9 Super Valuable WordPress Plugins for 2017

WordPress has become the most popular CMS in the web designer’s world. As a standalone system, it’s not all that glamourous. What makes WordPress attractive is the ease in which it can be customized with themes and plugins; to do what you need to have done.

No matter what functionality you might want to incorporate in a website, there are so many plugins out there, that there are bound to be one or more that can get the job done. The sheer number yet, can make finding the right one, or even a good one, a challenge. It boils down to an exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff.

The good news is, we’ve done most of the heavy lifting for you in locating the best WordPress plugins in certain categories.

Each provides web designers with useful and important functionalities, and any one of them can help you build a better website.

wpDataTables

The wpDataTables plugin gives you some unique methods for building charts and tables. It also offers a number of useful data management functionalities. If you’ve been constrained in the past to working with tables and charts that soon become obsolete, must be retrieved occasionally for updating, or do not render correctly on various devices, you’re in for a treat.

wpDataTables delivers tables that are interactive, editable in real time, and responsive. Furthermore, it is no more difficult to edit a wpData tables table, than to edit a table in Excel.

Creating a chart from one or more tables is easy as well. Charts created by wpDataTables can also edited in real time, and one of the more useful features of this plugin is the ability to highlight in color selected elements in a chart or table.

Content Timeline

It’s not only getting content right that’s important. How it is presented makes a difference too. The Content Timeline plugin gives you the option of presenting content in an easy-to-create sliding timeline.

These content timelines are responsive, completely customizable, and editable. You can edit a timeline’s sequence of content blocks; and you can also edit an individual block within its own window. Posts can be sorted and sequenced by month, year, or category for example, and swipe functionality is an added feature device users will appreciate.

12 customizable Card layouts are available to give your slider(s) an extra flair, plus you can add cards of your own creation. Building a content time line is simple, in that it primarily involves drag and drop functionality.

LayerSlider

LayerSlider is an immensely popular plugin. Many WP themes use it, although some of the exclusive features and other benefits of the standalone version are often absent or compromised. With the standalone version, you get the real deal, as thousands of website designers know well.

Layer slider offers multiple types of transitions that you can combine in all sorts of ways, including splitting text by lines, words, or characters, animating them create flying letters, loop layers and more. Multi-step animations, stackable transitions, and cyclical and random transitions are but a few of the options available to you in this supremely flexible design tool. Whatever you can create, can just as easily be edited or modified.

LayerSlider is not only more than worth what you pay for it in terms of value, it’s also a lot cheaper than its nearest competitor.

Logic Hop

Website personalization is a game changer for marketers and e-commerce. Being able to target and message individual users based on their behavior boosts conversion rates to new levels.

Logic Hop is a new plugin that brings the power of personalization to WordPress.

Fully integrated with WordPress, Logic Hop lets you use real-time data to target visitors and show customized content and calls-to-action. Try Logic Hop risk-free and see what personalization can do for you.

W3 Total Cache

If you are looking for ways to seriously increase website performance, and seriously reduce page load times, the W3 Total Cache is the go-to plugin that belongs in your tool kit. W3 Total Cache is recommended by countless web designers, developers, hosts, and it works right out of the box.

A wide range of other features are included, making paying a visit to the website a worthy investment of your time.

Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security’s Web Application Firewall will keep you from getting hacked. Wordfence Scan alerts you instantly of your site has been compromised. Live Traffic gives you’re a real-time look into any hacking attempts on your WP website.

How much are you willing to pay for a plugin that does all this? Wordfence Security is an open-source plugin – so, it’s 100% free!

WooThumbs – Awesome Product Imagery

The WooThumbs Awesome Product Imagery WordPress plugin makes it easy to convert a so-so product page or one-page website into an informational adventure for the user. Now, you can add multiple images (including video); position them as you please.

You can even create a carousel or slider featuring product variations and uses, while zoom effects can be added to let a user get an up close and personal look at the product.

Final Tiles Gallery

Final Tiles Gallery is a modular WordPress gallery. The key word is “modular”, a design feature that usually makes building something easy. Built around a unique grid layout, Final Tiles Gallery gives you the freedom to create galleries made up of image sizes and aspect ratios of your own choosing.

This plugin is one of the most widely used design aids in the professional photography niche.

Yellow Pencil

Have you ever wanted to be able to edit a website in real time, instead of having to shut things down, make your change, and start it up again? Yellow Pencil allows you to do just that whether you’re working with a WordPress theme, or directly from WordPress.

With 50+ style properties to work with, you have more control than ever over your design activities.

Conclusion

Whether you’re looking for a plugin to spice up a website’s appearance, protect it against hackers, improve its performance, or add some cool functionality, you should find something here. 7 of these plugins are premium, 2 are free, but they all are the best in their class, so you’ll get real value for your money, and it should be difficult for you to go away empty handed.