There are a number of tools and plugins that can help to speed up your content creation process, as the examples below show.
We recommend using plugins like the ones listed below as tools to aid in your content research and content creation, not as content generators per se.
Search engines like Google reward quality content designed to add value to humans, not content aimed at search bots, so keep this in mind when using tools like the ones listed below.
MyCurator
My Curator
MyCurator is a content curation plugin for WordPress that can help to speed up your content research by showing you relevant articles related to your topic using AI technology.
You can train the plugin to deliver more reliable information in its results using upvoting and downvoting features.
Train MyCurator to deliver better results using up or down vote buttons.
The plugin lets you curate articles in your WordPress Editor
and adds an excerpt, image, and attribution.
You can curate content for topics for free, but accessing its cloud services requires an API Key. Low-priced monthly plans (with a free 30-day trial) are available for users that want to curate content on lots of different topics or multiple sites.
The video below provides more information about this plugin:
There are also a number of training videos available on how to use this plugin.
WPRobotWPRobot – Autoblogging plugin for WordPress
WP Robot is a popular autoblogging plugin for WordPress.
This plugin allows you to drip-feed content to your site on auto-pilot at regular intervals that you specify. Your posts will then be targeted to any keyword you select and in any topic you choose.
You can autopost articles from over 20 content providers and specify which modules you want to autopost content from, run multiple posting campaigns using a different template for each campaign, run, copy, and pause individual campaigns, and much more.
WordPress makes available various content organizer plugins. Here are a few popular ones:
Content Views
Content Views
Content Views is a popular WordPress plugin that allows you to display and organize your posts in a grid or list layout. It provides various customization options to organize your content effectively.
Content Views lets you easily organize and control your site’s content and content layouts.
Key features of this versatile plugin include:
Grid Shortcode & Block: Easily display various content types like posts, pages, images, and taxonomy terms in attractive layouts such as grids, lists, sliders, and accordions.
Flexible Content Display: Effortlessly showcase recent posts, category-specific content, tag-filtered posts, and more.
Editor Compatibility: Compatible with both the classic editor and Gutenberg block editor for seamless integration into any WordPress environment.
Multiple Layout Options: Offers a wide array of responsive layouts, including grids, lists, sliders, masonry, timelines, and more, catering to diverse website needs.
Powerful Query Filters: Enables precise content filtering by post type, taxonomy, custom fields, keywords, authors, dates, and other criteria.
Front-End Filtering (PRO): Advanced filtering options for website visitors, including category, tag, taxonomy, and custom field filters in various formats.
Pagination Options: Supports both normal and AJAX pagination styles, enhancing user experience.
Theme Layout Replacement (PRO): Easily switch to alternative layouts for specific WordPress pages without altering the theme.
Integration Compatibility: Seamlessly integrates with popular plugins like WooCommerce, The Events Calendar, Advanced Custom Fields, WPML, and more.
Additional Features: Mobile-friendly design, complete control over layout and styling, lazy loading for images, SEO optimization, and social sharing integration.
With its extensive feature set, Content Views simplifies content management for users of all levels.
PublishPress Series is a plugin that lets you organize multiple posts on the same topic or time periods into issues or series.
This plugin is ideal for sites that want to publish content in the style of magazines or newspapers, as well as short-story writers, teachers, comic artists, etc.
For example, you can:
Turn posts into monthly issues for a magazine.
Group together newspaper articles on the same topic.
Organize chapters into a story.
You can easily add a post that you are writing to an existing series, or start a new series. You can also add a new post into the middle of an existing series, and the plugin will adjust the order, and filter the post list by series to see all the posts you’ve already added to the series.
The free version of the plugin lets you display options for your series information, supports advanced layouts, provides widgets and blocks, and allows you to quickly manage all posts linked to a series. You can re-order, schedule, publish, and unpublish all the posts in a series.
The paid version of this plugin supports custom post types, multiple series, shortcodes, and extra features, such as allowing you to add multiple authors and guest authors to WordPress posts, manage user roles, permissions, and capabilities (e.g. moderation, revisions, etc.), group content together into a series, and more.
Content Control is a versatile plugin that lets you control the visibility of different elements on your WordPress site. It’s useful for organizing content by restricting or displaying it based on various criteria.
Post Types Order
Post Types Order
Post Types Order allows you to reorder posts, pages, and custom post types using a drag-and-drop interface. It helps you organize your content effortlessly.
Before installing any plugin, make sure to check the compatibility with your WordPress version and read user reviews to ensure it meets your specific requirements. Additionally, always create a backup of your site before making significant changes.
Content Collaboration Plugins
Multicollab Team Collaboration
Multicollab Team Collaboration Plugin for WordPress Editorial Teams
Multicollab is a collaboration plugin tailored for editorial teams that allows team collaboration with Google Doc-style content editing directly within the WordPress Gutenberg interface.
It seamlessly integrates into the WordPress dashboard to bring real-time commenting, suggesting, and collaborating directly to your WordPress interface, eliminating the need to juggle between Google Docs and WordPress, the frustration of copy-pasting, and the limitations of traditional editorial processes.
With this plugin, users can effortlessly share feedback, comment on text and media blocks, and invite team members to collaborate seamlessly.
Features include inline commenting, team collaboration, detailed reports, and instant email notifications, all within your WordPress environment.
Designed for Gutenberg, Multicollab streamlines content collaboration in WordPress and enhances your editorial workflow without disrupting your existing processes. It is a valuable tool for efficient, organized, and high-quality content creation in WordPress.
Atarim Visual Collaboration is a user-friendly plugin that simplifies website collaboration, allowing seamless feedback collection and efficient project management. Almost 10,000 agencies and freelancers worldwide use it on over 120,000 websites, making it an essential productivity tool for any collaborative project.
Atarim reduces project completion time by automating workflows, freeing up valuable time for team members and making gathering feedback and managing tasks effortless, whether it’s submitting feedback directly on WordPress websites or managing requests and tasks efficiently.
The plugin caters to various users, including freelancers, agencies, and website owners, streamlining collaboration processes. It replaces multiple project management tools, eliminating fragmentation and the need for constant screenshots.
Atarim offers a plethora of features, including visual collaboration, urgency updates, status changes, automated screenshots, file uploads, and technical information tracking. Its cloud-based platform allows centralized request management, enhancing efficiency and communication.
With Atarim, collaboration extends beyond project completion, facilitating ongoing communications and feedback. Plus, it’s free to use forever, empowering teams to embrace visual collaboration and enhance project and task management.
Additional collaboration plugins include:
Admin Page Notes – Add notes and links on your pages to give your clients, authors or other editors clear directions when editing their site.
BuddyPress Docs – BuddyPress Docs enhances BuddyPress communities with collaborative workspaces akin to Google Docs, offering wiki-style collaboration, document editing and management, and shared Dropbox functionality. Key features include:
Document linking to groups or users, customizable privacy levels.
Support for fully-private document uploads.
Document taxonomy with tags.
Sortable and filterable document lists.
Front-end document editing with TinyMCE.
Overwrite prevention and idle detection/autosave.
Comprehensive revision history access.
Dashboard management of documents for site administrators.
Content Protection Plugins
If you want to protect your content from being copied or stolen, there are WordPress plugins you can use to help protect your site from content theft.
WP Content Copy Protection
WP Content Copy Protection Pro
WP Content Copy Protection is a free plugin for WordPress that uses various methods to protect your online content from being stolen by mouse, keyboard, and browser content-copying methods like right-clicking and saving images, highlighting and copying text, source code viewing, and common keyboard copy shortcut keys.
The premium version of the plugin provides everything included in the free version, plus advanced content protection features for WooCommerce-powered eCommerce sites, the ability to exclude specific pages, posts, or categories from being protected, enabling or disabling protection for site admins only, or registered users only, or admin and registered/logged-in users, advanced image protection, feed removal, extended keyboard copy protection commands, and more.
The plugin will not affect your SEO, embeddable codes, or advertising (e.g. Adsense).
Spam adds unwanted content to your site (e.g. comment spam) which can have a negative impact on your visitors and search engines.
WordPress has a number of plugins that can help you combat and prevent spam.
Akismet
Akismet Spam Protection plugin
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if these look like spam or not and lets you review any spam it catches under your site’s Comments admin screen.
The Akismet servers monitor millions of blogs and forums, watching the methods and tricks used by spammers in real-time.
When spambots, comment factories, buffer sites, and social engineering tricks are identified, Akismet uses this knowledge to try and prevent automated or human spammers from trying to place a spam comment on your site.
Akismet was developed by Automattic, a company founded by the creator of WordPress itself, Matt Mullenweg, and has proven to be very effective in fighting SPAM. Millions of WordPress users have Akismet installed on their sites.
One way to keep visitors longer on your site is to let them know that your site provides other content related to the topics they are interested in.
With WordPress, you can automatically provide links to related content on your site using a plugin like the one below.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) is a simple and easy-to-use plugin that inserts related post links at the end of each of your site’s posts, pages, and custom post types intelligently and automatically.
As discussed in the WordPress CMS Plugins lesson, YARPP works with related posts, pages, and custom post types. It also provides a templating system that lets you choose how your related posts are displayed.
