Useful WordPress Plugins You Probably Didn’t Know About

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WordPress is one of the most popular, efficient ways to develop a fully-functional, beautiful website. WordPress add-on products and services are also highly decentralized. Developers are constantly producing plugins, or stand-alone software that can be easily incorporated into a WordPress website and provide it with a specific functionality. Adding new plugins to your WordPress website can significantly increase your site’s value to visitors and help you market your brand. Below are 12 new and exciting WordPress plugins you didn’t know about.

Image Widget Plus

Image Widget Plus (1) is a new plugin that provides you with further control over how your images display within a widget. Its features include creating slideshows, displaying a random photo, and using a lightbox to focus the screen on a single photo while concurrently dimming out the background around it. In addition to photos, Image Widget Plus can also display logos, custom ads, and more.

Stop Signup Spam

Stop Signup Spam (2) is an awesome new plugin that will prevent users with email addresses or IP addresses that have been reported as spam from signing up for your website. Stop Signup Spam integrates with the core WordPress registration form and works with any type of web application. Protect your website from spammers with this simple and easy to use plugin.

Better Notifications

The Better Notifications Plugin (3) allows you to easily send automated emails to your users to notify them of updates on your WordPress site. The plugin can send emails to individual users or groups and can be customized to include such features as a logo or an unsubscribe button. It is also useful for sending an automated email after a user signs up, to inform him or her of a successful account creation and to provide instructions on how to login upon future site visits.

Divi 3.0

Divi 3.0 (4) is a much-touted new version of the popular Divi plugin. It allows you to have an exacting level of control over the design and structure of the front-end of your website. It is built on React, a cutting-edge JavaScript library developed by Facebook. Divi 3.0 improves on its previous version with a more stunning visual interface that smoothly incorporates front-end changes in real time. Thanks to the magic of React, you can directly type in changes to a component and watch it update instantly.

Theme Test Drive

Do you want to freshen up your WordPress design but want to be able to test themes before committing to them? The Theme Test Drive (5) plugin allows you to test drive new themes when you are logged in as your site’s administrator. Your users will still see your original theme when they visit your site. With this plugin, you don’t have to worry about interrupting your users‘ experiences of your site until you are completely ready to switch over to a new theme.

Wiremo

Reviews are a critical aspect of web applications that promote a product or service, as they help build trust in the brand. Wiremo (6) is a new WordPress plugin that sets up beautiful review forms on your application. Its styling is flexible and easily customizable. It uses a star rating system and sends you a notification when a user has submitted a new review.

RapID Secure Login

RapID Secure Login is an authentication plugin that allows iOS and Android app users to access your site via desktop browsers without typing in their passwords. They can simply scan a QR-code on the app to login to your website. RapID’s credentialing service provides high security authentication with 2048-bit cryptographic keys. Install the RapID Secure Login plugin to allow users to access your site with greater convenience without sacrificing security.

Sections Slider

The Sections Slider (8) plugin will help you divide long blog posts into shorter sections and display them in attractive, interactive slides. If your blog posts tend to be very lengthy, this plugin will help you maintain audience engagement and improve your users‘ reading experiences. You won’t have to cut down the quality of your posts by shortening them too much. You can just install this slider and watch it effortlessly transform your long posts into beautiful, sliding sections.

Show Plugin Menu Items on Activation

The new plugin Show Plugin Menu Items on Activation (9) will improve your experience as a site administrator by highlighting the menu items that have been added to your sidebar each time you install a new plugin. It can get very confusing to install a number of new plugins and then try to figure out how to change their settings. Save yourself time, effort and frustration by installing this plugin that will point the way to your new settings menus.

Weglot

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, translation plugins are essential in order to gain your site traffic from all over the planet. A new plugin called Weglot (10) is a translation API that effortlessly integrates into your website and translates it into multiple languages. You barely need to do more than add a few lines of code to make your site accessible to billions more people.  You can review and edit your translated website content on your Weglot dashboard. Weglot supports more than 60 languages and is built to scale.

Maintainn

The free Maintainn plugin can help you keep your WordPress site updated and secure. It renders a Site Info component that provides a top-level view of your entire WordPress site. You can also manage your plugins through Maintainn and add notes about specific plugins. The Maintainn Site Scanner ensures that your site’s WordPress Core files have not been altered in any way from the current WordPress files available on the WordPress.org repository.

VIP

Finally, there are some interesting plugins available to distinguish your users. For example, the new VIP (12) plugin lets you assign a special icon to users who are particularly active on your site. The icon can be displayed before or after a username on site membership lists. It can be a fun way to reward users for exceptional site engagement and encourage other users to interact with your site more.

All of these plugins can bring your WordPress website to life and improve its security, design, organization, functionality and user interface. Exploring WordPress plugins is a fantastic way to unlock your site’s potential, promote your brand and build a stronger following.

About the author

Ian Carnaghan

I am a software developer and online educator who likes to keep up with all the latest in technology. I also manage cloud infrastructure, continuous monitoring, DevOps processes, security, and continuous integration and deployment.

About Author

Ian Carnaghan

I am a software developer and online educator who likes to keep up with all the latest in technology. I also manage cloud infrastructure, continuous monitoring, DevOps processes, security, and continuous integration and deployment.

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