Recommended Plugins

As part of the package you can choose from the following Plugins.

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  • SEO Ultimate – A complete SEO plugin solution, which includes control over the robots.txt configuration.
  • All in one SEO Pack – One of the most popular plugins, great for optimizing your blog. The name however is a little misleading because it does not include robot.txt configuration for each pages so it is advisable to also install the Robots Meta plugin.
  • Robots Meta – Needed in order to configure the robot.txt file. The robot.txt file controls whether search engines will index particular pages and whether they’ll follow links on that page. If you’re using the  All in one SEO Pack this is a good companion. Note that if you select the SEO Ultimate instead of All in one SEO Pack you’ll not need Robots Meta.
  • Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Improves your internal linking structure by providing links to related post at the bottom of every blog post. This is handy for your web viewers too.
  • Google XML Sitemaps with qTranslate Support – Enables you to easily create a sitemap that is compatible with search engines.  It automatically notifies search engines whenever you make changes to your pages or posts.
  • Broken Link Checker – Checks internal and external links in your website. This is good for SEO because it assures you that your web pages will be crawled properly.

Website Content

  • Contact Form 7 – Another very popular plugin. It is the most customizable contact form plugin available. It gives you a lot of control over the layout of the contact form, and even allows you to insert an image. You can add anti-spam protection to your contact form through the use of another plugin called  Really Simple Captcha.  Note that while this plugin is very customizable it does require some knowledge of HTML in order to set up the contact form. (As part of our packages we would set up the form for you, but we just like to mention that it’s perhaps not the most user-friendly in case you want to make changes later yourself)
  • Really Simple Captcha – Adds an anti-spam captcha image to your contact form. Captcha is the word your visitors type in to prove they are humans and not spam bots. This plugin is to be used in conjunction with Contact Form 7.
  • FormBuilder – A versitile form for your site visitors. It is easy to create a new form or amend an exiting one as you have drop down options for the fields you’d like to include in your form. No HTML knowledge is required. FormBuilder is good if you want to ask more varied questions – such as a request a quote form, feedback form or a short questionnaire.
  • WordPress Video Plugin – Easily embeds videos into your site, it supports 63 video sites including YouTube.
  • Twitter Goodies – Shows your tweets on a page, post or widget area of your site.
  • Registered Users Only – When we develop your site we will add this plugin so that only you and us can see it before it’s ready. This plugin basically means only people with a valid username and password can see the content of the site. So that this plugin doesn’t use up your allocated plugin allowance we will deactivate it when we move the site to your domain and hosting account. If after your site has been moved you still wish to protect it, for example if you’re not ready to go live immediately or the website is a personal blog and you only want your friends and family to read it. Under such circumstance we can leave this plugin active and it will count as one of your allowed plugins. Note that we will not set up user accounts other than one for you and one for us.
  • Subscribe2 – Notifies your registered users or subscribers through email every time you publish a post on your website.
  • CGM Events Calendar – Adds a calendar to your site, with weekly and monthly views, you even have the option to categorize calendar entries. It also comes with an ‘Upcoming Events’ widget which means you can show a small number of events with their corresponding dates in your sidebar or other widget area.
  • Promotion Slider – Enables you to insert a slider in your website. A slider is a rotating set of images. You can link these images to special promotion pages, any other page or post, or you can turn off the linking altogether and use it as a way to display a portfolio.
  • WPaudio MP3 Player – Enables you to insert MP3’s in to your post, and even allows your visitors to download them. Just make sure you have the rights to allow you visitors to download these audio files. This plugin is ideal for those who want to include podcasts or prefer to speak rather than write their blogs posts.
  • WP-Testimonials – You can easily add testimonials to your site with this plugin. The testimonials you enter will all display on a single page in full, but you can also pick out the best bit of the testimonial and show it in the sidebar or other widget area. The testimonials widget only shows one testimonial at a time, but picks a different testimonial to show each time the page loads, so it varies it up.

Website Layout and Design

  • Display Widgets – By default WordPress shows the same widgets on every page, but this plugin gives you the option to choose which pages your widgets appear on.
  • WP Title 2 – This will allow you to have one name for a page in the navigation bar, but a different page title at the top of the page of text. So your navigation bar could read “Home”, but the main heading on the page may read “Welcome to our website”, this is not only user friendly but great for SEO as it allows you to insert your keywords into the heading of the page.
  • Page Links to – Allows you to turn a page in to a link. This is good if you want to include a link in your navigation bar to an external website.

Anti-Spam

  • Akismet – The most popular WordPress plugin, and was even created by the the creators of WordPress itself. It checks comments against it’s own database to determine if they are spam. This plugin is free for personal use, but business owners or professional bloggers etc are looking at a monthly cost of $5 or more depending upon the type of site(s) you have. If you’d like to use this plugin you will have to sign up for an API key, we will install and activate the plugin as part of the package, but you will be responsible for any ongoing subscription costs.
  • Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam – This is a free alternative to Akismet. The anti-spam protection in this case is a captcha image that users need to complete when adding a comment. Nota that some people choose not to add such a captcha image because they fear that making more work for blog commenters will put people off, however once your page gets popular this plugin will save you a lot of time deleting spammy comments.

Those purchasing a starter package may select 3 from the above list, those opting for the Business package will get 5. If this is not enough then for $5.00 per plugin we can install and configure as many as you like. If the plugin you want is not listed, not a problem – for only $10.00 we can install and configure any plugin. Just give us the name of the plugin and we’ll set it up. Note that if it is a premium plugin (i.e. not free), then you will need to purchase the plugin and send the installation file or link to us. The $10.00 only covers installation and configuration.

With so many plugins available today, there are often several plugins which appear to do the same thing, but with a few differences. If you know you want to add a particular feature to your site, but don’t know which plugin would be best, then we can help you out. For $40.00 per plugin we will gather your requirements, and then try out different plugins on your website to see which one would be most suitable. We will only review free plugins as premium plugin providers do not tend to have a ‘try before you buy’ policy which means we can’t fully check them out without purchasing them. The stated fee includes installation and configuration of the recommended plugin.

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