Guest Post – Today’s host is Jennifer Mathews, who provides a great list of the best new WordPress plugins for your blog. See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.
A great thing about WordPress is its seemingly endless list of plug-ins, all providing some sort of enhanced functionality over the other to improve the overall web experience when it comes to blogging. Dozens of new WordPress Plug-ins are released every few days, which means that blog owners should constantly be on the lookout for these to ensure that their blog is completely optimized and up-to-date.
Below we will talk about 10 latest WordPress plug-ins that are making waves this year. All are readily available on the official WordPress website and have received positive feedback from viewers, myself included. Given, that these plug-ins are still new and improved versions can come about, as of now they are one of the best options available for WordPress blog owners.
1) Verelo Blog Monitoring Plug-in
This plug-in ensures that the blog is free of malware and viruses and monitors the status of your blog around the clock. Users get an instant notification via text message, phone or email when their blog downloads or experiences any kind of malfunction.
2) Google Translate, Bing Translator
This plug-in is very helpful if you wish to reach a wider audience on your blog. It displays two options which can translate your web via Google or Bing Translator. There are over 70 languages to choose from including some of the most popular ones. This ensures that everyone can participate on your blog regardless of language.
3) Follow Us On Widget
This plug is one of many albeit very stable plug-in that allows bloggers to add popular social networking widgets such as FaceBook ‘Like’, Twitter ‘Follow’, Google ‘Plus One’ and even Pinterest ‘Pin’ button.
4) Battlefield 3 Server Stats
It’s nice to see plug-ins related to gaming making their way into WordPress. Battlefield 3 fanatics will really love this one. It’s an easy to install plug-in that displays the stats of your active BF3 server. It’s a great way to show off your gaming expertise and a great addition if your blog is focused on console or PC gaming.
5) Esponse QR Code Generator
QR Code Generators have been gaining steady popularity over the years. Now people have even started to embed them in their blogs and thankfully this plug-in from Esponse offers a seamless way to integrate them into your WordPress theme. It’s a great marketing tool if you run a business or e-commerce blog.
6) yBlog Stats
You will often find that some of the best WordPress plug-ins are also the simplest in nature. This tiny, simple plug-in is extremely handy to have. It keeps count of pages, posts, post word count and comments on your blog.
7) Slide Show Plug-in
There are many new WordPress Plug-ins to implement slide-shows but this one in particular looks promising. One of the best things about it is that unlike other slideshow plug-ins, there are no size restrictions with this one. Any size image will work just fine.
8) SiteTree Plug-in
It is recommended that only advance WordPress users use this plug-in as it requires configuring a very sensitive and integral component of a WP blog, the XML site map. Users can customize a sitemap page directly from the administration area. It also allows users to sort posts by title and popularity.
9) Twitter Chat
If you love to tweet, you will love this new WordPress Plug-in. It connects your blog visitors to Twitter within seconds and anything that they type in the widget area gets directly converted into a tweet and sent to you. It’s a great way of conversing back and forth with your blog visitors using Twitter as a medium.
10) NPR Radio Plug-in
I’ll admit it – this one is more of an acquired taste! Those you who are big on sports can now choose from a variety of sports plug-ins. However, if you prefer good quality unbiased latest news, the National Public Radio plug-in is the one you would want to choose. It can be seamlessly integrated into your blog and keep you and yours blog users updated around the clock. Another cool feature of this plug-in is that it also allows you to customize the style of the radio.
These are some of the latest and newest WordPress plugs-ins available for 2012. There are many more that can be added to the list but I feel that these ten deserve a shot on your blog. Download them and try them to see if you find them as useful as I did.
By Guest Author –Jennifer Mathews is a creative logo design consultant for LogoSnap.com, helping small businesses create a brand image and grow their online presence. She likes to stay ahead of trends, explore new mediums and blog about her experiences.