YARPP finds related content across your site using a customizable algorithm that takes into account elements such as post titles, content, tags, categories, and custom taxonomies, then caches the related posts data as pages on your site are visited, helping to improve overall site performance.
The above is just a small sample of plugins you can use to save time creating content with the WordPress CMS.
If you need help using WordPress, see the resources below:
WordPress Training Manual – A detailed and comprehensive step-by-step WordPress user manual for non-technical website users (non-coders).
WPMU DEV Blog – Tutorials for advanced WordPress users.
Make sure to subscribe to our updates to receive our free email course on managing your content effectively, which includes useful information and practical tips on using WordPress as a CMS.
These WordPress plugins will help to boost and improve user engagement with your content and your website.
WordPress Engagement Plugins
These WordPress plugins will help to boost and improve user engagement with your content and your website.
There are many different ways for your visitors to engage with your business through your website.
Most of these ways involve interacting with some form of content on your site, so it’s important to be able to manage this content effectively.
WordPress provides many different kinds of plugins to boost and improve engagement with visitors on your website in areas like:
Contact Forms
FAQs
Knowledgebase
HelpDesk
Chat
Advertising
Lead Generation
Event Calendars
Event Registrations
Bookings & Appointments
Maps
Membership Sites
eCommerce
Courses
Social Sharing
Testimonials
Company Pages (e.g. Meet The Team)
etc.
This section provides examples of various WordPress plugins you can use to improve user engagement with your website in the areas above and manage the content in these areas.
Many of the plugins described below can also be easily configured and added to your site’s pages or content using a shortcode.
Managing Content On Your Site With WordPress Engagement Plugins
While using plugins can save time and money on web development costs, using plugins to boost and improve user engagement on your site usually requires adding additional content to the plugin and managing it via the plugin itself.
Let’s look at some examples of WordPress engagement plugins and what kind of content you would need to add and manage to boost user engagement effectively.
Analytics
Features like custom reports and segments in Google Analytics allow businesses to delve deeper into specific engagement metrics, gaining a comprehensive understanding of how visitors interact with their content.
They can then use a data-driven approach to implement specific steps and methods with proven tactics and tools to effectively track and boost user engagement on their WordPress websites and further increase user engagement.
WordPress analytics plugins play a crucial role in enhancing user engagement on websites. These tools provide valuable insights into user behavior, allowing site owners to make informed decisions to optimize their content and user experience.
By tracking various metrics, such as popular content, bounce rates, and user interactions, these plugins enable website administrators to tailor their strategies for maximum user engagement.
Analytics plugins like those listed below offer a user-friendly solution to set up and monitor user engagement in WordPress.
Beehive – WordPress Analytics
Beehive – add customizable Google Analytics dashboards and reports to WordPress.
Beehive is an all-in-one Google Analytics Dashboard plugin that lets you easily track all of your important website statistics straight from your WordPress dashboard.
Beehive Pro features beautiful charts and graphs, Google Tag Manager, Custom Stats Dashboard, User Roles & Permissions, and more. It also allows you to enable display ads and view their current analytics in real-time and includes personalized authentication screen icons and project names, eCommerce compatibility, and constant updates with enhancements.
Most WordPress form plugins typically forward the sender’s message through to an email address and then store the information on your site’s database.
Using a contact form on your site effectively, then, requires having documentation and processes for areas like:
Forwarding the information (i.e. who gets which kind of information, e.g. sales, support, billing, etc.?)
Replying to senders (e.g. policies, guidelines, attachments, etc.)
Handling stored contact information on your database to make sure that your site complies with all data storage and privacy laws (for example, the GDPR if your site processes information about European citizens).
Here is an example of a WordPress contact form plugin you can use on your site…
Forminator
Forminator is a free custom form builder plugin for WordPress that lets you create and add different kinds of forms to your site like contact forms, opt-in forms, payment forms, and even quizzes and polls.
You can easily set up a professional contact form for your site in just a few clicks.
Forminator lets you easily set up contact forms. Source: WordPress.org
Forminator adds its own block to the WordPress Block Editor.
Forminator adds its own block to the WordPress Block Editor. Source: WordPress.org
The plugin integrates with many applications like Zapier, Slack, Trello, Google Sheets, and different email marketing apps.
Forminator has built-in integrations with 1000+ apps. Source: WordPress.org
Use Forminator to create forms that allow users to upload files to your site, collect electronic signatures, etc.
The plugin includes advanced features to help your site stay compliant with GDPR and a form preview button so you can view and adjust your form before embedding it on a page.
Forminator lets you create forms that allow users to upload files to your site. Source: WordPress.org
You can also use the plugin to create and add payment forms to your site. Forminator features codeless styling that lets you create the look you want without knowledge of code or CSS, use conditional logic to create dynamic forms, and add calculations and data validation fields to your forms.
Add lead-generating calculators to your site with Forminator. Source: WordPress.org
The forms let you accept payments from users with PayPal and Stripe.
Accept payments on your site with PayPal and Stripe. Source: WordPress.org
The plugin also lets you submit blog posts from a form and build interactive quizzes and polls.
Build interactive quizzes and polls to boost user engagement on your site. Source: WordPress.org
You can publish polls that display real-time graphs and stats
Publish polls with real-time graphs and stats. Source: WordPress.org
Including FAQs on your site helps visitors and prospective customers get their questions answered and overcome objections before making purchasing decisions.
WordPress FAQ plugins can save you time and resources when providing customer support by allowing you to create a “self-service” help center for a fraction of the resources of hiring a support team to handle customer inquiries.
Many FAQ plugins also make it easier to organize your questions by allowing you to group your FAQs by categories (e.g. for questions about products, ordering, etc.), and place these on a dedicated FAQ page using a shortcode.
Look for FAQs plugins that let you easily add new FAQs and update your FAQ content using a drag-and-drop interface, and build an FAQ section for your website using different categories and customizable styles and colors.
There are many great FAQ plugins for WordPress available.
For example…
Ultimate FAQ
Ultimate FAQ – WordPress FAQ and Accordion Plugin
Ultimate FAQ is an FAQ and accordion plugin for WordPress that includes easy-to-use Gutenberg blocks, shortcodes, widgets, an advanced FAQ search, and FAQ schema.
Creating and adding different FAQ categories in the plugin is just like using regular post categories.
Add FAQ Categories to the plugin just like you would add regular post categories.
Create FAQs and publish these or save them as drafts, just like regular posts.
You can easily view all your FAQs inside your WordPress dashboard using the plugin’s FAQ Summary panel…
All the FAQs you have created are listed inside your WordPress dashboard in the FAQ Summary panel.
To display your FAQs to site visitors, simply create a dedicated FAQs page, add the shortcode (or use the FAQ plugin’s block), and publish.
For example, here is a page with the FAQ shortcode inserted…
Insert a shortcode where you want to display your FAQs…
And this is what your site visitor will see after the page has been published…
A Frequently Asked Questions page listing all the FAQs in their categories.
Additional features of the plugin include the following:
Create unlimited FAQs
Create unlimited FAQ tags and FAQ categories
Add an FAQ block (WordPress Block Editor)
Add an FAQ shortcode
A responsive accordion layout that works on all sites and devices
FAQ page ordering and sorting options
Group FAQ options
Translation ready
Bulk import FAQs from a spreadsheet
Style your FAQ page layout
This plugin is user-friendly and includes a guided walk-through wizard that helps you configure the plugin’s settings, create your first FAQs, and create an FAQ page.
Watch the video below for an overview of this plugin:
As you can see, managing your site’s “frequently asked questions” using an FAQ plugin is both time-saving and very effective.
Customer Support – Knowledgebase, Helpdesk, and Live Chat
Like FAQs, Knowledgebase, Helpdesk, and Live Chat plugins allow you to automate and manage important areas of your business like customer support and help sections for a fraction of what it would cost to hire, train and set up a live support team.
If you plan to add a Knowledgebase, Helpdesk, or Live Chat section to your website to provide customer support, answer user questions, or address their concerns, it’s important to plan and create as much of the content that you will feed into these sections as you can beforehand.
You can use a WordPress plugin like the one shown below to continually add and update support-related content.
ThriveDesk
ThriveDesk – Live Chat, Helpdesk & Community for WordPress
ThriveDeskis a light and fast knowledgebase, helpdesk, and live chat plugin for WordPress.
ThriveDesk integrates live chat, helpdesk, and a knowledgebase in one streamlined plugin.
The plugin lets you provide timely customer support by integrating live chat, helpdesk, and a knowledgebase into one feature-rich application.
To learn more about all the features and integrations included in this plugin, see the plugin info here: ThriveDesk
Advertising
If you plan to display ads on your website through banners, text ads, or contextual ads (e.g. Google AdSense), then you will need to manage your advertising content effectively, especially if you are promoting content like time-sensitive offers, products of the week, expiring discount codes, etc. on multiple pages or sections of your website.
This means having an organized system for storing and accessing information like:
Banner ad images
Ad copy and destination URLs
Scripts (e.g. Google AdSense publisher code)
Details of advertisers, ad inventory, ad schedules, where ads are placed, etc. (e.g. a spreadsheet)
There are many WordPress advertising plugins you can use to display and manage ads on your website.
