If you have any experience in WordPress development, you know that plugins can make your life easier with shortcuts and website management tools. But before we start with our list of the best WordPress plugins to try out this year, we will shortly explain what exactly plugins are and how they work.
Putting it simply, a plugin is an addition that integrates with WordPress to solve problems regarding building and managing websites. A plugin allows web developers to add features to their sites and optimize their functionality easily. Most of the plugins are user-friendly and don’t require coding knowledge due to their automatization. With plugins, you can easily improve your website, including its performance, SEO, traffic, and much more.
There are thousands of available WordPress plugins to choose from in 2021, but most reviews focus on the most popular ones, such as Yoast, Jetpack, or Wordfence. There is no doubt that these plugins are useful; however, a lot of high-quality plugins with effective features don’t get the same amount of attention. This is why we put together a list of our favorite plugins that you must try out this year:
WP Sticky
This user-friendly plugin is the ideal tool for creating sticky elements on your website. Adding sticky elements, such as a sticky menu or a sticky header, can be useful to remind your visitors of important information or to encourage them to take action. However, creating sticky elements can sometimes be tricky. They can require a certain level of coding to work properly.
Luckily for inexperienced web developers, this plugin will take care of everything without demanding a single line of code. When you are using WP Sticky, you can forget about the technical stuff and concentrate on designing your sticky elements. The plugin is straightforward to use since all the elements can be picked out visually.
With this plugin, you can make any element on the webpage sticky in no time. For example, you can choose to add a sticky menu or a sticky header. After adding the elements, you can customize their positions, z-indexes, opacities, scroll ranges, and spaces between the top of the page and the elements. The plugin will make as many components as you want stick quickly and efficiently. The number of sticky elements you can create is not limited.
Sticky elements can sometimes be inconvenient for smaller devices and change their shape and form. The WP Sticky plugin took care of this problem by adding an option to disable sticky elements on certain devices. You can choose the unwanted devices by their screen sizes and even add custom values for your preferred screen sizes.
If you want to get extra creative, you can even add effects to your sticky elements. Those effects can differ from fading in, to sliding up, depending on your creative needs and preferences. The plugin is compatible with every WordPress theme, other plugins, and page builders, so there is no concern that it will cause any interference.
WP Sticky also provides advanced options that can help deal with problems like outdated themes or bugs. You can see some examples of how it works on their webpage. The developers of this plugin will answer any of your questions if you contact their full-time professional support.
Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode
Every developer knows that there are times when your website simply can’t be open to the public. The reasons can be various: fixing a bug, trying out new themes, or even publishing the website to inform the visitors that something is coming up.
Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode is the ideal tool for setting up a coming soon or maintenance page in WordPress. With it, you can create attractive and efficient landing pages to let your users know what’s going on. It is very easy-to-use, even if you have no coding skills.
The plugin offers a variety of features, such as:
- creating and managing multiple licenses,
- more than 2 million high-resolution images to choose from,
- more than 170 customizable and professionally designed themes,
- SEO tracking and analysis tools,
- remotely control all of your sites.
If you want, you even have the option to fully rebrand this plugin by changing the name, descriptions, and visuals. You can make it completely your own by removing all of its brandings and including a custom logo, custom colors, and CSS. The plugin is very flexible and works with any other WordPress theme or plugin.
WP 301 Redirects
This plugin is a lifesaver when you are changing the URL of an old post or even an entire page. Since the visitors will still find and click on the old URL, you need a way to redirect them to the new one. This is very important if you don’t want to lose your users while you are working on the new URLs.
With this plugin, you can easily create and manage URL redirects. You can set it up to automatically redirect the visitors to the content they were looking for. This is a great way to show your users that you don’t want to waste their time and keep their content by providing them with a relevant website.
Apart from your users, it is also essential to inform Google and other search engines that you are editing your URLs. If you do this, they will know exactly how to find them, and you won’t lose traffic. The plugin monitors and analyses all the traffic coming to the 404 pages and doesn’t work on bots.
WP 301 Redirects plugin instantly creates a redirect rule the moment it detects a change. It supports Google Analytics and other traffic analysis tools and works with every WordPress theme and plugin.
Google Maps Widget PRO
This tool allows you to add customizable maps anywhere on your website. You can adjust the design of every map to fit your website style. It is possible to add maps in the form of a widget or a shortcode, with the option to choose between street views, directions, satellite, and much more.
The number of maps you can add to your website is not limited. You don’t have to be concerned about a lot of maps slowing down your site because this plugin will not compromise its speed in any way. You can add maps anywhere you want, to various post types, sidebars, menus, just to name a few options. The plugin works perfectly on every type of device, which means you will also reach the users on-the-go.
The Google Maps Widget PRO plugin makes sure that you can use Google Maps without paying for it. It works for free because it substitutes the Pay per View option with a map image thumbnail.
Due to Google requirements, you need to install an API key in order to use this plugin. You can set it up in no time with the help of the plugin itself. It doesn’t demand any coding experience to create good-looking and efficient maps on your website. All you need to do is simply copy the shortcode and paste it in the position where you want to place the map.
WP Author Box
This plugin allows you to create author boxes that you can place above or under your posts. Author boxes contain important information, such as the author’s name, short description, and avatar, just to name a few. You can choose to make them fully your own or pick one of numerous professionally designed templates.
If you want to start from zero, the plugin offers the possibility to adjust every part of the author box. The adjustable parts include the color palettes, font types and sizes, margins, padding, layout, and much more.
This plugin is convenient for coworking. With it, you can easily select and accredit guest authors for their work. You can also assign blog posts to different creators and properly acknowledge their contributions. You can increase efficiency by displaying the most popular authors and posts on your website.
There is an option to associate author boxes with certain post types. This way, they will automatically appear there. You can customize links inside the author boxes, choose to open them in a new tab, or select their destination page.
To further introduce the audience to the authors, you can even add social media buttons in the author boxes. The plugin provides support for every social media out there, with the option to choose from more than 45 platforms.
Conclusion
The WordPress plugin directory offers almost 60,000 different tools to choose from, and some of them are talked about more than others. Choosing the right plugin is not an easy task. This is exactly why we put together this list of the best less-known plugins that will save you a lot of time, effort, and money.
A good plugin can be a real time saver. It can help you to build and maintain an attractive, efficient, and successful website. Depending on your objectives, you can try out those plugins that fit your needs and preferences perfectly. Let 2021 be the year in which you will finally achieve your goals and make the best possible improvements to your website.
