This is a guest post by Teyona Dame.
While there are numerous technology companies that generate millions of dollars by licensing proprietary software, there are only a handful of organizations that focus on developing free open source software. Among others, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds pioneered the concept of Free Open Source Software (FOSS) development. They believed in the freedom of choosing between proprietary software packages and free software. Another such modern open source pioneer is Matt Mullenweg, who is the founder of the openhearted WordPress Foundation.
The objective of the WordPress Foundation is to develop open source projects and free software, while holding responsibility to protect the intellectual properties and trademarks of its projects.
As an open source project, WordPress was made available as a content management system and blogging tool. Initially released in May 2003, it would be right to state that WordPress was the one that democratized the open source publishing arena.
Some WordPress History and Stats
As a dynamic content management system, WordPress had close to 143,000 lines of code. Available in more than 25 global languages, WordPress to date has released 18 versions of the content management system. The 1.2 Mingus is the first plugin-supported version, which was released in May 2004, while 3.4 Green is the most recent version released in June 2012. As of September 2012, there were more than 56 million WordPress powered websites and blogs.
Since its release, WordPress 3.4 Green version has been downloaded more than 18.2 million times globally. There are two types of WordPress websites, one is the WordPress hosted website on WordPress.com, and the other one is the self-hosted WordPress.org. WordPress.org houses the free blogging software that requires a separate hosting service, database and FTP to make your website or blog go live. On the flip side, WordPress.com is a hosted version of the free blogging package that helps all kinds of users to start blogging within a matter of seconds. With more than 2.5 billion page views every month, registered WordPress.com members on any given day produce more than 500,000 posts and close to 400,000 comments.
While both the hosted and self-hosted services from WordPress are free, users can customize their website or blog by choosing from an array of themes, widgets and plugins on offer. Plugins are applications that extend the functionality of your WordPress site or blog. We’re gonna talk about the best WordPress plugins a bit later. There are currently more than 21,000 plugins housed in WordPress.org, which have been downloaded more than 351 million times. Themes are designs that enhance the appearance of your website and blog. Currently, there are more than 1,600 GPL licensed themes that have been downloaded more than 55 million times to date.
Key WordPress Features
There is certainly more to WordPress other than just plugins and themes. Some of the key features of WordPress are:
- W3C standards compliant;
- easy installation;
- upgrades and imports;
- spam protection;
- cross-blog communication tools;
- typographical niceties;
- clever text formatting.
On top of all these key features, there are certain plugins that are mandatory for all startup websites and blogs. In other words, there are the best WordPress plugins and widgets that you deninitely need on your site. Membership, gallery, forum, mobile, calendar and SEO plugins are integral for a WordPress powered online startup. I have elaborated below the different WordPress plugins that are available under these sections.
Membership Plugin
For websites that require users to sign-up and become a member, this membership plugin from WPMU Dev will help greatly. There are two types of membership websites based on the content: one is free content that is accessible by everyone, and the other is members-only content that is only available to registered members who have a paid subscription to the website. This featured membership plugin facilitates easy creation and management of membership websites. With this plugin, you no longer have to worry about its operation as it takes care of most of the work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yb9iGhqDWs&feature=colike
The only thing you will be required to do is design the structure of your website and how you would like to present it.
Prior to installation and activation, make sure you categorize your content. Upon installation, this plugin transforms your site into an amply functional membership website by providing access to downloads, multimedia content, forums and more through different membership levels. This plugin facilitates access to downloads, categories, pages, posts, and any functionality for that matter.
The plugin is compatible with 3.3.2 and requires WordPress 3.1 and higher versions for functioning. With more than 67,700 till date, the plugin has garnered a four-star rating out of five. To install this plugin in your WordPress powered website, click this link.
Gallery Plugin
Implementing a gallery page in your WordPress powered website is so easy now with the gallery plugin. This plugin lets you create many galleries based on the requirement in your website or blog. You can now perform an array of gallery functions, from adding multiple pictures to writing description for each gallery, and from showing all of them in a single page to viewing each of them separately. And to top it all off, the plugin facilitates uploading of high quality pictures. Some of the key actions that the plugin supports are:
- featured image as cover;
- loading numerous images to each album in the gallery;
- lets users customize the attachment sorting settings in the admin panel.