Here are a couple you can check out…
AdRotate
AdRotate – Ad manager & AdSense Ads
AdRotate is a plugin that lets you easily manage all your advertising campaigns, affiliate banners, text links, etc. from one location.
You can create advertisements using any kind of ad banner or text link, group adverts together, and place them anywhere on your site using shortcodes or AdRotate’s Post/Page Injection sections.
Use AdRotate’s shortcode or Post/Page Injection sections to add groups of adverts to your site.
WP AdCenter is a complete advertising solution for WordPress sites.
WP AdCenter is another advertising plugin you may want to look at if you plan to monetize your WordPress site with banner advertising.
WP AdCenter is an advanced ad management plugin that lets you:
Create and manage different ad zones.
Place your own banners anywhere on your site
Notify your advertisers after 80% of the campaign is over
Export your campaign details as a spreadsheet
Rotate banners or place multiple banners in one Ad-Zone
Use the same slot to display different ads (without requiring refresh)
Automate your income – with PayPal
Monetize your WordPress site with affiliate banners, Google AdSense, etc.
The plugin integrates with payment gateways like PayPal and lets you offer advertising spots for sale on your site. Your advertisers can buy available spots and use the plugin’s built-in intelligent reporting features to review AdZone performance and optimize revenue.
Additional features include:
Unlimited ad zones.
Unlimited banner sizes.
Unlimited campaigns.
Set automatic start and end campaign dates.
Place ad zones into your WordPress theme using shortcodes and widgets.
Add media easily.
Detailed statistics with downloadable/printable charts.
Collect payments automatically.
Add different effects to your ads (fadezoom, blindX, blindY, and more).
Responsive ads work well on mobile and desktop devices.
Display multiple banners per AdZone and multiple ads in a row, column, or grid.
Auto-disable expired ads.
See the video below for an overview of the plugin:
After working out your marketing and content promotion strategies for generating new business leads, using content promotion tools with lead generation plugins like the ones listed below will not only make it easier to implement your strategies but also manage their content.
Hustle
Hustle is a versatile free marketing and lead generation plugin that you can use to build a mailing list and convert site traffic on a WordPress site.
The plugin includes opt-in forms, targeted marketing popups, slide-ins, embeds, shortcodes, designer-made form templates, and social sharing capabilities.
Hustle lets you create great-looking lead generation pop-ups, slide-ins, and embeds using professionally-designed templates.
You can fully customize the look of your campaigns in the plugin’s settings.
Use Hustle’s built-in appearance settings to customize the look of your campaigns.
You also have complete control over your lead generation forms.
With pop-ups, for example, you can choose the visibility conditions that will display your pop-ups to visitors (e.g. only display the pop-up if visitors land on certain pages or visit posts published under certain categories, or use specific devices/browsers, or are visiting from a specific country, etc.).
Target your audience with Hustle’s display conditions.
You can also use pre-built layouts, align the position of your images in your selected layouts and more.
Hustle includes one-click layouts.
Hustle not only lets you easily grow your mailing list and display targeted ads across your site with pop-ups, opt-ins, and slide-ins, but you can also add social sharing widgets to your site so visitors can share your content across different social media platforms.
Quickly build floating social share bars to add to your content.
Additional plugin features include:
Fully customizable and mobile responsive layouts with granular control of all form design elements (e.g. adjust images, typography, color, margins, padding, borders, spacing, shadow, module sizing, etc., or use your own custom CSS).
Smart triggers for pop-ups and slide-ins (e.g. time on page, scroll, exit intent, and more).
Set campaign schedules (e.g. start and end dates, schedule modules to show on specific days of the week, at a certain time of day, choose a custom timezone, etc.)
Follow-up emails with manual or automated email messages.
Integrations with social media platforms, form builders, email services, etc.
Smart exit intent technology (detects when visitors are about to leave your site and displays a pop-up or slide-in to grab their attention).
Recaptcha to protect your signup forms from spam.
Adblocking detection and override.
Intelligent results tracking of individual modules with conversion stats, and insightful charts.
For additional options (e.g. unlimited pop-ups, slide-ins, embeds, and social sharing bars), we recommend upgrading to the Pro version of the plugin.
Watch the video below for an overview of the plugin:
Additionally, see these tutorials to learn how to use the plugin:
Normally, you would need to create content for your lead magnet AND for the article or post that will promote your lead magnet to your visitors and prospects. What if your articles or blog posts already contain compelling content? Couldn’t you use these as lead magnets?
This is where this clever little WordPress plugin comes in that automatically turns your articles and blog posts into lead magnets, helps you get more free web traffic, and grows your subscriber list … all completely on auto-pilot!
Post Gopher is a WordPress plugin that converts your blog posts and pages into downloadable PDF books. It builds beautiful forms, integrates directly with your autoresponder, captures leads, and sends out download links completely on autopilot.
Post Gopher handles everything on autopilot
Post Gopher does the following while you focus on creating content:
Automatically converts your blog posts or pages into PDF lead magnets,
Auto-generates lead capture forms that integrate seamlessly with all major autoresponder services,
Sends a customizable email to your new subscribers with the download link to their PDF version of your blog post or article.
Tracks your results with a built-in dashboard that provides details on your most popular posts, conversion rates, and when readers return to your blog using the links inside their PDF file.
After the plugin has been activated and configured, Post Gopher displays a fully customizable lead generation banner on your posts and pages.
Add a lead generation call-to-action banner to your posts.
Everything can be customized to suit your preferences, from the text and design of your call-to-action banners to pop-up form colors, text and fields, and even your PDF templates.
You can also specify which posts and pages will display the lead generation banner, where to position it in your content (e.g. top, bottom, top & bottom), and more.
Customize your PDFs
If someone visits your site, decides to download and read your post content later, and clicks on the banner, Post Gopher automatically converts your post or page into a downloadable PDF book or report, adds the user details to your autoresponder, and emails them a link to download the PDF file.
Post Gopher integrates directly with your autoresponder, capturing leads and sending out download links to your new subscribers on autopilot.
Post Gopher automatically adds new readers to your autoresponder.
The plugin includes built-in statistics reporting for tracking views, clicks, opt-in rates, downloads, and return visitors, and analyzing your best performing lead generation content and most popular blog posts.
The built-in stats panel lets you track and analyze results.
Post Gopher, then, is an easy “set and forget” tool that passively collects leads, grows your list, boosts user engagement, and helps you get more traffic on autopilot.
If your website or blog provides lots of high-quality content, use this plugin to help you leverage your content creation efforts into growing an engaged subscriber list, increasing your reach, and getting you more dedicated content readers.
Thrive Leads – Lead generation plugin for WordPress.
Thrive Leads is a lead generation plugin for WordPress that combines a list-building solution focused on cutting-edge conversion tactics and conversion optimization.
The plugin combines every kind of opt-in form you need with a simple drag-and-drop design editor designed to help you build a profitable list by showing relevant and highly targeted offers to your visitors based on posts, categories, tags, and more.
Thrive Leads also includes an advanced but easy-to-use A/B testing feature and actionable reporting & insights covering the most important metrics you need to assess how your opt-in forms are performing and where your most valuable traffic is coming from.
Social or community events (e.g. art classes, camps, golf tournaments, church events, etc.)
Community events (fundraisers, festivals)
Workshops, Seminars, Conferences (physical or virtual)
Or any other event?
If so, then plugins like the ones listed below will help you manage your events and all the information associated with running these events.
WP Event Manager
WP Event Manager – Event management solution plugin for WordPress.
WP Event Manager is a lightweight and scalable plugin that lets you implement a full-featured event management system for live and virtual events on WordPress.
WP Event Manager lets you display and manage all of your physical and virtual events.
The plugin works out of the box with practically every available WordPress theme saving you time and money on developing custom solutions.
The free version of the plugin has all the core features and functionalities you need to create a robust event management system on your site in a few minutes.
You can also purchase and install a number of premium add-ons that will enhance your event management capabilities by allowing you to do things like:
Sell tickets
Accept registrations
Display an event calendar on your website with upcoming events
Add Google Maps
Add recurring events
Collect information about the attendees at the point of registration
Send notifications to event managers
Change event colors to match event types and categories
And even turn your WordPress website into a live streaming platform for virtual events.
Provide your site visitors with all the information they need to register for your events.
Event Espresso is another popular event registration and ticketing manager plugin for WordPress.
It can turn your existing WordPress website into a fully-featured event registration and ticketing website that can accept online payments, add custom registration forms and emails, seating limits, multiple price options, discount codes, and printable tickets and event apps on your phone.
If your business depends on taking bookings and appointments, you will need to manage a calendar for scheduling your bookings, sending confirmation emails, rescheduling appointments, etc.
All of these processes can be automated using WordPress plugins like the one shown below
Booking Calendar
Booking Calendar – WordPress plugin
Booking Calendar is a free booking and reservations plugin that allows you to manage your time more effectively by adding appointment bookings to your site and sending out customized emails automatically.
