9 New and Promising WordPress Plugins Worth a Try

Is there a better place to search for WordPress plugins than its extensive directory ? Well, probably no. Tens of thousands plugins both good and bad, awesome and average, new and oldies, popular and fairly unknown, are there at your fingerprints. The plugins are built for various functionalities and services, and I bet there is no such a service or feature that you won’t be able to find a plugin for it.

However, this post is not about those popular and much spoken about plugins. In this post, I’m going to introduce you some awesome new WordPress plugins that have been added to the directory recently but have the quality and potential to compete with old hats in the near future. I’ve hand picked them myself after a careful search and testing. Here they are. 9 new yet advanced WordPress plugins you all go and give a try.

1. Google Analytics WD

Google Analytics WD is the official member of Google Analytics Technology Partners Program and comes with the most advanced, comprehensive,and valid reporting functionality. The WordPress Google Analytics plugin reports statistics on your website audience, performance, its speed, traffic sources, and your AdSense and AdWords accounts. Apart from the mentioned report types it allows you to get custom reports on any metric and dimension, that are crucial for you. You can also track targeted activities by setting and managing goals, and enable the tracking of custom dimensions for logged in users, specific posts and authors, categories and tags. All the reports are accessed from the plugin’s reporting page, and are possible to export to CSV and PDF files, as well as be emailed to multiple recipients.

2. WordPress Google Maps

Google Map WD is another new yet super advanced and feature-packed plugin. Its intuitive interface allows you to create unlimited responsive Google maps in just minutes. The WordPress Google Maps plugin supports all the Google map styles, overlays and layers, and comes with unique map themes and skins that you can use to stand out. Also, it’s equipped with store locator and get directions functionalities to help you pinpoint locations in specific areas and suggest routes for getting anywhere your visitors want. Google Map WD plugin comes with a built-in icon maker which you can use to create custom icons for the markers. It supports advanced marker listing options, marker animations, user geolocation functionality, and shortcodes to help you easily add the created maps in any of your posts and pages.

3. GoDaddy Email Marketing

GoDaddy Email Marketing plugin will help you convert your site visitors into subscribers and drive repeat traffic to your blog along the way. With its simple drag and drop composer you can add email signup forms to your site, as well as send unlimited emails to your visitors. The forms are added to your website using a widget, shortcode or template tag. The plugin also provides reports that show how many of your emails get clicked on and opened. The forms are responsive and look great on just any device.

4. Facebook Feed WD

Want to display multiple Facebook feeds on your website? Facebook Feed WD gives you tons of options to do that. With the help of WordPress Facebook feed plugin you can bring photos, albums, events and other content from multiple pages/public groups/profiles to any of your posts and pages, and display them with customized settings. You can choose the feed update interval, number of the posts displayed, user roles, post length, content display view, and define custom settings for descriptions, comments, likes and shares. Also, you can choose to display only specific content from the feeds, such as photos, albums, videos, events, if the whole feed is not the option you want to go with. There are various beautiful view options available for each content type and lots of styling options. The plugin has an advanced lightbox with 15 transition effects, filmstrip, social buttons display, and tons of other settings that you can adjust to your needs.

5. Mega Menu

You can add powerful and great looking menu bar to your WordPress site with WP Mega Menu plugin. With its simple drag and drop functionality, you can create horizontal and vertical mega menus without any coding skill and literally in no time. The plugin supports Flyout and Mega menu, and comes with a bunch of pre-built templates for just any need. You can give menus fades or various transitions, and enable hover or click trigger effects to open the menu. WP Mega Menu is responsive and SEO-friendly.

6. One Click Demo Import

Theme developers you check this awesome plugin out! One Click Demo Import allows you to import your demo content, widgets and customizer settings with just one click. Theme authors define demo imports for their themes, and users just easily import them. Once activated, the plugin creates “import demo data” page under the “appearance” section in the dashboard, where you can select which import files you need. The plugin provides a simple, fast and easy way to set up your theme.

7. Widget Options

It’s claimed to be the most complete widget management solution and it has some cool stuff to offer. With Widget Options plugin you’ll get full control over your sidebar widgets and manage each widget’s appearance and visibility options. It allows you to show or hide widgets on specific pages, as well as mobile and small screen devices for a better navigation experience. You can set custom alignments for every widget, create predefined classes and create custom widget ID, manage and restrict widgets using WordPress conditional tags, enable/disable different options, and view all of the changes made in real time.

8. Search by Algolia

Search by Algolia provides fast and the most relevant search results to your website visitors. It uses typo-tolerance and language-agnostic features and returns the fastest results to users no matter where they are. It supports find-as-you-type experience and auto-complete dropdown menu, which provide relevant results as the user writes the search terms. Algolia searches for matching and relevant content all over your website, including blog posts, categories, users etc. It also gives you freedom to choose how the results are displayed, in terms of popularity, relevance, date, etc.

9. PHP Compatibility Checker

This awesome plugin is developed to help you check if the themes and plugins you use on your website are compatible with the newer PHP versions. It basically scans plugin or theme codes inside your WordPress file system and reports compatibility issues if there are any found for fixing. The found issues are listed as errors or warnings, along with the information why they’re marked as incompatible with the given PHP version. PHP Compatibility Checker  also suggests theme and plugin updates if the new versions offer compatible code.

Dozens of plugins are added to the WordPress directory on a daily basis, and choosing the right one for your blog can be really overwhelming. This short collection will come in handy if you’re looking for new and advanced alternatives. Give them a try and share your experience with me and others in the comments.