Top 10 Free WordPress Plugins of the Month — July 2013

Plugins of the Month

Every few months I’ll have a particularly troublesome plugins of the month edition.

What do I mean by “troublesome”? Simple — I come across a bunch of plugins that I really want to install on my own WordPress websites. The only problem with this is that if I allowed myself to install every single plugin I liked the look of, I would have a hell of a lot of plugins on my sites.

So I have to exercise restraint for the most part, but that doesn’t mean you have to! The plugins below are both diverse and of real quality; there’s something for everyone. Enjoy!

10. Smooth Scroll Up

Let’s start with something nice and simple. Smooth Scroll Up is a lightweight plugin that places a “Scroll to top” button in the bottom right of the screen on your website:

Smooth Scroll Up

If you’ve been in search of this functionality then look no further!

Download from WordPress.org.

9. Social Gallery Lite

For Facebook fans this plugin is a great alternative to vanilla image lightboxes:

Social Gallery Lite

Each image is presented alongside Facebook comments and likes. It’s a great way of boosting the social exposure of your images (and by extension, your blog).

Download from WordPress.org.

8. Contact Us Page

I’ve seen a few fancy contact pages in my time and this plugin enables you to create something equally flashy with relative ease:

Contact us

As you can see, the plugin includes a Google Map of your location along with contact cards for each of your team members. When a visitor mouses over a contact card that person’s location will pop up on the map.

Download from WordPress.org.

7. Clicky Analytics

I am a huge fan of Clicky Analytics; I use it more often than Google. And that’s why the Clicky Analytics plugin caught my eye — it displays Clicky Analytics data inside your WordPress blog (and more specifically, on your dashboard):

Clicky Analytics

This plugin also places the Clicky tracking code on every page on your site.

Download from WordPress.org.

6. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

In the interests of equal opportunities, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Google Analytics counterpart to the above plugin.

Google Analytics Dashboard

As you can no doubt tell, these two plugins were developed by the same team. The functionality is comparable to the Clicky Analytics plugin.

Download from WordPress.org.

5. Feedweb

One of the best things about blogging is that you can get direct feedback from your visitors. If you ask the right questions (in the right way), they will tell you what you need to know in order to create better content for them in the future.

And that’s where Feedweb comes in. Check out this video to see how it can revolutionize your own content strategy:

The concept is pretty simple: you ask people key questions relating to your content and they give you the answers which empower you to create more (or less) of the same. A great tool for any blogger.

Download from WordPress.org.

4. Comm100 Live Chat

There are quite a few live chat plugins available for WordPress but this plugin is still well worth consideration. Comm100 Live Chat is based upon the Comm100 service, which was rated as top enterprise chat software by Top Ten Reviews.

It is a premium service (starting at $21 per operator per month) but you get a 15-day free trial to see if it is what you are looking for.

Download from WordPress.org.

3. BruteProtect

WordPress security is still (and will remain to be) a hot topic, hence the popularity of many security plugins. However, that doesn’t take away from the quality offering that is BruteProtect — a rather unique spambot firewall.

BruteProtect

BruteProtect utilizes the entire depth of its user base to identify suspicious IP addresses (i.e. those who unsuccessfully attempt to log into WordPress sites) and block them from accessing your site. It’s a simple concept, but perfect for those concerned about spambot attacks. I’ve already installed it on my blog.

Download from WordPress.org.

2. jonradio Multiple Themes

I’ve been looking for a plugin like this for a long while — one that incorporates functionality that I think should come as standard in the WordPress core.

The concept is simple — jonradio Multiple Themes enables you to install and use multiple themes on one website. One example of how you could use this is if you have a sales page that you want to have a particular look and feel compared to the design for the rest of your site. However, there are a huge number of applications, including:

Download from WordPress.org.

1. All In One WP Security and Firewall

Finally, we have yet another security plugin. But it’s a good’un — you can’t argue a 4.9 out of 5 average star rating. Check out this video to get an overview of the feature set:

It’s a pretty slick offering; one that all security-conscious WordPress users should consider.

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!