The plugin works right out of the box. Your visitors can check the availability of your services and book appointments online quickly and easily (and even pay for appointments online) using an intuitive and user-friendly interface.
Booking Calendar lets your site visitors view available times and schedule appointments on your website.
The plugin sends notifications to site administrators and users. You can access information about your bookings and easily manage all of your scheduled bookings and appointments from the plugin’s Booking Listing screen.
View and manage all of your bookings and appointments from the plugin’s Booking Listing screen.
The plugin also provides a number of features and screens where you can view detailed information about your bookings and appointments and make changes.
View detailed information about all of your bookings and appointments.
And you can manually schedule bookings and appointments by entering customer information via the Add booking screen.
Take bookings over the phone or via email and manually enter the information into your calendar.
Booking Calendar is also widget-ready, supports multiple languages, and is also available in a premium version that offers many more features and functionalities.
Watch the video below for an overview of the plugin:
This plugin is suitable for a wide range of business services – medical, dental, health & fitness, repair services, massage therapists, yoga classes, restaurants, making room reservations, event venues, etc.
Adding maps to your site, such as Google Maps, can also help visitors and customers find you more easily, increase local SEO, and allow you to display the location of events.
Adding a map to your website helps your customers find you.
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
The WordPress CMS is powerful and flexible enough to transform any website into a full-featured eCommerce store using plugins.
eCommerce stores built on the WordPress platform can range from anything like regular websites offering users the ability to pay for a service online through a payment processor (e.g. PayPal, Stripe, etc.), to running enterprise-sized eCommerce sites selling thousands of products.
Your store content and information are normally managed from the plugin within your WordPress dashboard, although there are many solutions that integrate with WordPress, where your WordPress site serves as the “shop front” for your customers and you manage all the content on your store from your eCommerce solution’s website.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the leading eCommerce plugin for WordPress.
Installing the plugin automatically adds eCommerce capabilities to any WordPress site.
The WooCommerce core platform is free. You can enhance the functionality of your store with hundreds of free and paid extensions from the official WooCommerce Marketplace, and manage your store from anywhere using the free WooCommerce mobile app (Android and iOS).
Being open-source also means that you retain full ownership of your store’s content and data.
WordPress lets you turn a simple website into a large, professional, and feature-rich membership site containing private content that is accessible only to members using plugins.
There are many membership plugins available for WordPress. While they all perform a similar function (i.e. restrict content access to members only), most membership plugins will let you set up different membership levels, manage registrations and members, set different access levels to content, and automate actions like content sequencing and delivery (e.g. drip feeding of content with monthly subscriptions).
Restrict Content Pro
Restrict Content Pro is a membership plugin for WordPress that lets you restrict exclusive content for members using a lightweight built-in eCommerce solution.
With the plugin installed, you can create unlimited subscription packages with membership levels (e.g. free, trial, premium, etc.), set up content previews that display an offer for visitors to sign up to access the rest of the content, offer discounts and coupon codes, and much more.
WP Courseware is a learning management system plugin for WordPress that lets you set up professional training courses and build e-learning products quickly with WordPress.
There are many WordPress plugins that can help your business reach a wider audience online and build your social following by sharing your content on social media.
For example, you can use the Hustle plugin mentioned earlier (see above) to add social sharing capabilities to your WordPress site.
Social sharing plugins make it easier for visitors to promote your content on their social networks.
The plugin supports all popular platforms and includes features like a social counter, a floating or inline social bar, style settings, visibility conditions, and more.
Testimonials add powerful social proof content to your site.
Having testimonials on your site, however, also requires an effective system for requesting, collecting, managing, and displaying this content on your site.
Testimonial plugins like the one shown below can help you in all of these areas.
Thrive Ovation – Testimonials Plugin For WordPress
Thrive Ovation is an all-in-one, set-and-forget testimonials management plugin for WordPress.
You can turn comments left on your site into testimonials with one click, leverage the power of social testimonials by integrating with Facebook and Twitter and collect testimonials on auto-pilot.
Thrive Ovation also provides a time-saving testimonial management dashboard, giving you a complete bird’s eye overview of user-submitted, comments, social media, and imported testimonials in one testimonial library that allows you to see testimonials that are ready for display, waiting for approval or review, have been rejected, are missing a photo, etc.
Thrive Ovation – Testimonial Management Dashboard
Additional plugin features include:
Insert testimonials wherever you like using shortcodes.
Edit and update testimonials from one location, which then update dynamically throughout your site.
A library of fully customizable, professionally designed testimonial templates.
There are many plugins you can use to add and manage information about your company and your staff.
Here is an example:
Simple Staff List
Simple Staff List
Simple Staff List is a free plugin that lets companies display information about their employees on their website.
The plugin makes it very convenient to manage information about your staff and their profiles. You can add new staff members, edit existing team members’ details, remove profiles from employees who are no longer with the company, and more, all from one central location.
Enter information about your staff into the plugin’s profile fields…
Add information about your staff or team members.
After you have entered the information for all staff members and configured other plugin settings, copy and paste the shortcode into a page (e.g. “Meet the Team”) and publish.
Visitors now have a page where they can learn more about your team members.
Your visitors can now learn more about your team on your Staff Profiles page.
There are many WordPress plugins you can use to help boost user engagement with your content.
We recommend installing some of the plugins listed above and tracking your results to improve your content’s performance and boost user engagement on your site.
The above is just a small sample of WordPress plugins you can use to improve engagement on your website using the WordPress CMS.
If you need help using WordPress, see the resources below:
WordPress Training Manual – A detailed and comprehensive step-by-step WordPress user manual for non-technical website users (non-coders).
WPMU DEV Blog – Tutorials for advanced WordPress users.
Make sure to subscribe to our updates to receive our free email course on managing your content effectively, which includes useful information and practical tips on boosting user engagement with your content using WordPress.
Media files used in WordPress are typically uploaded to the WordPress Media Library if files are saved on your web server (as opposed to being stored in a cloud service like Amazon S3).
Plugins can extend the functionality of your WordPress media library.
Media Library Folders
Media Library Folders
Media Library Folders enhances the functionality of the WordPress Media Library by allowing you to add and build new folders and subfolders to label and organize your media folders and perform operations on these folders and their contents.
Media Library Folders lets you organize your media files into folders.
The plugin provides an effective way to manage image and video folders when creating WordPress image galleries and albums.
The paid version of the plugin offers enhanced functionality like the ability to organize media using categories, add images to WooCommerce product galleries, offload Media Library items to external cloud storage services like Amazon S3 or DigitalOcean Spaces, and more.
The video below provides an overview of the plugin:
WordPress plugins can make embedding media files into your content easier.
EmbedPress
EmbedPress
EmbedPress lets you easily embed media-rich content like documents, videos, PDFs, audio files, maps, charts, and slides into your WordPress site.
The plugin connects to over 100 services and media platforms and lets you embed content from these services by simply pasting in their URL. It also includes blocks for the WordPress Block Editor.
The premium version of the plugin gives you additional features like enabling lazy loading for loading embedded images on your website faster and adding custom-branded logos for all your video embeds.
Watch the video below for an overview of the plugin:
For a step-by-step tutorial on using the blocks to embed content into WordPress, go here: WordPress Embed Block
File Download Plugins
WordPress lets you manage your download files right out of the box but it doesn’t have advanced management features like:
Download password protection
Tracking file revisions
Monitoring/restricting the number of downloads
Preventing unregistered users from accessing your files
Managing and selling digital downloads
etc.
You can easily add these features using file management and download management plugins like the plugin below:
Easy Media Download
Easy Media Download
Easy Media Download is a free plugin that makes it easy for users to download digital media files from your website (music, videos, images, etc.). The plugin supports downloadable files in all formats. It creates buttons that begin downloading files immediately when clicked on. Shortcodes allow you to place download buttons anywhere in your content.
Check out the video below to see the plugin in action:
For a step-by-step tutorial on how to add, edit, and manage downloadable files in WordPress and more WordPress download plugins, go here: How To Add Downloadable Files In WordPress
Image Plugins
There are many great WordPress plugins you can use to manage images on your site more effectively, compress and optimize images to make your pages load faster for visitors, add visual effects, styled borders, or frames to images, display images in galleries and slides, etc.
Smush – Image Optimization
Smush – Image Optimization and Compression Plugin For WordPress
Images can take up a lot of storage space on your server and slow down your site.
Smush is a free image compression and image optimization plugin that saves storage space, helps your site load faster and reduces image file size without reducing the quality of your images.
You can compress and optimize images automatically, manually, or in bulk. You can also Super Smush your images, which compress these even further without losing image quality.
Smush automatically detects and optimizes all of your images.
This plugin is highly recommended for all WordPress sites, and especially for sites that use loads of high-quality images (e.g. photography, design, portfolio sites, etc.)
Photo Gallery is a user-friendly and feature-rich plugin that lets you add responsive image galleries and albums to your website.
The plugin lets you add image descriptions and tags to gallery images and makes renaming, uploading, removing, and copying images in the galleries you create easier.
Photo Gallery’s Gallery Editing screen makes it easier to edit images in your galleries.
