Now that your website is live, you may be on the market for some added enhancements to ensure your site’s pages load quickly, has the best SEO optimization and is well equipped with the most up to date features and functionality. Good web design is about accommodating all the expectations of your visitors and ensuring a positive site experience. We scoured the internet, testing dozens of plugins and came up with our favourites. Here now are our “top 5” picks:
W3 Total Cache
If you’re noticing pages on your website take an unusually long time to load (see also speed test tool), and you’ve tried to address these issues by lowering the resolution of your website’s images or even re-installing your WordPress theme altogether, the solution may exist in this wonderful plugin by Fredrick Townes. This essential Web design tool allows you to perform a number of caching settings, without understanding a stitch of HTML code. Once installed and correctly configured, the plugin will dramatically improve your website’s load speed by caching browsing data and providing a smooth integration from your host’s source files.
Social Media Widget
Struggling to find a simple social media widget that is fully customizable and will come equipped with some fun animated features? Your search is over with this easy-to-use plugin by Blink Web Effects. The easy to install widget can be added to your sidebar or footer, and provides a whole host of pre-installed logos by virtually every social media site on the planet.
P3 Plugin Performance Profiler
Understanding how your website theme interacts with the thousands of available WordPress plugins will help you decide how to choose which to install and which to avoid. P3 Plugin Performance Profiler, for WordPress will conduct an audit of all installed plugins on your website and measure their impact on performance and load times. In certain cases, it may even help you identify poorly configured plugins.
Next Gen Gallery
Arguably one of the most popular image gallery plugins available for WordPress. Next Gen Gallery, by Photocrati Media, has yielded over 6-million downloads and counting. This is certainly one of those ‘must have’ plugins for any web design that requires a lot of image management. Import and manage all of your site’s images, customize resolution and size settings for both slide shows and thumbnail views.
SEO Ultimate
This powerful plugin will dramatically increase your website’s chances for top Google rankings. Customize and edit all essential elements of your website, such as meta tags/titles, slugs, media tags and much, much more. Easily create rich snippets and meta descriptions. A great plugin for novice web developers who need SEO optimization.