[4/8] Start your own website: Plugins

 Part 1: Intro
Part 2: Content Management Systems (CMS)
Part 3: Design

As you could read in the earlier articles in this series, I advise you to run your website on a content management system. Its usability is so much better than making an html website by yourself, especially if you're not into coding. The editor in the backend is easy to use and you don't have to design every page separately.

The best part of running your site on a CMS is that you can extend the functionality with plugins. With these plugins you can run Google Maps, automatically add and update a sitemap and send it to search engines, add SEO content, display a photo gallery etc. For Wordpress and Joomla there are thousands of plugins available for free (they are called ‘extensions’ in Joomla) and they are really easy to install. In most cases you can search for a plugin in the backend and your CMS starts downloading, unzipping and installing it.

Social media integration

Social Media Widget

For the website I made for a sports centre in Venlo, I added plugins to integrate social media sharing buttons on each page with the AddThis plugin. It is a very popular plugin, which you can see on a lot of well known websites. In the right side menu I added links to the various social media accounts of the sports centre with the Social Media widget. I also included the Facebook like button in each article by using the Facebook Likes It plugin.

List of useful plugins

 

Wordpress

• Event Calendar: With this plugin you can add events to your website. These events can be shown in a calendar on your homepage. 
• Facebook Likes It: Add a “like-button” to your articles and pages.
• Nextgen Gallery: A photogallery to show slideshows, thumbnails and photo's in a lightbox.
• SEO Ultimate: Improves the ranking of your website in a search engine by making your website more friendly to search engines. You can read more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the next article on this blog.
• Fast Secure Contact Form: Add contact forms on your website with CAPTCHA protection to reduce spam. 

Joomla

• Acajoom: Build your own database with email addresses for your mailinglist. In Acajoom you can compose your emails by adding the latest content of your website. It is a all in one mailinglist solution. It has an automated subscription system and is very easy to use.
• All Videos Reloaded: Lets your embed all kinds of video in your website by using tags. For instance you can embed a Youtube video by using the tag {youtube}link to video{/youtube}. 
• Eventlist: Adds a calendar to your website. In Eventlist you can set up an event and make visitors sign up. 
• SH404SEF: The best SEO optimizer for your website. Tracks 404 logs and adjusts your url's to be more search engine friendly.