The plugin also lets you add videos and audios to your galleries, customize gallery layouts, create unlimited responsive gallery and album views, set up and manage multiple widgets, add image watermarking and right-click protection, and more.
The Photo Gallery plugin also provides additional extensions to take its functionality further, making this a great choice for image-heavy websites like photography websites, portfolios, blogs, and any sites that want to feature professional-looking image galleries with easy user navigation.
With the Photo Gallery Premium version of the plugin installed, you can add commenting capabilities with Captcha protection, add a dynamic tag cloud widget with an image tag cloud and text tag cloud options, and set role permission capabilities (i.e. specify who can edit galleries, albums, and images).
The video below provides more information about the plugin:
For a step-by-step tutorial on how to add, edit, and manage images in WordPress and more WordPress image plugins and image tools, go here: Using Images In WordPress
Video Plugins
WordPress lets you easily integrate videos into your content. You can add videos to your posts, pages, custom post types…even your sidebar menu using plugins.
Video Player
Video Player WordPress plugin.
Video Player is a WordPress plugin that lets you manage the entire video player using a friendly interface. You can customize the player look & feel, playlist, and CSS file.
The plugin comes in two versions: Right Side playlist and Bottom Playlist.
Some of the plugin features include:
Support for any type of video file that Flash Player supports: FLV/H.264 encoded video: MP4, M4V, M4A, MOV, Mp4v, F4V, YouTube, RTMP (using FMS or RED5), and RTMP live streaming.
Ability to play audio MP3 files.
Support for Google Analytics
You can set this player to any size you want, changing the player width, the player height, and the playlist width.
Ability to integrate with your posts and pages using a shortcode
Just like videos, WordPress also lets you easily integrate audio files into your content.
HTML5 Audio Player
HTML5 Audio Player
HTML5 Audio Player is a compact and responsive audio plugin for WordPress that supports .mp3 and .ogg file formats and works on all browsers and devices.
You can add audio files and audio previews to your WordPress posts and pages using a shortcode.
For a step-by-step tutorial on how to add audio files in WordPress and more WordPress audio plugins, go here: How To Add Audio Files In WordPress
Plugins For Managing Media Stored Remotely
In addition to plugins that will help you better manage media files on your WordPress site, you can also install plugins that integrate 3rd-party media services and platforms with your site and allow you to manage media stored in remote locations (e.g. cloud services like Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.).
S3 Media Maestro
Use S3 Media Maestro to display content stored on Amazon S3 securely on your WordPress site.
S3 Media Maestro lets you display videos hosted on Amazon S3 on your site, protects your files from unauthorized sharing, and lets you easily manage and deliver media or download files securely using Amazon’s S3 web storage services.
You can easily configure default media player settings for video and audio players like player type, skins, splash images, volume, size, metadata, etc.
S3 Media Maestro media player settings.
You can use this plugin to set up online learning and video membership sites. S3Media Maestro prevents paying customers from sharing links to your content with others by creating unique expiring links that will only work for your customers. Anyone else who tries to use the same link to your content will be denied access.
Dropr lets you easily access files from your Dropbox account and add them to your WordPress website.
The plugin essentially turns your Dropbox account into a secondary WordPress Media Library. You can access your Dropbox files from the WordPress text editor screen, then drop files into your content without having to upload them to WordPress, saving you server bandwidth.
The plugin also includes its own block for the WordPress Block Editor.
If you need help using WordPress, see the resources below:
WordPress Training Manual – A detailed and comprehensive step-by-step WordPress user manual for non-technical website users (non-coders).
WPMU DEV Blog – Hundreds of WordPress tutorials for advanced WordPress users.
Make sure to subscribe to our updates to receive our free email course on managing your content effectively, which includes useful information and practical tips on using media with WordPress.
Use these WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your content for search engines, boost your search rankings, and improve your content marketing results.
WordPress SEO Plugins
Use these WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your content for search engines, boost your search rankings, and improve your content marketing results.
WordPress SEO plugins help to improve your content SEO and provide information to search engines that help them better understand and organize your content for indexing and displaying on search results.
The plugins listed below help to optimize your content and will even notify search engines when you publish new content for faster page indexing.
SmartCrawl
SmartCrawl – WordPress SEO plugin
SmartCrawl is a free plugin that helps to improve your content’s SEO and search rankings on search engines like Google and Bing with built-in keyword optimization tools, XML sitemaps, meta tags, titles and descriptions, and more.
SmartCrawl features one-click setup, automatic XML sitemaps, improved social sharing, real-time keyword, and content analysis, Schema Types builder, traffic redirection, SEO scans and reports, and integration with 3rd-party tools (e.g. Moz SEO Tools).
You can quickly and easily set up and use SmartCrawl with the plugin’s setup wizard.
Use SmartCrawl’s Quick Setup Wizard to quickly install and set up the plugin on your site.
Once installed, you can run a scan of your site’s content…
Run an SEO test with SmartCrawl to analyze your content.
After running your scan, go to the plugin’s dashboard to activate various SEO features and begin configuring SEO settings for your site…
Configure all of your site’s SEO features and settings from SmartCrawl’s dashboard.
You can create optimized title and meta descriptions for each post and preview how these will display on Google Search results…
Preview how your content will display in Google’s search results.
You can also customize post titles, descriptions, and featured images for social shares…
Configure SEO settings for promoting your content on social media.
And configure advanced SEO settings and instructions for displaying your content in search results…
Configure advanced SEO settings for your articles.
Smartcrawl also lets you configure Schema markup settings for your website.
Configure schema settings for your website with SmartCrawl.
You can also add preset Schema types that include all the properties recommended by Google or add your own custom schema types.
Add schema types to your site to help Google understand and rank your content better.
SmartCrawl is a powerful WordPress search engine optimization plugin that makes your site easier to find and improves your website and content ranking, for free.
Watch the video below for an overview of what the plugin can do to help improve your site’s SEO:
The PRO version of the plugin offers advanced features like reports, automated scanning, automated linking for specific keywords, a crawler that checks for broken URLs, 404 errors, and multiple redirections, plus access to 24/7 support for all things WordPress-related.
Yoast SEO is a popular and widely used WordPress SEO plugin.
The plugin includes many SEO features designed to help site visitors and search engines to better understand your content, like canonical URLs, meta tags, title and meta description templates, XML sitemaps, Schema, SEO and readability analysis tools, Google preview, and more.
Enable or disable SEO features from the Yoast SEO settings panel.
The premium version of the plugin includes additional features like extensions for news SEO, video SEO, local SEO, and WooCommerce SEO, integrations with other SEO tools and services, blocks for the WordPress Block Editor, and advanced optimization tools.
All in One SEO Pack is a powerful plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines. It offers features like XML sitemap generation, meta tag optimization, social media integration, and advanced options for more experienced users.
Rank Math is a feature-packed SEO plugin that provides a wide range of optimization options. It offers features like advanced schema markup, redirection management, XML sitemap generation, and easy integration with popular SEO tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
IndexNow Plugin is a free plugin for WordPress that enables the automated submission of URLs to multiple search engines without having to register and verify your site.
The plugin automatically generates and hosts an API key on your site and detects when you create, update, or delete a page or post, and notifies search engines to ensure they have the latest updates about your site.
You can also toggle the automatic submission feature, manually submit a URL, view a list of recent URL submissions, retry any failed submissions from the recent submissions list, download recent URL submissions for analysis, and view the status of recent successful and failed submissions.
Access all of your URL submission tools and reports in the IndexNow Plugin Settings screen.
It’s important to track how, when, and where users are visiting your site. This data lets you see where you can make improvements to your site, increase rankings, and drive more web traffic.
BeeHive
Beehive Analytics – Google Analytics Dashboard
Beehive gives you access to powerful data insight from Google Analytics reports inside your WordPress dashboard.
With the Beehive Google Analytics Dashboard plugin installed, you can track visits, page views, bounce rate, average visit duration, and referrers, and enable advanced settings to track your site’s demographic and interest for advertising as well as analyze shopping behaviors to boost your products’ performance.
Customize your dashboard view with the stats you need from Google Analytics.
You can also easily track statistics for your entire site or network with the quick setup display.
Once installed, you can use the plugin’s dashboard to see what promotional channels are performing the best and driving the most traffic to your site.
Know what channels are sending you the most traffic and performing best on your site.
Set up analytics reports that include information like:
Analytics Overview – See all Users and Page Views for the current day, yesterday, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or across the year.
Session Report – See the number of interactions with your website taking place within a specific timeframe.
User Report – The total number of users for the requested time period.
Pageview Report – Know when a page containing your tracking code is visited.
Pages/Sessions Report – The average number of pages visited on your website per session.
Average Time on Page Report – See how long visitors are staying on your site.
Bounce Rate Report – See how many people leave your website after visiting one page.
Top Countries Report – See where your visitors are coming from.
Most Visited Page Report – Know what pages are being visited and how long visitors are staying.
Trends Report – Monitor trends and improve your content based on user behavior.
Referrals Report – See where most of your traffic is coming from and where you should be focusing most of your effort.
Medium Report – See how much traffic is coming from direct, email, referrals, social, or organic channels.
