I am always looking for new WordPress plugins to make my life easier. Over the years I have tested out quite a few and slowly built a list of the ones that I use on every website I create. Recently, I wrote a guest post for the Diary of a Mad Freelancer about how to take control of your blog by using 5 Must Have WordPress Plugins. I want to talk with you a little about the three that didn’t make the list but are still extremely useful.
The main reason that these three plugins were left off the list is because I could not call them must haves. They have more specific uses or a few issues associated with them but if you look around on my site you will notice that I use everyone of them. Or in the case of the editor I guess you wont notice but trust me, its there.
- Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress - This is a fantastic substitute for the standard WordPress text editor. It gives you a lot more features that help you to layout your posts and and style it like you would in Microsoft Word. The only downside is that in some rare cases it will conflict with other plugins. I was building a site for my brother with a picture carousel plugin but the carousel would not work until I removed the FCKEditor. I have no problems on my website however.
- Exclude Pages for Navigation – This is very helpful if you use static pages on your website like I do. When you add a static page to your site it is automatically put into the navigation bar. I wanted to put a hidden explanation page for the people that sign up for my free report but it kept going into my navigation bar. Now with this plugin I can just click a button and no one will know that page is there unless I provide them the link to it. (Alright hackers can probably find it but they can get into anything if they try hard enough so I am not counting them)
- WPTouch - a Very simple hands off plugin that adds some style to your site. A lot of the most poplar sites on the internet have two templates for their site. One is for people that are viewing it on a standard desktop computer and the other is for people that are viewing it on a mobile device like a phone, Ipod touch, Ipad Etc. The mobile theme is laid out so that it is easier to read on a small screen. This plugin will give you a mobile version of your website that people can choose to view on their techie toys and it looks just like the big boys.
Now, if you have read my guest post and this post, you know every plugin that I am currently using for my site. If I come up with any more in the future then I will be sure to let ya’ll know.
If you have any questions about plugins or you disagree with my choices, let me have it in the comments.
