The Ten Most Exciting Free Plugins of March 2016
Plugins are the icing on the WordPress cake. With a few clicks, new and exciting features become available. Every month, I hope to find a great, surprisingly cool plugin for you and me that provides just the features that we have wanted for the longest time. So, let me surprise you with what I found in the WordPress plugin index this month.
Simple Social Media creates the popular follow buttons for your social networks. The icon's colors can be adjusted, and, via shortcode, they can be placed wherever you want to, even within text widgets.
This plugin is almost a must-have for websites that need to earn money. It deactivates the adblocker and shows the ads even to users with active adblockers.
The »Email download link« plugin allows you to give away PDF files or e-books to your readers. Before the download, your users need to enter their name and email address, then the plugin will unlock the download. Additionally, an email with a download link to the e-book or the PDF file will be sent to your users. So, you get the same functionality used by large blogs for these purposes.
WP Knowledge Base is your base of all knowledge. This plugin allows you to create a kind of reference book of knowledge, tutorials, documentation, and much more.
This plugin gives you as an administrator the option to send an email to registered users directly from WordPress. This can be done for one single user, or for a bulk of registered users. Undoubtedly an interesting feature for member websites, or blogs with multiple authors.
With this plugin, you can give your team lots of exposure. It can display your team's members in an appealing way, and, on top of that, it's responsive. Every team member can be presented with a photo, job title, and the respective social networks. It comes with a shortcode generator for the WordPress editor, so you can comfortably integrate your team anywhere on every article or page.
When selling ebooks on Amazon or other providers like Google Play Books or iBooks, this plugin will be the one for you. It creates a widget for the sidebar and displays the book's title, the cover, and links to the providers.
TK Google Fonts lets you use the variety of Google fonts in your theme. You can easily set the fonts in the WordPress theme customizer, and see how they will look on your website. The plugin only loads the fonts that you choose. Thus, it won't affect the theme's loading time (much).
1 - Simple Social Media
Simple Social Media creates the popular follow buttons for your social networks. The icon's colors can be adjusted, and, via shortcode, they can be placed wherever you want to, even within text widgets.
- Developer: newscope
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.16.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
2 - Anti-Adblock Adbreach
This plugin is almost a must-have for websites that need to earn money. It deactivates the adblocker and shows the ads even to users with active adblockers.
- Developer: Robin Heckmann
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.16.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
3 - SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly Images adds the alt and title tags required for Google to used images and graphics. This improves the ranking of your images on Google image search. No further settings are needed.- Developer: scottie
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.16.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
4 - Email download link
The »Email download link« plugin allows you to give away PDF files or e-books to your readers. Before the download, your users need to enter their name and email address, then the plugin will unlock the download. Additionally, an email with a download link to the e-book or the PDF file will be sent to your users. So, you get the same functionality used by large blogs for these purposes.
- EDeveloper: gopiplus
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.16.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
5 - WP Knowledge Base
WP Knowledge Base is your base of all knowledge. This plugin allows you to create a kind of reference book of knowledge, tutorials, documentation, and much more.
- Developer: Kyle M Brown
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.16.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
6 - WP Email Users
This plugin gives you as an administrator the option to send an email to registered users directly from WordPress. This can be done for one single user, or for a bulk of registered users. Undoubtedly an interesting feature for member websites, or blogs with multiple authors.
- Developer: techspawn1
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.15.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
7 - WP Our Team
With this plugin, you can give your team lots of exposure. It can display your team's members in an appealing way, and, on top of that, it's responsive. Every team member can be presented with a photo, job title, and the respective social networks. It comes with a shortcode generator for the WordPress editor, so you can comfortably integrate your team anywhere on every article or page.
- Developer: themeidol
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.15.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
8 - Book Widget
When selling ebooks on Amazon or other providers like Google Play Books or iBooks, this plugin will be the one for you. It creates a widget for the sidebar and displays the book's title, the cover, and links to the providers.
- Developer: fweep
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.15.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
9 - TK Google Fonts
TK Google Fonts lets you use the variety of Google fonts in your theme. You can easily set the fonts in the WordPress theme customizer, and see how they will look on your website. The plugin only loads the fonts that you choose. Thus, it won't affect the theme's loading time (much).
- Developer: Sven Lehnert
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.15.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
10 - Advanced EU Cookie Law Consent
This plugin takes care of meeting the European data protection guideline on cookies. Since 2011, all commercially used websites have to meet the cookie data protection guidelines and display a message. This plugin is also especially important for users of Google Adsense ads, as Google requires you to use one of these plugins. »Advanced EU Cookie Law Consent« allows you to customize this message so that it fits your website's design.
- Developer: yanniskir
- Work in progress: yes
- Latest version from: 03.15.2016
- Costs: free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Known compatibility issues: unknown
- Developer Homepage: unknown
- Download on WordPress.org
Nice. I’m going to try out knowledge base for a faq