We’re about to throw a farewell for 2016 and proceed to 2017. This year has been pretty exciting for WordPress community as we’ve seen major plugin releases, theme additions, updates, and wordpress.org has started to test out its new plugin directory, which looks really cool.
A couple of days ago we’ve witnessed one of the major updates of the year, and that’s “Vaughan”, the new 4.7 version of WordPress.It’s the latest and final update of the year which comes with a brand-new default theme, pretty impressive new features in customizer, editor, and some enhanced backend tweaks.
We’ll step into the new year with the best WordPress version yet, so the only thing that is left to do, is to equip it with the right set of tools. In this post I’m going to share with you a collection of great WordPress plugins that will power up your website and prepare it for all the ups and downs that 2017 may as well bring.
WordPress Google Analytics
The WordPress Google Analytics plugin comes with the most advanced reporting functionality, and allows you to get custom reports on any metric and dimension that are crucial for you. It provides comprehensive reports on your website’s audience, performance, traffic sources, user geolocation, and also enables you to track targeted activities with its goal management functionality. You can track custom dimensions for logged in users,authors, post types and categories, and exclude unnecessary data from the reports by filtering out specific IP addresses, countries, regions, users and roles. If you want to see how’s your website doing on certain metrics compared to a specific period, it’s compare data functionality will be a great solution to it. The reports are responsive, and are possible to export to CSV and PDF formats.
MailChimp WD
With MailChimp WD plugin you can totally rewire your marketing strategy. It’s an easy to use plugin with drag and drop interface, which allows you to create highly converting opt-in forms and turn your visitors into subscribers. The forms are fully customizable and come with 13 built-in form themes and four different display options, each one with its own customization options, animation effects,custom messages, categories, frequency, etc. MailChimp WD allows you to create smart forms, which will opt-in or hide based on the conditions you specify. It’s easy to set up and has a straightforward submissions section, which gives you insight on the number of entries, conversion rate and number of views for each form.
JetPack
JetPack does a lot of stuff and does it perfectly. It’s an all-in-one tool that helps you easily manage your website with its centralized dashboard. It comes with tools for traffic growth, security monitoring, speed and image optimization, and ultimately results in better performance of your website. It helps you to effectively protect your site against hackings and unauthorized logins, and keeps your plugins up to date along the way. Apart from the mentioned tools, Jetpack comes with some other great features for custom CSS, contact forms, notifications and subscriptions.
WordPress Google Maps
Google Maps WD is another powerful and user-friendly plugin with intuitive interface and some outstanding customization options. You can easily create responsive Google maps with live preview , and see the changes you apply to them in real time. The plugin supports all the essential Google map styles, layers, shapes, and overlays, and comes with unique map themes and skins.You can allow your site visitors to find loactions near them, and get direction suggestions to various destinations. It features a built-in icon maker for custom marker icons, and allows you to fully customize the maps according to your needs.
Duplicate Post
With over a million of downloads, this plugin provides the simplest and easiest way to clone post and pages on your website. With just a single click you can immediately duplicate posts, create new drafts,copy to a new draft the content on your website. After you make the necessary changes, you just hit the “publish” button and you’re done. You can restrict the plugin to certain post types, and allow only specific users and roles to duplicate posts or pages on your site.
Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps will make it easier for search engines to index your site, which will result in other benefits as well. It generates special XML sitemap for your website and helps the crawlers to better see its structure and retrieve it more efficiently. Every time you create a new content or add a new post, it notifies all major search engines about it. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages and custom URLs. It works out of the box and will not slow your site down.
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache takes your site’s performance to a whole new level by integrated caching. It supports Content delivery network (CDN), which reduces download time, increases site performance and conversation rates, and ultimately results in a better user experience. Also, it positively affects your search engine rankings, especially for mobile-friendly sites. The plugin improves your web server and helps it effectively sustain high traffic periods.
Akismet
Akismet is a perfect solution for getting rid of the spam in the comments section of your site. It effectively monitors your site against spammy content and filters it out right away. The plugin provides a status history for each comment in the admin area, where you can see which comments has been caught as spam, and manually mark them as not “spammy” if necessary. You can also see the number of approved comments for each user.
Redirection
Redirection plugin will help you manage your site’s redirections and keep the track of 404 errors. It automatically ads a 301 redirection when a post’s URL changes, and comes with custom pass-through redirections, which allow you to pass URLs to another page or website. The plugin features various redirection methods and provides statistics for the occurred redirections.
All In One Security and Firewall
All in One Security Firewall is a comprehensive and user-friendly plugin which will add extra level of security to your website. It performs a complete security monitoring, and checks your site against vulnerabilities, malware and force login attacks. The plugin comes with powerful tools that help you monitor all user accounts and attempted logins, create strong passwords , schedule automatic backups, strengthen your file security system, and blacklist users based on IP addresses. It features a powerful firewall functionality, which will stop malicious scripts before they even heat your site’s code.
Here you have them! A collection of great WordPress plugins that will definitely come in handy in 2017. They come with a cutting edge functionality, timely support and feature millions of downloads and positive reviews.
If you’ve used any of them on your own website or WordPress blog, and have something to share with us, feel free to do it in the comments section below.
0 comments:
Post a Comment