must have wordpress plugins
hey y'all welcome to another wordpresswednesday. my name is kori ashton. we're going to do it. i'm going toupdate- (i know it's been two years since i'vedone my list of favorite plug-ins) i'm going to give you 10 (maybe a fewmore here and there) of my favorite wordpress plugins for 2016. here we go. i've got to start off-(you know this one is it) everybody knows about yoast. it's my favorite (still to this day) seoplugin. if you're not using that please look atthis one.
be sure that you're using thisspecifically for search engine optimization. there's all sorts of tutorials on how touse this plugin. we've done a whole series here on ouryoutube channel as well on how to use yoast for your wordpress website. check that one out. next on my list (of course) is gravityforms. this is a premium form builder program. if you want a contact form on your website,this is a really great program to use. it does of heck of a lot more though thanjust contact forms.
we have another whole series i've done onthis plugin. i'll put all these links in the descriptionbox below so you can check these out and really, truly understand the valuethat you get with paying for a premium pluginlike gravity forms. if you needed a free option though, contact form 7 is probably stillmy favorite free form building plugin. gravity forms though by far outways whatthe capabilities are inside of it and just is all around a fantastic form builderprogram. alright, if you're looking to do a galleryon your website (a photo gallery)
foo gallery has really surpassed a lot ofthe other options on the market right now. i think it's outstanding. you can see thereviews here. a lot of people are feeling the same thingabout it. super easy to use, highly flexible, fully responsive (of course)and has a really slick lightbox that opens these images up. really super nice option here, socheckout foo gallery. again, all these links are going to be inthe description box below.
if by chance though you're interested in having kind of a "hands off" scenariowhen it comes to adding photos to your website and you're really active on the social network called, instagram- and your taking a lot of pictures from yourphone and you're uploading things and you would like (hopefully) thoseimages to appear on your website as well. good for search engine optimizationbecause that's fresh content. easy for you because it's just straightfrom your phone and you don't
necessarily have to log in to yourwebsite- you can use a plugin called,the instagram feed. it's really spectacular. shows you some cool stuff of how yourinstagram feed could look on your website with really cool different displays. again, fully responsive-really nice. theycan click to load more on a page. they can click on an image and pop overto your instagram account (and of course you'd be gaining followerson your instagram account if you're using this pretty awesome plugin.) so, checkthat one out.
all right, this is like #4 but i've already given youtoo many so i'm loosing track. let's just keep going. google places reviews- if you'reutilizing google+ for any of your reviews, be sureto not send people away to read your reviews. have your reviews listed on your websitedirectly. so, if you watch this video it'll walk youthrough (very quickly) what it looks like to have these reviews appear on yourwebsite. it's a widgetized thing that you just dragthe widget over, put it in the sidebar or
the footer area that you'd like it toappear in. you have couple of different options onthe theme layout, the design of the different layouts of how your reviews can appear in your website. for free-it's really spectacular. there's a pro version of it but the freeversion is pretty spectacular as well. check that out if you're interested inbringing over and "bragging" or letting your customers (rather) bragabout your awesome services
on your website. let's talk about backing up your website.it's super important that you always have a backup in place (especially before youdo any updates.) so, you want to have an option in yourwebsite that is consistently backing up your website and giving you the option torestore it in case anything goes "wonkadoo" and you're able to click, "restore mywebsite- fix it please! i don't want it to be broken or have anydown time." if you're using updraftplus-this is a free plugin.
it does have a paid version but the freeversion is pretty spectacular as well. it allows you to set in place an automaticbackup. the restoration process in this particularplugin is totally free. one click to restore it back. all right, let's talk about something youmight not know about. i've mentioned mailmunch before. this is the program that we use onwebtegrity's website to gather subscribers. we got the idea from a guy, wpdevsolutionshere in town (wayne.) we'll give a shout out to him.
