is the perfect time to check it out.

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!

32 Comments

  1. David

    Hi Tom. Thanks for sharing these useful plugins. Zedity looks great, I will definitely try it out.

  2. John Larson

    I recommend this plugin http://wordpress.org/plugins/audio-comments/

  3. Lewis Iyaogeh

    Thanks for the great list there.

    I have seen most and definitely recommend them, although there are a few that are new to me, especially the Zedity plugin and Smart Layers.

    Lewis

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Thanks Lewis! Glad you liked it 🙂

  4. Nitin Srivastava

    Hi Tom,
    Thank you the updating the latest Plugins,
    I was aware of some but many are new.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      My pleasure Nitin!

  5. Grand National 2014

    I have been looking for a plugin like Zedity for ages! You’ve saved me a shed load of work with that pick.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Good to hear!

  6. Liz

    Hi Tom! Thanks so much for these best-of lists, just came across this feature.

    Wondering – is it possible to submit a plugin for review? I’d love to share a new plugin we’ve been working on, we’re looking for WordPress user feedback as we improve it.

    Thanks!

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Yep! Just drop it in the comments box or email us 🙂 Please note that we only feature plugins with <100,000 downloads and that are hosted on WP.org.

  7. Adithya Shetty

    Hi Tom,
    Great list of plugins you shared! I never heard some of them!
    thanks for sharing! 🙂

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Glad you enjoyed Adithya!

  8. Wordpress Form Builder

    Advanced Comments Moderation is exactly what we need. We have huge number of comments that we should moderate and this seems pretty simple and yet effective.
    Thanks for the list!

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Great Ben! Glad you found the plugin useful 🙂

      1. Wordpress Form Builder

        Yeah, thanks again Tom!

  9. Tom Jamieson

    Very cool list here. I have been using tweetily for a while now, so I will definitely check out your new tweeting plugin. Thanks for sharing!

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      No problem Tom!

  10. Abhay

    Cool comment moderation plugin.
    Thanks

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      My pleasure Abhay!

  11. gkocis

    Evergreen Post Tweeter. Is this the new Tweetily ?

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      It’s a fork of Tweetily — I was having issues with certain bugs and I also wanted to tweet by tag and have some other features, so I created this 🙂

  12. Baris Sarac

    I am not sure what the 1st plugin does “tweet out links to old posts”..

    if you mean scheduled tweeting, I would rather use hootsuite than anything else. If you mean schedule an article there is already wordpress functionality like that.

    In my opinion, more than one people should put this list together and should not do advertisement here. I am not going to follow managewp notifications anymore due to biased product based recommendations.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Hi Baris,

      I’m not sure how else to explain it other than the plugin tweets out links to old posts. It…tweets out links to old posts. Sorry I can’t be any more specific — that’s about as specific as it gets!

      There is no advertising on this page (other than the mentions of ManageWP, which one would expect). I happen to have helped develop a couple of free plugins that are featured here, along with eight others, in just one edition of this long-standing series.

      Cheers,

      Tom

      1. Tony Jones

        Tom,

        I always check your list and I think you were upfront in pointing out your own plugin. Maybe another approach would be to do the top then and then add your own as an extra piece of information.

        You might get less stick!

        Tony

        1. Tom Ewer

          Author

          Hey Tony,

          To be honest, I think you’ll always get stick from certain people when mentioning something you’ve done. I like what you’ve suggested though and might do it next time. There’s still a good chance that the Baris’ of this world will comment though!

          Cheers,

          Tom

  13. Keith Davis

    All these are new to me Tom.
    I think most of us stick with the plugins we use and use the same ones when we start a new site.

    Having said that I have recently added a few new plugins so it’s good to know what’s out there.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Glad to help expand your horizons a little Keith 😉

  14. Glenn Tate

    The video on Zedity is for the premium version so I thinks it’s misleading to have it in a post about the top FREE plugins …just sayin.

    1. Baris Sarac

      agree

      1. Tom Ewer

        Author

        You’re both absolutely right. I was fooled by the video’s inclusion on the plugin page. I’ve removed the video now. Thanks for the heads up!

        1. support

          You might want to delete this line as well 🙂

          I’ve embedded a brief video of Zedity in action above.

          1. Tom Ewer

            Author

            Now you’re just being picky 😉

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Over 65,000 WordPress professionals are already using ManageWP

Add as many websites as you want for free, no credit card required. Sign up and start saving time!

Have questions? Get in touch!

Over 65,000 WordPress professionals are already using ManageWP

Add as many websites as you want for free, no credit card required. Sign up and start saving time!



Have questions? Get in touch!

Over 65,000 WordPress professionals are already using ManageWP

Add as many websites as you want for free, no credit card required. Sign up and start saving time!



Have questions? Get in touch!

Over 65,000 WordPress professionals are already using ManageWP

Add as many websites as you want for free, no credit card required. Sign up and start saving time!



Have questions? Get in touch!