Extend Your WP Functionality with The Best WordPress Plugins for 2018

There are some things that are frustrating for a web designer. One of these is attempting to satisfy a client’s specific need and not having the right tools to do so easily.

A quick check of these Best WordPress Plugins for 2018 will reveal some areas where you might need help. Maybe, you’ve faced this problem and wish you had one or more of these plugins to help you work it.

Have you ever been called upon to create tables or charts from complex data? Maybe, you’ve been asked to design a portfolio to satisfy a specific client’s requirement? If the answer is yes, then you know what we mean when we say there are plugins that you might need. They will allow you to avoid or easily resolve these problems.

And here they are, each one ready to be downloaded to upgrade your WordPress website.

1. wpDataTables

Charts and tables are typically used because of their ability to summarize information based on data in compact and easy to understand formats. They are not always easy to prepare however, and more than a few web designers view the prospect of having to deal with them with dread.

wpDataTables changes all that. This table and chart producing WordPress plugin is so useful, and has become so popular, that web designers have been known to transfer their projects over to the WordPress platform to be able to use this plugin. This is especially true forthose whose clients work with large amounts of complex data and data typically associated with scientific studies, large inventory management projects, statistics, and the world of finance.

Data for the tables and charts can come from many different sources (MySQL tables for example, when huge amounts of data need to be summarized).Key information can be highlighted and/or color-coded, and wpDataTables’ charts and tables are responsive and easy to maintain and update.

2. LayerSlider

When you’re looking for a tool to do a specific type of task, it can become all to easy to focus on searching for one that will “get the job done” and overlookingtools that will not only do the task at hand but have other powerful and highly useful features as well.

Such is the case with LayerSlider. LayerSlider is much more than a slider-building tool. A “multi-purpose animation platform” is the best description of this popular WordPress plugin. The drag and drop visual editor enables you to go well beyond slider design. With its versatile layout options, you can create everything from image galleries to slideshows, and from animated page blocks to entire websites; and no coding is required.

Your sliders, galleries, landing pages, etc. will be device-friendly too, and you can even incorporate popups into your websites that visitors will find helpful.

3. NextGEN Gallery & NextGEN Pro

Any of Next GEN’s family of gallery design WP plugins can take your gallery design efforts to the next level. The family includes the free NextGEN Gallery plugin, and three premium packages including NextGEN Pro. These plugins have been downloaded more than 20 million times. NextGEN Gallery has set the pace as the industry standard gallery plugin for 10 years running; accounting for an average of 1.5 million downloads a year.

Whether you need to build a simple gallery with a few images, or manage and display large numbers of images, NextGEN Gallery is simple to use. You’ll have no problem grouping images in albums, creating thumbnail images, and putting into play NextGEN’s style, sizing, transition, and lightbox display options.

We suggest you start with the free NextGEN Gallery plugin to see what it can do for you. Then you can check out the extensions and features NextGEN Pro offers.

4. REXPANSIVE – Page Builder for WordPress

Rexpansive is a standalone drag and drop page-builder plugin that features an automation feature that makes it not only highly useful, but unique as well. Once you’ve created your layout, you can expand or move photos, text, or videos without having to resort to manual settings.

With the help of this expansion feature, you can easily and automaticallychangean attractive web page layout into something spectacular!

5. CSS Hero

You have a website based on a WordPress theme, and you want to further customize its appearance. The problem is, that’s something that is often difficult to do. CSS Hero’s WYSIWYG Live CSS Editor solves that problem. It gives you greater control over your presentations by allowing you to tweak your theme’s CSS non-destructively, add custom fonts and useful CSS snippets, and preview how your edits will appear on mobile devices.

6. Blog2Social

Blog2Social provides a smart social media avenue for WordPress. While you will find its social media post automation feature useful and a time saver, Blog2Social also gives you the ability to individualize posts by varying content, formats, and images to give them a personal touch.

Another important feature is the Social Media calendar. Here, the calendar’s dates and times of scheduled posts can be rearranged by drag and drop and different posts can be highlighted in different colors.

7. Helpie Knowledge Base Plugin

Helpie is a knowledge base plugin that will help you create a knowledge base of documentation for your products and service, a Wiki knowledge base for your team, or a private knowledge base for your clients. By using this plugin, you can experience a reduction in customer support requests, improve team sharing and collaboration, improve your website’s SEO capability, invite feedback, and manage and control knowledge base access.

8. Heroic Knowledge Base

The Heroic Knowledge Base plugin is designed to enable you to use your website knowledge base to your best advantage. Its lightning-fast search feature helps visitors find what they need in an instant.

Heroic Knowledge Base also enables you to collect feedback on article access and use, and quickly analyze how visitors are benefiting from the content in the knowledge base. You can also give your visitors downloads attached to articles

9. Final Tiles Gallery

Try as you might, there comes a time when all your gallery creations begin to exhibit a certain sameness. The likely culprit is the need for constant image sizes and aspect ratios. The Final Tiles plugin relieves you of having to be bound by these constraints. Now, you can mix and match images that differ in size and aspect ratio in the same gallery. You can mix videos in with you images, create albums, add captions and special effects, and more.

10. Essential Grid WordPress Plugin

The Essential Grid WordPress Plugin, the #1 WordPress grid-building solution, is more powerful than its name implies. With the help of this plugin, you can create highly customizable grids to display your content formats on.

As a result, you’ll find it much easier to create truly unique image galleries, product displays in shops, portfolio and blog layouts, and even social media stream formats.

Conclusion

You might already have a multi-purpose WordPress theme among your tools. But sometimes, multi-purpose falls short of “do everything imaginable’ and “do everything perfectly”. That is why plugins can be so valuable.

You won’t find chart and table builders, and flexible grid systems without these plugins! They will provide you with social media content management and other key functionalities. Quality results will not make you wait. Picking one or more can make your day!

The post Extend Your WP Functionality with The Best WordPress Plugins for 2018 appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.