Did you make a New Year’s resolution to finally fix something on your WordPress site or to add a cool feature that you have seen on other sites? Perhaps this has nothing to do with the new year but you’re interested in adding new features to your WordPress site.
Here is a list of plugins that are not exactly brand new but they could be new to your site. The added functionality could solve a problem or breathe new life into your site. These are all free and from the WordPress.org plugin repository. Check out the list after the jump and feel free to make your own recommendations in the comments.
Relevanssi improves WordPress search by replacing the default search and allowing partial-match search with results sorted by relevance.
Author hReview if you do product reviews, this plugin is for you. It allows you to set metadata in your post that Google might show when your page comes up in search results, making your site more appealing to visitors.
dSero Anti AdBlock allows you to counter browser adblock extensions. If your ads are blocked, they are replaced by call-to-action buttons.
WPTouch gives your site a nice mobile theme when viewed from a mobile browser without affecting your normal theme. This makes it more friendly for smartphones and tablets but it still has a link at the bottom offering to switch to the typical site.
Advanced Custom Fields allows you to make custom fields a lot more fancy, such as adding a WYSIWYG or other features. My favorite part of it? The ability to set a default value for a select custom field.
Display Widgets adds some more logic to your widgets. If you only want a widget to be shown on select pages, it’s a drop-down and a checkbox to configure that setting. Likewise, if you want a widget to be hidden on select pages.
Edit Flow is for sites that need a strict editorial structure. It adds a calendar, post status, private comments, notifications, and more to keep everything organized and improve communication.
Editorial Calendar is similar to Edit Flow. It provides a calendar for reviewing your future posts to be published, ensuring you have the coverage you want. You can drag & drop within the calendar to reschedule should something come up.
Point and Stare CMS Functions allows you to add CMS features and make the admin back-end more claimed with your customizations.
FitVids adds an element of responsive design to your website. Embedded videos will be resized to be full width while keeping the appropriate aspect ratio. It will depend on your theme if it works well for you but it can make videos more friendly to embed for browsers across screen sizes. For an alternate, you can also check out Fluid Video Embeds.
WordFence Security adds a nice security element to your site. It scans files for malicious changes or even links to malware-hosting sites. It also scans live traffic and can be configured to shape your traffic accordingly. It’s a nice base defense for security.
SEO Friendly Images automatically generates alt and title attributes for your uploaded images. Getting additional traffic from Google Image searches and other vectors is just another added bonus publishers might be looking for.
Google XML Sitemap for Images is along the same lines. It creates a sitemap for your images and allows it to be submitted to Google.
Broken Link Checker scans your posts on a schedule you define to find broken links. You can edit the links, unlink them, or have the plugin ignore them to ensure your page is providing quality content.