Recommended Plugins

Online Learning Services’ top picks for WordPress plugins.

Website Accessibility

WP Accessibility

This plugin helps with a variety of common accessibility problems in WordPress themes. While most accessibility issues are best addressed by directly changing the theme, WP Accessibility adds a number of helpful accessibility features to help make your website accessible to users with disabilities.

accessibility toolbar settings


Site/User Administration

User Role Editor

This plugin allows you to change/add/delete WordPress user roles and capabilities. User Role Editor is especially useful if you want others to contribute to your site, but would like to specify exactly what you’d like them to be able to do. For example, you might want to add an Author to your site and have them create and publish their own posts and pages. However, Authors are not able to embed within a post or page that they create. The User Role Editor plugin gives you a way to give each user exactly what they need.

options in the user role editor plugin

 

Members

Members allows you create additional user levels, as well as blocking actual post content from being viewed by users not of a certain level. This plugin might be useful if you want to host your personal information or blog and your professional work on the same site.

members settings on a post


Event Registration and Management

Events Manager

Fully featured event registration management including recurring events, locations management, calendar, Google map integration, and booking management.

 


 

Search Engine Optimization

Yoast SEO

Widely regarded as the SEO plugin for WordPress. It has an extensive feature set and rave reviews. Includes XML sitemap features.

wordpress seo plugin


 

Social

Contact Form 7

A very popular contact form tool, this is more basic than others but nevertheless effective, dispensing with bells and whistles for core contact form effectiveness.

example of a completed form using contact form 7

 

Simple Share Buttons Adder

This plugin offers a wide range of share buttons that you can add to help your readers share your content. You have a range of options to customize your share buttons, and can include them on any page or post.

example of different buttons that can be created with plugin


 

Spam-Blocking

Akismet

Comes with WordPress, but if you haven’t activated and added an API key yet, you’re missing out. It really does stop the hordes of spam comments that come every hour.

askismet plugin


 

Website Functionality

Responsive Menu

This is a highly customizable responsive menu plugin, with 63 customizable options for a nice mobile menu or tablet menu experience. It can be used as a responsive menu, mobile menu, tablet menu or full dedicated menu for your main site.

responsive menu on mobile device


 

Other

Comprehensive Google Map Plugin

A simple and intuitive Google map plugin that installs as a widget. Custom Google Maps can appear in your website!

google maps

 

Page Builder by Site Origin

A simple drag and drop page builder that allows you to customize the look and organization of your page. This is an extremely useful plugin for those who want further control over the layout of their pages without needed to code it.

page builder plugin

 

Cyclone Slider 2

An easy to use slider plugin, allowing you to drag and drop to reorder slider images.

cyclone slider plugin

 

Sources: Penguin Initiatives