18 WordPress Plugins to add Professionalism to your Blog

Categories → Popular,Wordpress,Wordpress Plugins

Is it time to take your WordPress Blog to the next level? Has the time come to take your blog up to the level of professionalism that all the top blogs use?
Here are some easy to use but powerful WordPress plugins that will help you on your way, they range from Newsletters, RSS, Legalities, creating Directories, User Login… I hope they help.

Calendar Plugin for WordPress

Support: Calendar Support Page.
Description: A simple but effective Calendar plugin for WordPress that allows you to manage your events and appointments and display them to the world on your website.
Features: Monthly view of events ; Mouse-over details for each event ; Events can have a timestamp (optional) ; Events can display their author (optional) ; Events can span more than one day ; Multiple events per day possible ; Events can repeat on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis ; Repeats can occur indefinitely or a limited number of times ; Easy to use events manager in admin dashboard ; Sidebar function/Widget to show todays events ; Sidebar function/Widget to show upcoming events ; Comprehensive options panel for admin ; Modifiable CSS using the options panel ; Optional drop down boxes to quickly change month and year ; User groups other than admin can be permitted to manage events ; Events can be placed into categories ; Categories system can be switched on or off ; Pop up javascript calendars help the choosing of dates ; Events can be links pointing to a location of your choice.

Business Directory Plugin for WordPress

Support: Business Directory Plugin Support.
Description: Business Directory for WordPress is an easy way to host a free directory page for your readers, affiliates, advertisers, community or club members. Invite them to submit a simple advertisement listing for themselves on your blog.

Disclosure Policy Plugin for WordPress

Description: When initially conceived, this plugin was intended to aid bloggers with diverse business relationships to include some form of financial disclosure at the bottom of posts, and in their RSS feeds. But, since that initial conception, it has evolved into an application that has a multitude of uses in a business context, and it might even prove useful for more traditional personal bloggers who might occasionally mention their employer or want a way to automatically link through to related content.

Google Maps in Posts Plugin for WordPress

Description: Google Maps in Posts plugin for WordPress gives possibility to use Google Maps Services in your blog. That could be useful for posts in WP, describing certain locations or events, to indicate them immediately in the WP post with a map. The Google Maps Plugin gives you a simple and easy Worpress administration back end to handle multiple locations and your own location would be defined only once for all the maps of your WP blog.

WP List Files Plugin for WordPress

Description: WP List Files is a WordPress plugin that walks trough a given directory (and its subdirectories if so desired), generates a nested list form it and includes it in a page or a post. It includes a JavaScript to allow collapsing and expanding of directories. If no JavaScript support is available, it gracefully falls back to fully expanded.

List Pages Plus Plugin for WordPress

Description: Alter the output of the wp_list_pages() function’s HTML. Add in your own classes, insert text into link title, add additional tags surrounding title. Parents and Children are set seperately for greater flexibility.
Set default arguments in Settings Panel using `wp_list_pages_plus();` replacement function. Instead of adding commonly used arguments to your `wp_list_pages();` function, you can set these as defaults and update them easily without altering templates. The `wp_list_pages_plus();` function mirrors the `wp_list_pages();` function exactly and additional arguments may be added directly within the function call, direct arguments will also override default arguments for multiple location use and greater flexibility. Just edit your `sidebar.php` template (or wherever your Page menu list is output) by changing `wp_list_pages(’args’);` to `wp_list_pages_plus().

Private WP Plugin for WordPress

Description: WordPress plugin that makes your blog accessible only to logged in users.
Have a blog that you want to share only with people you know? Or do you just want to force people to log in so you can track what they’re reading? Then Private WP is for you. No more editing your template files, just download this plugin and activate it.

WP-reCAPTCHA Plugin for WordPress

Description: reCAPTCHA is an anti-spam method originating from Carnegie Mellon University which uses CAPTCHAs in a genius way. Instead of randomly generating useless characters which users grow tired of continuosly typing in, risking the possibility that spammers will eventually write sophisticated spam bots which use OCR libraries to read the characters, reCAPTCHA uses a different approach. They effectively kill two birds with one stone.

AJAX Login Plugin for WordPress

Description: AJAX Login means that the login process is executed without reloading the entire page. The user is alerted through messageboxes on errors, and the page is only reloaded when login succeeds. The same goes for registration and lost password retrieval! This plugin adds a nice templated box on your WordPress, either with a template tag or as a sidebar widget. In the default template the box contains functionality for logging in, registering as well as retrieving new passwords. If already logged in a logout link is displayed.

Draft Notifier Plugin for WordPress

Description: This plugin will send an email notification to the blog’s administrator when a draft is written or edited by a user that cannot publish posts (these users are called “Contributors“). You may find such notification useful since these posts must be subsequently approved (published) by a user who can publish other people’s posts.

Easy 125×125 Ad Management Plugin for WordPress

Description: If you’ve given up the low-paying and slightly obtrusive ad networks used by many new bloggers, in favor of selling ads directly, you may have been frustrated with the excessive time involved managing your ads. Not only do you have to find advertisers to sponsor your blog, you have to manually edit your template to put the ad in, and then head over to your favorite calendar app to set an alert to remind you when to take the ad down.

WP Newsletter Plugin for WordPress

Description: This simple WordPress mailing list management widget (plugin) sends emails with “Subscribe” and “Unsubscribe” subject for newsletter opt-in and double opt-in email list management. New mailing list subscriptions are written in WordPress sidebar and new subscribers details are gathered into your bulk email software or mailing list management software.
The email list widget works with common bulk emailers and with SendBlaster’s newsletter software subscription management with custom field integration, for email merge purposes.

Comment-License Plugin for WordPress

Description: Comment License shows a license with terms of your choosing in your comments form. You can edit the terms of your license in the options page.

WP User Manager Plugin for WordPress

Description: This Plugin aims at improving the WordPress User Management so that WordPress can be used beyond blog and something like a CMS too. It allows to add more meta data (extra Fields) to users. Also these extra meta fields or already existing meta data such as last name, first name , yahoo, aim, jabber and description user meta data to be part of the user registration form.

Beautiful Textlinks Plugin for WordPress

Description: If you ever wanted to create beautiful textlinks for your wordpress to deliver your readers important websites right below your published post – we have a great solution for you!

Quick Shop Plugin for WordPress

Description: QuickShop supports any WordPress that has the Sidebar Widgets installed, really. It adds a SideBar widget that shows the user what they currently have in the cart and allows them to remove the items, not to mention a TinyMCE button to easily allow you to add products to your posts/pages.
Features: A TinyMCE button ; Full range of formatting for widget layout in Admin -> Options -> Quickshop ; Two widgets – one is Paypal, the other is set for your custom solution ; Now has both Paypal Subscription and Donation tags ; Ability to create different product options in a drop-down…

Add to Any Subscribe Button for WordPressfor WordPress

Description: Lets readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader, such as Google Reader, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, Pageflakes, and all the rest. The button comes with Add to Any’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing history.

©Feed Plugin for WordPress

Description: Extends the feed! A report of copyright, a digital fingerprint and the IP of the feed reader can be added. In addition, some search engines are scanned for the digital fingerprint in order to find possible content theft. The feed can be also be supplemented with comments and topic-relevant contributions. The complete RSS feed can be delivered even if the <--more--> tag is used in WP 2.1+, smaller as 2.5. It is possible to view related post using the plugin “Simple Tagging” or “Simple Tags”.

About the Author: Paul Andrew (830 Articles)

Paul Andrew is the editor and founder of Speckyboy Design Magazine. You can follow Speckyboy on Twitter, on Facebook, on Digg or you can subscribe via RSS.

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