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There are constantly new plugins coming up for WordPress users. It’s the advantage WordPress has over other CMS platforms in its league. WordPress being the oldest, has the maximum number of users and hence the most plugins, tools & support available.

Here are 5 plugins that you definitely should add to your best WordPress add-ons book

01. Restricted Site Access

When working on a site, clients often ask me to limit access to the site under construction only to logged in users. For visitors, they wish to display a message like “Our site is under construction, kindly visit again later”. This is so that visitors, instead of getting a sneak peak sooner, get to see the website directly once it’s ready and officially launched. I used to make this work through coding but recently I came across this nice little plugin that does the trick.

‘Restricted site access’ not only blocks the site from visitors’ view but it also lets you add a custom message to be shown to them. Alternatively, it even gives you an option to redirect them to a specific page!

02. Jigoshop

In my opinion, Jigoshop is by far the best WP e-commerce plugin available right now. I have used it on multiple sites with very good results.

Once installed, the plugin offers a number of options to set up a shopping site, complete with inventory handling, payment gateways, product variations depending on size, colors and more.

My Personal Tip:

To make any changes to the single product page e.g. adding or removing text, changing order of elements; download and make changes to the file jigoshop_product.class.php located here: jigoshop/classes/jigoshop_product.class.php

This can be very helpful as it took me quite some time to figure out that this is the file that controls the elements on the single product page.

The only thing missing is a calculator that figures out the shipping cost based on size, weight, delivery destination etc. To solve this problem, I bought the ‘Table rate‘ extension developed by Jigoshop. This plugin however did not help because it lets you base your calculation either on the item size OR weight. Most courier companies like DHL charge based on size as well as weight.

I haven’t yet comes across a flawless plugin that calculates shipping but I’ll surely let you know as soon as I have!

03. Post Background

Fed up of having every post look just like the next one? Add some creativity to your posts by using the ‘Post Background’ plugin that lets you upload and set a custom background image for every post/page just like you do in case of the post thumbnail image.

04. Boxer

Most premium WordPress themes today come with a lot of shortcodes to create columns/sections within your page or post.

These make the theme extremely flexible as you can set up a page based on the type of layout you have in mind however, not all of us are using themes that have these options.

Enter ‘Boxer’. This is the one-stop solution for all your post & page layout design needs. With a single shortcode, this plugin lets you divide your page into sections based on your specific requirement.

This plugin is SO good, it’s hard to believe they hadn’t come up with it until recently.

05. Punchtab

Give your users a reason to share your site content and leave comments. Punchtab offers loyalty programs that help you offer rewards for your loyal users. Users earn points for every visit, like & comment!

Punchtab works great for attracting new visitors to your site and engaging them. Your website users in turn are rewarded with rewards of your choice e.g Amazon Gift coupons etc.

You can see how it works right here on our site. Just click on the ‘Rewards’ tab on the left and see the plugin in action.

Though all of these plugins might not be suitable for everyone, each one of them is definitely worth trying out!

Do you have any plugins to recommend? We would love to know about them. Please add your comments below.