Search Engines Report – Know which browsers users are visiting your site from and use this information to improve and test your site’s performance across different browsers.
Social Networks – Learn which social networks are driving the most traffic to your site.
Beehive analytics lets you see which locations you should be targeting and which pages of your site are performing the best.
Beehive is one of the best free Google Analytics WordPress plugins available and comes packed with additional features to suit all kinds of websites, from blog and small business websites to eCommerce sites and enterprise networks, including:
Google Tag Manager integration
Built-in display advertising tracking for remarketing campaigns, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, demographic and interest reports
Security and GDPR privacy tracking features like Toggle IP Anonymization to anonymize your visitor IPs, stop demographic reports, protect user IDs, and more.
Roles and capabilities manager that let you customize reports, set what users have access to, and hide traffic data based on different user permissions.
Compare your statistics and results over different time frames.
MonsterInsights is a very popular and widely-used Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
The plugin provides a website analytics dashboard inside WordPress with real-time stats, reports, and actionable insights.
MonsterInsights Analytics Dashboard.
MonsterInsights includes many features like universal website tracking and Google Analytics 4 setup across multiple devices and campaigns, enhanced eCommerce tracking, page level analytics, tracking for affiliate links, ads, authors, categories, tags, searches, custom post types, users, and other events, GDPR compliance, and seamless tracking integration with many popular WordPress plugins and services.
Site maps help visitors find what they are looking for more quickly and easily on your site and search engines to discover more of your content.
Typically, search engines crawl your site’s content using XML Sitemaps, while visitors use HTML site maps. You can also add news sitemaps, video sitemaps, etc.
There are WordPress plugins you can use to add all kinds of sitemaps to your website.
To learn more about the differences between an HTML site map and an XML sitemap, what they are used for, and how to add them to your WordPress site, see these tutorials:
From version 5.5 onward, WordPress has included its own in-built XML sitemaps.
Since XML sitemaps are now a core feature in WordPress and it’s not recommended to have more than one XML sitemap on your site as it may confuse search engines, you could simply use the native WordPress sitemap instead of a plugin.
The native XML sitemap feature of WordPress, however, is very basic and supports only a small set of content types.
SEO plugins like SmartCrawl and Yoast SEO also include XML sitemaps that are more advanced and give you options to decide what goes into that sitemap.
For example, if you noindex a post or page in Yoast SEO, the plugin immediately removes it from your sitemap. Other features of plugin sitemaps include properties like last modified date to help crawlers distinguish between what’s new and what’s old, images, etc.
If you plan to use SmartCrawl or Yoast SEO or have installed either of these SEO plugins, you don’t need to install an additional XML sitemap plugin and can override the native sitemap that ships with WordPress.
With SmartCrawl, for example, you can configure all of your sitemap settings from the plugin’s Sitemaps screen. This includes switching to the native WordPress sitemap (which will disable SmartCrawl’s sitemap), choosing which post types to include in your sitemap, and including/excluding other posts and post types.
SmartCrawl includes a full-featured XML sitemap.
The plugin generates and updates your sitemap when new content is added, changed, or removed, and automatically notifies Google.
An XML sitemap is generated automatically by SmartCrawl.
SmartCrawl also generates a News Sitemap if your site publishes news-related articles and a Multilingual sitemap for each language you have on your site.
XML Sitemaps is a standalone XML sitemap plugin for WordPress.
The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress-generated pages and custom URLs and notifies all major search engines when you create and publish new content on your site.
WP Sitemap Page is an HTML site map plugin that automatically generates a sitemap of all your pages and posts using a shortcode.
To see an example of an HTML site map generated by this plugin, visit our own Site Map page.
We use an HTML Site Map to help site visitors find content on our site.
Note: This plugin does not generate an XML sitemap. It simply allows you to list all of your pages and posts on a single page for human visitors (i.e. not search engine bots) and exclude pages from displaying on your site map.
Whenever you change or redirect the URL of a post or page on your website to another page or website, it’s a good idea to let search engines know.
Use a WordPress plugin like the one shown below to manage your link redirections and to notify search engines that links have been redirected.
Redirection
Redirection
Redirection is a very popular link redirection management plugin for WordPress. Use this plugin to point old, removed, deleted, or trashed posts to new posts on your site or URLs on external sites, easily manage 301 redirections, and keep track of 404 errors.
Simply enter the old URL (i.e. the Source URL) and the new URL (the Target URL), click a button, and the plugin will add the necessary code to your site to inform search engines that the page with your content has moved to a new location.
Use a plugin like Redirection to let search engines know when you redirect URLs on your site.
Simply enter the old URL (i.e. the Source URL) and the new URL (the Target URL), click a button, and the plugin will add the necessary code to your site to inform search engines that the page with your content has moved to a new location.
In addition to SEO tools and services, there are a number of WordPress SEO plugins you can use to optimize your content for search engines, automate and speed up search engine notifications, and help search engines (and users) find and index more of your site’s content.
We recommend installing some of the plugins listed above and tracking your results to improve your content’s performance in the search engines.
If you need help using WordPress, see the resources below:
WordPress Training Manual – A detailed and comprehensive step-by-step WordPress user manual for non-technical website users (non-coders).
WPMU DEV Blog – Hundreds of WordPress tutorials for advanced WordPress users.
Make sure to subscribe to our updates to receive our free email course on managing your content effectively, which includes useful information and practical tips on improving your SEO using WordPress.
Use these WordPress CMS plugins to help make your Content Management System easier to use and your website easier to manage.
WordPress CMS Plugins
Use these WordPress CMS plugins to help make your Content Management System easier to use and your website easier to manage.
WordPress offers many powerful built-in features for managing and organizing your website and its content.
The CMS plugins listed in this section will help to extend and enhance the functionality of these features and make using and managing your CMS easier, more efficient, and more productive, speeding up your content publishing and allowing you to manage different business setups and production workflow requirements.
Editorial Calendar makes it easier to see the status of all posts in your blog and when they’ll be published.
From the calendar, you can edit your post titles, post content, and scheduled times, use drag and drop to move posts around and change your post dates, manage post drafts and posts from multiple authors, and a whole lot more.
Check out the video below for an overview of what you can do with this plugin:
EditFlow is a plugin that lets you collaborate with your editorial team inside WordPress. The plugin includes a number of useful content management workflow features, such as
Calendar – Provides a convenient month-by-month look at your content.
Custom Statuses – Lets you define the key stages of your workflow.
Editorial Comments – Provides threaded commenting in the admin section for private discussion between writers and editors.
Editorial Metadata – Helps you keep track of important details.
Notifications – Receive timely updates on content that you’re following.
Story Budget – View your upcoming content budget.
User Groups – Keep users organized by department or function.
Imagine having loads of published pages on your website and then having to change something in your content that appears throughout your website.
You would either have to go through every page of your website and find every instance of the content you want to change…or you can use a plugin like Better Search Replace.
Better Search Replace is a great time-saving plugin for WordPress that lets you search for text strings (e.g. words, values, dates, sentences, URLs, etc.) throughout your website and replace these quickly and automatically on your site’s database, saving you the hassle of having to manually find and replace every instance.
An example of using Better Search Replace to quickly update thousands of http links to https.
The plugin is very easy to use and requires no technical skills. After installing the plugin, go to your WordPress admin menu and select Tools > Better Search Replace.
Select Tools > Better Search Replace from your WordPress admin menu.
On the main screen, do the following:
Enter the string or URL to search into the “Search for” field,
Enter the string or URL to be replaced into the “Replace with” field,
Select one, multiple, or all database tables you want the tool to search through using Ctrl-Click (Windows) or Cmd-Click (Mac).
Make sure the “Run as dry run” checkbox is ticked In the Additional Settings section. This enables the tool to make a “dry run” search and replace query without replacing anything in your site’s database (which helps to prevent errors).
Double-check what you have entered into the Search and Replace fields, and click the Run Search/Replace button to begin the process.
In the example below, we decided to change the URL text (called the post slug) in one of our lessons, after creating our course content and adding the old URL link to many pages.
So, instead of manually going through all the course content to find every page on our website pointing to the old URL and changing it to the new URL, we simply used Better Search Replace.
After installing the plugin, we entered the old URL in the “Search for” field, and the new URL in the “Replace with” field, and selected all tables on our database to seach.
Enter the text or URL that you want to search and replace.
We then ran a “search and replace” in dry run mode. The tool found 17 instances in our site’s database that needed updating.
Dry Run results.
We then unticked the “Run as dry run” checkbox to make permanent changes and clicked the button to run the search and replace function again.
Run Search/Replace again without the dry run to make your changes.
The tool went through all of the site’s database tables and made the replacements. In our example, 47 database tables were searched and all instances of the old page URL were replaced with the new page URL.
Search and replace completed.
You can view which tables were changed by clicking on the “Click here for more details” link in the results notification.
View search/replace details.
To view full details about any changes made to your site’s database and access a whole range of advanced features, upgrade to the premium version of the plugin.
Tips:
After performing a search/replace, test and check your content to make sure that the replacement has been done correctly. This is especially important if replacing links and URLs in your content.
Use Better Search and Replace with a plugin like Broken Link Checker (described below) to avoid broken links when making changes to URLs.
