We’ve all been there, lured in by the promise that this plugin or that widget will take care of all that ails our WordPress site. When we shake ourselves back into reality we realize that we were promised rainbows and unicorns but instead have rain and horse droppings.

To that end, I have a few plugins that I have installed multiple times, provide a lot functionality, are easy to use, and actually make me happy to use them. Without further ado, here they are:

Promotion slider

Do you like sliding panels but your theme doesn’t have that functionality? Promotion slider is easy to install and configure and uses a shortcode that makes it easy to put where you want. Adding photos and text is achieved by using its own category. Set up the post to which it links and copy that URL. Add a promotion slider post, paste the link to the post, add the feature image and text. Done!

WPtouch

Make your site mobile for touch mobile devices. Easy to configure and it looks nice!

Contact form 7 & Contact Form 7 to database extension

Want to add your own form but don’t want to get in the guts of knowing how to create a form? Do you want the input saved to a database in addition to being mailed to you? This is the easiest solution I’ve come across to date. Lots of flexibility for complex forms and functionality. The FAQ and forum on his website will answer 99.9% of any questions/ issues you may have.

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I will have more to add later but wanted to share…