27 Comments

  1. haider

    Thank you for this very helpful list,I totally agree with you

  2. Wajid Khan

    Damian Baker 😀

  3. Madiha Durrani

    really nice post keep it up thanks for sharing and plz share some blog themes for WP

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Thanks Madiha! We post the top plugins and themes here each month 🙂

  4. Mike

    Awesome, I somehow missed that Social Gallery Lite was on this list.

    There’s a video on vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/75810820 which shows the benefits (some features are PRO only though)

    Cheers

    http://www.socialgalleryplugin.com/

  5. Jordan Sali

    Nice plugins. Really interested with clicky analytics. Thanks a lot. Btw, do you have free cool events calendar plugin for wordpress 3.6? I need it. Pls?

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Not sure what you mean by “Do you have” the plugin Jordan. If it’s free, why can’t you get it yourself?

  6. Daniel Powney

    Great plugins. Another interesting analytics plugin is Hotspots User Tracker. It tracks what users are doing including heat maps overlayed on your website and shows the sequence of user activity including mouse clicks, ajax calls, page loads, form submits and custom events.

    It’s free, no registration required, all in the WordPress admin and all data is stored locally on your WordPress database. It also caters for responsive web design and touch screen devices.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Sounds cool, thanks for the suggestion Daniel!

  7. Wajid Khan

    You are providing an excellent collection of WP Plugins include free-of-cost and premium plugin. This list important for new WordPress site.

    1. Damian Baker

      Hi Wajid,
      I couldn’t agree more!!!
      Awesome list Tom, and I have to try that Smooth Scroll Up plugin, which looks sensational.

      Cheers,
      Damian Baker
      CSS JavaScript Toolbox

      1. Tom Ewer

        Author

        Thanks guys!

  8. iGyan

    ​​
    I really enjoyed your presentation. will definitely try some things I want to try out on our stuff.​

  9. Ann

    Thank you for this very helpful list. I’ve installed Smooth Scroll Up and it’s an elegant little plugin, which does just what it says. It’s easily customizable both in its inbuilt editor options and via the CSS coding. Works a treat!

  10. Paul

    Thanks alot! Now I’m having the same problem as you. I can’t decide which plugins to remove to make some room!

  11. Anthony

    thanks for the list, was looking for something like the “social gallary lite” plugin.

  12. Mathew Porter

    I will have to take a look at Brute Protect and All In One WP Security and Firewall, they could be very useful solutions.

  13. Joe

    Some great plugins on this list, especially the scroll up one, will install that now.

    Thanks.

  14. Eric

    Nice list…Feedweb and Clicky Analytics are great toys for the site.

  15. Francesco

    Great plugins. Especially like the scrolling one and the two security ones. Will install them tomorrow.

  16. Amin

    Thank you for including the security plugin in this list 🙂

    @Glenn, I wouldn’t mind learning a little more about what caused the database table prefix renaming to fail on your site. Can you please post the issue on the forum?

    Thanks

    1. Muhammad Wajid

      nice plugins really

  17. Wordpress Expert

    Great to know “All In One WP Security and Firewall”, it ‘s really useful. I think it ‘s better than “WP Security”. Thanks Tom Ewer.

  18. Samuel

    I guess there is plugin for the “scroll up” function of a blog!

    I always thought you had to code that. But I guess not!

    Interesting set of plugins, including a few about analyzing your site’s performance traffic-wise.

    Samuel from Internet Dreams

  19. Musilda

    Google Analytics Dashboard is great tip, thank you.

  20. Glenn

    All In One WP Security and Firewall took about 3 minutes to crash my site. Renamed the database table prefix but didn’t change the wp-config file to match. htaccess rules might have stopped that from happening. I think this plugin is not for the novice user and if you’re not a novice then you can achieve most of it manually.

    1. Niccolo

      @Glenn,
      I totally disagree with you…..I’ve used at least 10 security plugins on my sites over the past few years and this new one (All In One WP Security and Firewall) is the most user-friendly and novice-friendly I’ve used so far!

      Just putting in my 2 pence worth 🙂

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