Manually checking for broken links, however, can be extremely tedious and completely unnecessary when you can use a plugin instead.
Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress plugin that automatically monitors and tests all of your site’s internal and external links to help you find and fix broken links.
The plugin continually scans and reports broken links, giving you the choice of editing the URL, removing the link, marking “broken” links as working, leaving the link as is, and various other options.
Broken Link Checker lets you find and fix broken links on your site.
Redirection is a really popular link redirection management plugin for WordPress.
Use this plugin to point old, removed, deleted, or trashed posts to new posts on your site or URLs on external sites, easily manage 301 redirections, and keep track of 404 errors.
Upon installation and activation, the plugin presents you with a wizard that includes a brief overview of how to use the tool and then guides you through the setup process.
Use the Redirection wizard to set up the plugin for optimal performance.
Once the plugin is set up, you can use it to manage unlimited redirections on your site.
Manage unlimited redirections with this plugin.
Redirecting outdated links not only helps to improve user experience but also your site ranking, so this is also an essential WordPress SEO plugin.
Adding a redirection is simple:
Click on the Add New button to create a new redirection.
In Source URL enter the URL you want to redirect from.
In Target URL enter the URL you want to redirect to.
Click the Add Redirect button.
Add new redirections in a few clicks.
After adding a new redirection URL, there are various additional functions you can perform, including editing your redirection.
Easy Table of Contents lets you insert an automatically generated table of contents (ToC) into your posts, pages, and custom post types.
You can disable the ToC for specific posts and pages, choose which heading styles will display in the ToC, choose different customization options and settings, and a whole lot more.
An example of a Table of Contents automatically generated by the plugin.
You can see the plugin at work by clicking on any of the lesson pages of this course.
Visit any lesson page on this site to see a Table of Contents generated automatically using the Easy Table of Contents plugin.
Set up custom roles and capabilities using User Role Editor.
User Role Editor is a powerful free plugin that provides advanced user role management tools for WordPress.
With the plugin installed, you can easily create and edit new roles and manage permissions for all users with just a few clicks and set specific capabilities for each role separately simply by ticking or unticking checkboxes.
The User Role Editor plugin lets you easily change role capabilities by enabling or disabling checkboxes.
There are many useful things you can do with the User Role Editor plugin, such as allowing or disallowing registered users to upload files to your site or disallowing certain types of users to delete posts they have already published.
You can also customize roles and set permissions and capabilities like removing the ability of authors to publish posts on your site, forcing posts to be submitted for review by an administrator before being approved for publishing, etc.
Add related post your your posts automatically with YARPP.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) lets you automatically display pages, posts, and custom post types related to the post your site visitors are currently reading.
Once installed and activated, the plugin’s algorithm analyzes your site’s post titles, content, tags, categories, and custom taxonomies to find related content on your site and lets you display these on your posts using a range of different placement options, templates, and styles.
The plugin automatically generates related posts for your site visitors. Source: YARPP
Showing visitors relevant content from your site can help boost visitor engagement by keeping them longer on your site.
Increasing sessions and pageviews on your site can also help to improve SEO. The plugin also gives you options like displaying related content to visitors who are leaving your site.
Display related posts to visitors exiting your website. Source: YARPP
The Pro version of the plugin includes over 50 advanced features, giving you complete control over all aspects of your tables.
These features include the ability to include any post type in tables, such as blog posts, pages, documents, and more, rename table headings, display or exclude items from showing in tables using a wider range of options, choose column widths and image sizes, embed audios and videos, and a whole lot more.
Content Views is a really useful and versatile plugin for displaying your content in attractive grid and list views.
The plugin makes it easy to display and sort posts, pages, and other content types without using code using filters like recent posts, categories, tags, authors, etc.
You can also add only selected posts to a view, and arrange the list by alphabetical order, published date, random order, or by dragging them into the order you’d like to see the content displayed.
Post grids are responsive and will automatically resize to look great on all devices.
The premium version of the plugin includes many additional useful grid and filter features, including displaying custom post type, filtering by custom taxonomy and custom field, frontend filter, displaying the grid on your Blog and Category pages, displaying ads in the grid, and much more.
We have created a tutorial that shows you how we use this plugin to keep the content on this website organized here: Web Content Organization
TranslatePress is a WordPress translation plugin that lets you create a bilingual or multilingual site for targeting users in other countries with content translated into different languages.
The interface allows you to easily translate the entire page at once, including output from shortcodes, forms, and page builders. It also works out of the box with WooCommerce.
This is a self-hosted translation plugin, so you’ll own all your translations.
You can also translate images and image sliders with TranslatePress. Source TranslatePress.
Check how many post and pages are published,drafted, or scheduled and export All URLs.
Export All URLs lets you export the URLs of all your site’s pages, posts, and custom post types to a CSV file, which you can then easily import into a spreadsheet.
This plugin is useful for performing a content audit or site migration.
Duplicate Posts & Pages is a handy plugin that lets you quickly and easily duplicate (clone) posts, pages, and custom posts.
You can set up default preferences for your newly duplicated posts and pages in the plugin’s settings section.
For example, depending on your site’s configuration, you can specify which editor new posts and pages should be saved as (classic or block editor).
Additionally, you can save duplicated items as a draft, private, public, or pending post or page, select where to redirect posts/pages after creating this, and add a suffix to your duplicated post or page.
After setting your preferences, simply hover over the post or page you want to duplicate and click on “Duplicate This” in the item’s menu.
If you need to give different user roles access to the post/page duplication function or use additional features like allowing which post types can be duplicated, then consider upgrading to the Pro version of the plugin.
The video below provides an overview of the plugin’s capabilities.
Don’t want others commenting on your posts? Use the Disable Comments plugin to prevent site-wide comments in WordPress.
If you plan to selectively disable comments on individual posts then you can do this directly through WordPress. If you want to disable comments on certain post types or on your entire site, then use this plugin.
With this plugin installed, you can globally control comments on your website and disable comments according to post type, on pages, attachments, etc.
The video below provides an overview of what this plugin can do:
Optimize Database After Deleting Revisions keeps your WordPress database optimized.
WordPress (and the WordPress Autosave and Post Revisions Feature) stores all of your deleted posts, pages, comments, post revisions, spam comments, unused tags, etc. in the WordPress database.
All of this unnecessary data can significantly increase, bloat, and slow down your website.
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions is a free ‘one-click’ WordPress database optimization plugin you can use to delete all the extra table data you don’t need from your site’s database.
You can choose what to remove to avoid accidentally deleting data.
This includes:
Old post, page, or custom post revisions (you can choose to keep a certain number of your most recent revisions and delete older revisions)
Trashed posts, pages, and comments (optional)
Spam comments (optional)
Unused tags (optional)
And a whole lot more!
Optimize database After Deleting Revisions – Main Screen
You can also schedule optimization to run automatically hourly, daily, or weekly at a specific time (optional) and enable one-click database optimization links in your site’s admin bar and admin menu (optional).
After the plugin cleans up your database, it then optimizes its tables for better performance (optionally you can exclude certain tables, or even specific posts/pages, from optimization), and creates a log of the optimizations (optional).
Advanced Custom Fields is a very popular WordPress plugin that expands your Content Management System’s capabilities significantly by allowing you to add extra content fields (called custom fields) to your WordPress edit screens.
The plugin lets you create new custom fields with just a few clicks using a user-friendly field builder.
You can create as many fields as you like, each with its own name, type, and settings. Each field you create is then added to a group that allows you to organize your fields and specify the edit screens where these will appear.
In addition to posts, you can add and display custom fields on pages, custom post types, user profiles, comments, media, and more.
WPCode is a WordPress code manager that lets you insert code into headers and footers and custom code snippets.
WPCode is a code snippets plugin that makes it easy to add code snippets in WordPress without having to edit your theme’s files (note: Editing theme files like functions.php is not recommended, as you will lose all custom code functions if you update your theme or switch to another theme).
The WPCode plugin includes a built-in WordPress code snippets library.
The plugin’s Global Header and Footer interface makes it easy to add code for applications like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixels, and custom CSS to your WordPress site’s header and footer and other areas of your website.
Easily add code like Google Analytics to your site using WPCode’s Global Header and Footer screen.
You can also use WPCode to insert custom code for running different applications on your site (e.g. email newsletter forms) and then insert these into your posts and pages using a shortcode.
WPCode lets you add PHP code snippets (with smart code validation to prevent PHP errors), JavaScript code snippets, CSS code snippets, HTML code snippets, and text snippets with full conditional logic.
Add custom code snippets to WPCode and insert these into your posts and pages using a shortcode.
Use this plugin to save time inserting scripts that need to go into either the Headers or Footers section of your website and manage all your header and footer scripts and other custom code snippets from a single screen.
Some examples of codes you may want to add using this plugin include inserting:
Google Analytics tracking code.
PHP Code Snippets or JavaScript code snippets without modifying your theme’s functions.php file.
Facebook Pixels code, Google Conversion Pixels code, and other Advertising Conversion Pixel Scripts with conditional logic.
