One of the primary reasons the WebDesign and Blog industries have become so dependant upon WordPress is due to the fact that it is an open source Content Management System (CMS). The availability of endless amounts of plugins is unparalleled. No matter how obscure your business’s needs may be, there is most likely a WordPress plugin that will allow your site to meet it. Fyresite.com has now compiled the list of 2011’s 11 Best Plugins For WordPress. Each of these WordPress plugins Fyresite.com uses regularly to assure our clients websites meet the highest standards of aesthetics & functionality, and most importantly show our clients the best ROI on their web-presence.
The 11 Best WordPress Plugins to Use in 2011
1) W3 Total Cache – This an essential WordPress plugin for at least two reasons. First and foremost, it allows your pages to load much faster. Also, because this plugin stores static versions of your entire website, this plugin utilizes significantly less processing on behalf of your CPU compared to solely employing WordPress for your site.
2) HeadSpace – HeadSpace provides you with the features that streamline your SEO process from top to bottom. This magnificent addition to WordPress gives you the tools you need to drive traffic to your site and makes it easy and quick. Minimizing the amount of time a company spends on SEO efforts can drastically decrease overhead, and allow resources to be allocated to more important operations. This plugin can single handedly allow companies to put their focus on more important things, while still meeting your SEO needs.
3) Gravity Forms – This plugin has revolutionized a companies ability to utilize WordPress to produce forms. Additionally, you aren’t held back by other limitations commonly found in other plugins or methods of creating forms as it allows, image and other media uploads, conditional logic, and to create posts. This plugin has set the new standard for creating forms through WordPress.
4) MaxBlog Press Affiliate Ninja – This WordPress plugin can dramatically cut down the amount of time a company needs to allocate toward promoting affiliate products, convert keywords, track clicks, and other essential time consuming processes. Companies no longer need to fumble around with affiliate links because they are all stored in the WordPress dashboard and your linking is automatically done for you.
5) WP-DBManager – This plugin has several useful functions it performs including the ability to email your site’s entire WordPress database to you on a daily basis. Companies no longer need make efforts to log and track their database, and still have the information organized and accessible at an arms length.
6) Thank Me Later – This plugin is a company’s best friend. It allows your company to automatically contact each and every user (first-time visitors only) via email with promotions or information. Companies can now connect with users with ease and for free, cutting out any need to pay for email services.
7) SEO Smart Links – This plugin automatically interlinks keywords to your other articles for you. Linking from within an article to other articles is a extremely effective and easy way to increase your site’s rankings; also it allows readers to locate other articles you have posted on similar or related subjects.
8 ) Digg Digg – This WordPress plugin is an extremely easy way to encourage viral and social marketing with no costs involved. This plugin provides floating social icons right next to each post. With implementation of these floating icons it encourages and simplifies the process for users to share and promote your content. This is the cheapest and most effective way to encourage these marketing techniques and spread the word about your company.
9) Revision Control – Because of the way the revisions feature of WordPress functions often times your company site’s database will become bloated and due to sheer size can drastically slow down your website. Utilizing the Revision Control WordPress Plugin you can eliminate this effect; as you can now control and limit the number of post revisions stored on your database (which is most often a waste of database space anyway).
10) Editorial Calendar – This plugin slash organization tool provides your company with an easy to use editorial calendar to manage your posts and updates. With this tool you can simply drag and drop articles from one date to another, edit both past and present posts, and overall manage your content more easily.
11) XML Google Site Maps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. A XML Sitemap allows search engines to crawl a website easier by allowing the crawler to see the entire structure of a website. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.