It also offers a set of display options like selecting dimensions of thumbnails to selecting the number of images for a separate page of an album in the gallery. Moreover, users can also view all images in the gallery in a slideshow and full size.
This plugin requires WordPress 3.0 or higher and is compatible up to WordPress 3.4.2. With an average rating of 4.6 out of 5, the plugin has garnered close to 160,000 downloads till date. To install this plugin in your WordPress powered website, click this link .
Forum Plugin
Though there is a collection of forum plugins available for WordPress, most of them are either buggy or difficult to set up. So, when it comes to incorporating forums in your WordPress powered website then there is one plugin that handles the task comfortably. The plugin is called Mingle Forum and is compatible up to WordPress 3.4.2 version. The Mingle Forum plugin is easy-to-use, quick to setup and integrates seamlessly on your website. This plugin helps you simultaneously create corresponding forum posts when you are ready with a WordPress post, and also allows image uploads on new posts.
Some of the other notable features are:
- SEO-friendly forum URLs;
- sitemap creation;
- specific HTML areas for AdSense and other affiliate links;
- multimedia embeds into forum posts;
- RSS Feeds;
- categories with sub-forums;
- and more.
With more than 229,000 downloads till date, the plugin has received 4 star rating out of five. The plugin also provides translation for most of the popular global languages. To install this plugin in your WordPress powered website, click this link.
Mobile Plugin
Mobilizing your WordPress site or blog can be achieved seamlessly by installing the WordPress Mobile Pack. This plugin can be aptly called the best WordPress mobile plugin as it has a mobile switcher and a separate mobile admin panel. The mobile switcher facilitates the selection of themes based on the type of visitor and also has a selection of themes, widgets, and device adaptations.
The administration panel lets users edit the website and post new content. The plugin requires WordPress 3.3 or higher and is compatible up to 3.4.2. The plugin works on PHP4.3 and PHP 5 versions. Some of the other features of the plugin include provision of custom color variations and mobile analytics, provision of mobile ad widget and barcode widgets, and more. Amassing close to 390,000 downloads till date the plugin has received an average rating of 3.8 out of 5.
To install this plugin in your WordPress powered website, click: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-pack/.
Calendar Plugin
A calendar is an inevitable part of a website, as it provides a timeline of all the activities. While there are many calendar plugins available for download on WordPress.org, the My Calendar plugin stands out from the rest. It’s totally the best WordPress plugin in terms of providing a timeline for your posts. This plugin shows events in monthly, weekly and daily formats, while offering custom templates for event output and showing events from many other calendars on pages and posts. This calendar plugin also disables default CSS and JavaScript for display only in specific pages and posts, while also supporting editable JavaScript and CSS styles.
The My Calendar plugin limits posts by categories, location and authors, while allowing users to edit occurrences of events individually. The plugin automatically sends email notifications to the administrator in times of scheduled events.
Last updated in September 2012, the plugin requires WordPress 2.9.2 and is compatible up to 3.4.2 versions. To install this plugin in your WordPress powered website, click this link.
SEO Plugin
SEO is vital for the publicity of a website or blog on the web, so webmasters spend a lot of time implementing SEO strategies. With SEO Ultimate, you can be sure of a plugin that will assist you in SEO. This is the all-in-one SEO plugin that provides control over meta tags, title tags, slugs, autolinks, and rich snippets. It also has an array of editor options like meta robot tags editor, meta keyword editor, meta description editor, and file editor. I am a big fan of the Canonicalizer option the plugin has because it’s usually the issue that WordPress sites have duplicate content for that reason or another.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE_10_nwe0c&feature=colike
The plugin displays admin notices, including icon integration, has a permalink tweaker, and has a plugin settings manager. All in all, this plugin is a must have for all webmasters who spend a lot of time in SEO.
With an average rating of 4.2, this plugin has received close to 910,000 downloads and requires WordPress 3.3 or higher. To install this plugin in your WordPress powered website, click this link.
Your Turn
I’m sure that you’ve seen and worked with a lot of plugins as well. Needless to say, you have some tricks up your sleeve, right? What are the best WordPress plugins you know about?