Google AdSense Ads code, Amazon Native Contextual Ads code, and other Media Ads code.
Site Verification Meta tags for Social Media, Google Search Console, and other Domain verification scripts.
Add Rich Text Ads and Content Snippets automatically on posts & pages.
This plugin is quick and easy to set up, offers a ready-made Code Snippet Library and Custom WordPress Code Snippet Generator, and lets you add unlimited code snippets. You can also export/import code snippets,
The WordPress Block Editor is part of WordPress’ Gutenberg project, which aims to redefine what is possible with the WordPress CMS.
Many new blocks are being developed to extend the power of the WordPress CMS and CoBlocks is an example of this.
CoBlocks is an innovative collection of page-building WordPress blocks for the new Gutenberg WordPress block editor.
CoBlocks turns Gutenberg into a true page builder.
It provides many additional blocks and true row and column building for a true page builder experience for Gutenberg.
CoBlocks adds true row and column-building capabilities to the WordPress block editor.
CoBlocks’ additional blocks include:
Accordion Block
Alert Block
Author Profile Block
Carousel Gallery Block
Click to Tweet Block
Collage Gallery Block
Counter Block (New!)
Dynamic Separator Block
Events Block
FAQ Block
Features Block
Food & Drinks Block
Form Block
Gif Block
GitHub Gist Block
Hero Block
Highlight Block
Icon Block
Logos & Badges Block
Map Block
Masonry Gallery Block
Media Card Block
Offset Gallery Block
OpenTable Reservations Block
Post Carousel Block
Posts Block
Pricing Table Block
Resizable Row/Columns Blocks
Services Block
Shape Divider Block
Social Profiles Block
Social Sharing Block
Stacked Gallery Block
CoBlocks provides many additional blocks to the WordPress Block Editor.
As well as providing many additional blocks, CoBlocks also gives you custom typography controls that let you design web pages and control typographic elements including fonts, sizes, weights, transformations, and more.
Additionally, here are some other useful WordPress plugins that will help you manage your site and its content more effectively:
Smush – Image Optimization
Smush – WordPress image optimization plugin.
Smush is an easy-to-use plugin with an intuitive dashboard and advanced settings that speeds up your website’s loading time, improves its performance, and prevents your website from becoming slow and sluggish.
It does this by optimizing your website’s images, making them smaller in size without sacrificing quality. This results in faster loading times and improved website performance.
With Smush Pro, you can optimize unlimited images in bulk at once with just a few clicks and use features like lazy loading and automatic compression to further improve your website’s speed. Plus, with Super Smush multi-pass lossy compression, you can save up to 2x the space without sacrificing image quality.
Smush Pro also offers a CDN for faster optimization results and can preserve image EXIF data.
By using Smush Pro, you can experience faster load times, reduced server space usage, and better web accessibility for all of your site’s users.
Hummingbird is a powerful performance and optimization plugin for WordPress that will help improve your website’s speed and performance.
Hummingbird Pro offers advanced features such as minification, GZIP compression, browser caching, and image optimization, which can help to significantly improve website speed and performance.
It also includes a performance report that examines the same vital components of your website as Google PageSpeed Insights and gives you an overall score out of 100, as well as scores for aspects of your site that you may want to consider fixing, including render-blocking resources, server response time, image optimization, and minification.
Other benefits of using Hummingbird Pro include uptime monitoring, which keeps an eye on your site around the clock and notifies you if anything goes wrong, including slow response times, server errors, and pages disappearing.
Defender is a plugin that provides complete security for WordPress sites.
Defender offers a range of features such as scheduled security scans, vulnerability reports, safety recommendations, blacklist monitoring, and customized hardening for your site.
Defender Pro also includes secure cloud-based audit logs so you can see every change made to your site, plugin and theme code file change detection, and automated scans and reports with va checklist of all issues that need fixing.
Defender Pro deters hackers with IP banning, login lockout, updating security keys, two-factor authorization, and more. It prevents brute force attacks, SQL injections, cross-site scripting XSS, and prevents hackers from exploiting WordPress vulnerabilities.
Defender Pro also offers a range of benefits such as easy installation, one-click security tweaks, disabling trackbacks and pingbacks, hiding error reporting, preventing information disclosure, preventing PHP execution, changing the location of WordPress’s default login area with login masking, enabling round-the-clock firewall protection, setting up login lockout, automating blocking of bot IPS with 404 detention, blocking users based on location with geolocation IP lockout, blocking or allowing IPs with IP Banning, and enabling two-factor authentication.
SmartCrawl is a powerful plugin that helps optimize the on-page SEO of your website for search engines, improve your online presence, increase website traffic, and create better user engagement.
SmartCrawl offers a range of features that help optimize your website for search engines, including automated SEO scanning, real-time keyword and content analysis, detailed audits and reports, and one-click recommendations.
With SmartCrawl Pro, you can create targeted content that ranks at the top of your favorite search engine. It also allows you to fine-tune your title and description on each post and page, create comprehensive sitemaps for your site, verify your site with Google and Bing, connect to a free Moz account for SEO reporting, and enable automatic internal link building.
SmartCrawl Pro is easy to use and comes with a setup wizard that walks you through the most important settings. It also offers multiple keyword analysis, additional SEO recommendations, the ability to disable SEO and readability analysis in the post list, and more.
Forminator is a versatile form builder plugin for WordPress.
Forminator is an easy-to-use and feature-rich form builder plugin that lets you create a wide range of forms, from simple contact forms to complex order forms with payment collection, polls, quizzes, and more.
Forminator Pro includes extra features such as forms that let you collect eSignatures.
Hustle is a lead generation plugin that lets you create effective pop-ups, slide-ins, and embeds for your site.
Hustle is a plugin that provides unlimited pop-ups, slide-ins, email opt-ins, and social sharing modules for marketing campaigns.
With Hustle Pro, you can create and customize modules to grow your email list and increase subscribers, leads, and customers by displaying targeted ads with unblockable popups, slide-ins, opt-ins, and embeds.
Hustle Pro seamlessly integrates with over 1000 third-party applications and provides conversion reports with configurable metrics.
Use Snapshot for safe, convenient, and space-efficient WordPress backups.
Snapshot is a backup plugin for WordPress that allows you to create and manage backups of your website’s data and store these on-site and off-site with FTP and SFTP, Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, and WPMU DEV cloud.
Snapshot Pro lets you restore a website easily from the admin dashboard, even when the site is down or locked up.
With Snapshot Pro, you can create unlimited snapshots, schedule backups, and customize what’s backed up. You can also store unlimited snapshots, auto-remove old backups, set backup intervals, and download log files.
The plugin is also flexible when it comes to backing up WordPress, allowing you to back up a single install of WordPress or, back up the main site and sub-sites of a Multisite network separately.
You can also manage snapshots directly in the WordPress dashboard or use the plugin in conjunction with WPMU DEV’s managed backups to save backups to multiple locations, creating redundant backups and ensuring no loss of content in the event of a hack or error.
Branda is a white-labeling and admin-customizing plugin for WordPress that allows you to customize every aspect of WordPress, from the front end to the back end of your website.
Branda Pro offers a wide range of features, including the ability to reorganize the admin menu and bar, create custom login, maintenance mode, and coming soon pages, personalize widgets, add new help content, create a custom color scheme, add custom CSS, choose a new email template, edit the author box, create a personalized cookie notice, personalize the database error page, add header and footer content, control comments, select a new favicon, and set text replacement rules.
With Branda Pro, you can completely white-label WordPress with over 30 modules for customizing the dashboard. This is useful for WordPress developers and design agencies, or if you plan to provide WordPress sites to other users fully branded as your own (or just want to customize your own site).
Shipper is a WordPress plugin that helps you migrate WordPress sites from one host to another, simplifying the migration process, and saving you time and money.
The plugin offers two forms of migration: API Migration and Package Migration. API Migration transfers everything directly to the new site using a secure API, while Package Migration creates a package of the site’s files and databases that can be manually uploaded to the new host.
Shipper also offers pre-flight checks and helpful hints to speed up the migration process, as well as accurate ETA’s and calculated website sizes. Additionally, Shipper Pro handles moving local to production, development to live, and offers password confirmation to protect connected sites from hackers.
There are a number of WordPress CMS plugins you can use to automate tasks in your Content Management System and make running your WordPress site easier and more securely.
We recommend installing some of the plugins listed above and learning how to use these to manage your WordPress CMS more effectively.
The above is just a small sample of plugins you can use to enhance your WordPress CMS.
If you need help using WordPress, see the resources below:
WordPress Training Manual – A detailed and comprehensive step-by-step WordPress user manual for non-technical website users (non-coders).
WPMU DEV Blog – Hundreds of WordPress tutorials for advanced WordPress users.
Make sure to subscribe to our updates to receive our free email course on managing your content effectively, which includes useful information and practical tips on using WordPress as a CMS.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
There are many WordPress plugins you can use to help you plan, organize, curate, protect, and even create content for your site.
There are many different ways for your visitors to engage with your business through your website.
This section provides examples of various WordPress media plugins you can use to manage files in your content and on your site, like:
WordPress offers many powerful built-in features for managing and organizing your website and its content.
