WordCamp UK Portsmouth part 2
One of my favourite sessions at WordCamp UK 2011.
WOW Plugins
Michael Kimb Jones was another great speaker (and he’s a great designer). He was shocked at how many plugins we use for each of our sites. Here’s his list of WOW plugins plus a few from me.
- Gravity forms. Use it, love it. Most of the audience put their hands up that they use this.
- Buddy Press. Lots of folks again. Haven’t used this. Forum plugin.
- BBPress. Forum plugin. My developer installed this one for me a while back (but the non-plugin version so not as easy to use as current version apparently).
- Disqus. Again, big response. Relaively spam-resistant comment form system. Premium version has analytics. Not used.
- WordPress SEO by Yoast. Not used. My themes which are based on Thesis and Hybrid have SEO built-in.
- Google XML Sitemaps. Automatically makes SEO-friendly XML sitemap. Not the same as a Site map on your website. Use it, love it.
- WP SuperCache – Kimb uses. Speeds up complex sites.
- WP Total Cache – lots of recommends
- MarketPress – sell things.
- Jigoshop – sell things, mobile-friendly
- WP e-Commerce - sell things
- Jetpack – 8 plugins in one.
- Pages Tree View – shows just top level pages in Dashboard. Click to see children. Useful if your site has over 50 static pages (as many of mine do). Also drag and drop your new page into a section. Will investigate this one.
- CollabPress – project management plugin. Assign tasks to people.
- Contact Form 7 - Easy to use Contact form system. But puts code in all pages. Use this one.
- Easy Table Creator – create tables directly in WP. No need to import from Word or Dreamweaver. Lovely. Will use.
- Custom Post Type UI – create new taxonomies and post types with no php knowledge. Can export code to your own theme.
- EG Attachments – can select documents like PDFs easily. Will use.
- Front End Editor – clients can change their site text without going via the scary dashboard. It looks like they can even edit text widgets! OMG this one is awesome.
- Regenerate thumbnails – will change all thumbnails to a new size (say if you’ve changed themes).
- Widgets on pages – Add new widgets to pages using shortcodes. Clever. May use.
- WordPress Reset - gets rid of all customisations inc posts and pages.
- I suggested Widget Logic, which Kimb also uses. It enables you to load only certain widgets on certain pages without using php – just very simple WP conditional logic.
- Another suggestion from the audience was Fold Page Lists. Will have to check out this one. I think it shows children of a page in the navigation.
- I would have suggested Simple Site Navigation. But it is not needed now we have lovely WP menus.
- Login Lockdown – lock out those who get their password wrong more than 3 times. Should have mentioned this one.