if you're interested in grabbing moreleads though and getting people to 'subscribe' to your blog, this is areally non intrusive-really great way of having people sign up to your website. i'm telling you right now, our web listhas just grown out of nowhere from us installing this. it's a free installation,it's a free program (up to a certain point) and then youhave paid options. if free is in your budget (and it shouldbe) check this out to grow your email list. it's pretty spectacular. let's talk about blogging.
if you got a featured image that you'reusing and you're frustrated that it always appears kind of in a "wonky" way insidethe post and you just don't want it to always appear there (you want to be able to kind ofdictate where it ends up in the post,) this particular plugin solves thatproblem. it allows you to have a secondary field,that when you choose to add a featured image it will appearin your thumbnail view. if you don't want it to appear largeinside the post, this will give you the option to hide thatfeatured image.
it's a really cool, little tricky workaround but sometimes you want to be able to hidesome and then reveal some. this is a cool one. then, the last one i want to walk youthrough is, what the file. this isn't the last one i have one moreafter this. what the file- this one is for all younerds who want to go crazy deep into development. y'all want to figure out what php file orwhat exact file is manipulating the area on the website that you want to change oraffect.
if you're a nerd coder that wants to goa little bit more advanced inside of wordpress, checkout what the file and see what it cando when you install it into your dashboard. let's look at responsive menus. if you want an option to have thehamburger icon, (i'll show you one quick example here ofa hamburger icon) if you want to have a menu that's fullyresponsive so it looks like this on a cell phone, (when you click on it,slides out really nice) this is a plugin that is free for you touse. it does have a pro version but the freeversion is pretty spectacular.
it gives you a lot of opportunities tochange the color- to change the look and the feel (thestyling of the menu.) you can tell it to appear only in cellphone mode and kind of give it that breaking point. this is a really cool feature. if maybe your theme options are a littleoff or maybe the responsive menu on the theme youjust don't like and you want some more control over it,this would be a really great plugin to use.
all right. this is my last one i wantedto tell you about. easy wp smtp- this is specifically for sending emails through your website. a lot of times people complain that whenthey're using a form builder, (like contact form 7 or even gravity forms) people are not receiving the autoresponders. or, perhaps even you as the business owner not getting thoseleads and you don't know what's happening and the form is working correctly andsometimes you get a lead and sometimes
you don't. that can actually be an issuewith your mail server. using a plugin like this allows you tokind of adjust your settings to redirect your mails. you can see here it sends all outgoingmail through a specific smtp account that you can allocate. that sounds a little bit more advancedbut walk through the instructions on this. it's actually very easy to follow and itmight fix the problem of you missing leads or your customers missing thatcommunication with you. that was quick and i think i gave you like12 cool plugins!
check them out. if you have time, give them a shout out. let them know thatyou found out about them over at the webtegrity youtube channel. be sure to find us over on twitter too. if you're interested in any more tutorialslike this or you have a question about one of these plugins, check with the pluginauthor first. see if they have some instructions in the installation panel. see if they have some faq's or supportarea that you can even go to to get some questions answered there.
if you absolutely can't find help, pleasebe sure to put that in the comment box below and we'll do our best to try to answersome of your questions. always best practices (let me say this)when you're looking at youtube videos, be sure to defer to the fact of what sortof reviews every plugin that we're talking about (ortheme for that matter- anybody making a youtube video) be sure that you look at the ratingsbecause this video could be a little out of date (depending upon when you'rewatching it.)
be sure to look at what version of wordpress it iscompatible with- be sure that you're running that. it'sgoing to say what it's required to have. okay? you always want to be sure that you'rerunning (hopefully) no more than 12 plugins. that's not a rule, that's my personalopinion. you could struggle with starting to see awebsite slow down or potentially have some conflicts in codeas you add on all of these plugins. be sure you're running a lean, fastloading, easy to navigate wordpress website.
i hope it's super successful for you. if you have any questions though, this iswordpress wednesday. every wednesday this is what i'm doing.i'm hanging out here on youtube with you. be sure to subscribe and i'll see you nextwordpress wednesday. bye, y'all!
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