5 Must-have WordPress plugins for Photographers
As a photographer I need the best website possible to display my work on and so around 2 years ago I made the decision to learn and utilise the WordPress platform. Wordpress is a CMS (Content Management System) and is available to download completely FREE from here. The key reason to make the move from a HTML based website to a CMS website was to allow for worldwide updates and an easy to use Admin area.
WordPress is used by millions of people (including The Rolling Stones and CNN) as the foundation to their website with thousands of plugins available (many of which are free) to bolt on to add functionality such as Social Media sharing capabilities to their website.
Over the 2 years i’ve been using the system i’ve probably got through 200+ plugins to drill down to the ones that I actually need and so this post is hopefully aimed to save you 2 years worth of digging.
1 – AA’s Digg Digg Alternative
Digg Digg is a very popular way for you to add a Social Media sharing bar to your website, a simple one-click sharing toolbar that lets viewers recommend your website on sites such as Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more. Social interaction is very important in SEO to help Google to acknowledge your website as a good resource and move it up the search results accordingly.
AA’s Digg Digg Alternative is a modified version that has been created to increase load time (another factor in your websites SEO score) – Price – FREE – Download here
2 – Booking System PRO
As soon as staff start being a part of your business then a central booking area is, in my eyes, crucial to make sure that your time doesn’t get double-booked which would look very unprofessional.
For Special Event days such as our upcoming Portrait Day we use Booking System PRO which is available for just $20. This provides us with an easy to use Admin area to add Special Events in and allows us to customise the day/s & time/s the Event is available on as well as take a deposit to secure the booking via PayPal. The plugin is also responsive (becoming ever more necessary in website designs) which means that customers can access and book using a mobile or tablet device as well as a desktop.
Booking System PRO is available via ThemeForest – Price – $20 (around £13) – Download here
3 – Google Calendar Events
I work from both a studio and a retail outlet and so juggling time between both places mean that unfortunately we don’t always have someone able to cover the shop while we’re at the studio.
This is where Google Calendar Events comes in. A FREE plugin that can link through to your Google Calendar account and display upcoming events (such as meetings, photo shoots etc). I have a dedicated Google Calendar in my iCal on my iPhone, iPad and MacBook which are all synched through iCloud, this means I can simply pop in the details (only very brief for security and privacy purposes) such as …
14.07.13 – Photo Shoot – 14:30 – 15:30
Customers are then advised on the website and at the shop to check this page for times that I will not be available and they can then schedule around this. Having everything synchronised also helps to not double book at any time.
Google Calendar Events – Price – FREE – Download here
4 – jQuery Pin-it Button for Images
While the name of this plugin doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue it’s a lightweight, simple plugin that enhances your potential Social Media reach no end for photographers.
Hopefully people viewing your photographs like them or at least like some in particular and may want to ‘Pin’ them to a Pinterest board. This can help increase the amount of viewers to your site and also helps in Google and other search engines.
jQuery Pin-it Button for Images – Price – FREE – Download here
5 – Revolution Slider
This next plugin you’ll see all over this website, the Revolution Slider is our weapon of choice for displaying our photographs at the top of many of the pages.
There are hundreds of free slider plugins out there however we feel the very reasonable $15 gives this slider the edge. It is completely responsive which allows for smooth downscaling to mobile and tablet devices, it’s also highly customisable through an easy to use interface and finally it has its own area on the admin sidebar. The separate location in the admin area may seem a strange feature to mention however when the shortcode for your slider is added to the post or page it’s for, you can simply go into the admin area and add/remove/edit the slides within the slider for any of the pages, this makes updating them a lot more trouble free.
Revolution Slider – Price – $15 (around £9.76) – Download here
I hope you’ve found this useful and please feel free to comment below with any that you use!