Plugins | Wordpress for Churches and Ministry

7 WordPress Plugins to Feature Content In a Slideshow

One of the most common features sought in a premium WordPress theme is the ability to have some kind of scrolling featured content slideshow on the home page. But an argument could easily be made that this kind of feature shouldn’t be theme-based but plugin-based so that it transfers from one theme to another. If you’re looking to add such a featured content slider to your existing site without changing themes, here are seven plugins worth checking into.

SlideDeck

SlideDeck features a nice original user interface. Rather than scrolling through thumbnails, it works more like an online presentation with accordion-like slide windows. It’s a premium plugin and seems a bit pricey considering the ease with which one can implement opensource javascript solutions for free, but it is very nicely done, and there is a free version, though you’ll be displaying an ad for the SlideDeck brand if you go the free route.

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Featured Content Gallery

The Featured Content Gallery plugin has been around for a while and is usually easily recognized because the base code is also used in plenty of premium themes on the market, most notably many of the earlier StudioPress themes. It offers the ability to display some content snippets as an overlay.

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DDSliderWP

DDSliderWP offers eleven transitions and a very slick backend control panel. It offers a ton of customization options, but it is premium, so you’ll need to invest about $20 to have its slickness on your blog.

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Sugar Slider

Sugar Slider is quite nice in that it offers a multitude of display options including one very similar to SlideDeck (mentioned above). It also features a robust control panel to manage its features as well.

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Featured Content Slide

There is very little in the way of a description on this plugin’s details page, but it has a nice aesthetic to it with a couple of different display options.

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And two others worth mentioning in this list that don’t offer much in the way of detailed descriptions would be WordPress Slideshow Gallery Plugin and Front Slider Plugin.

If you know of others, feel free to give us a link in the comments!

Give People Driving Directions to Your Church with the Route Planner Plugin

Adding a “location” to a church website is a no-brainer. Adding a static map is even better and best of all is adding a Google Map, but now a new Route Planner plugin will allow people to simply enter their own address right below the Google map and it will spit out turn-by-turn directions to your church or venue and chart it on the map for them.

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Slidenote WordPress Plugin Is Awesome for Announcements

Want to remind website visitors of your next big event, a special discount code, or perhaps even something like “We will NOT be having services this Sunday because of the 38 inches of ice on the roads!” Slidenote is perfect, and Tom McFarlin has made it into a WordPress plugin. It’s super-easy to implement and you can insert it sitewide via a widget or into any page or post using shortcodes and occurrence-specific parameters.

My only request of Tom is to add the ability to throw an html hyperlink into the content, but Tom already says he’ll think about it in the next update.

Slidenote Plugin

7 Great WordPress Plugins for Better Usability

Usability WordPress Plugins

UX Booth is one of my favorite blogs about usability, and today, they’ve published one fantastic list of WordPress plugins designed to make your site more usable…

The main reasons it’s so important to strive for a better user-friendliness is because it will make your blog more efficient, it’s easier for your visitors to adapt to, and more satisfying to use. In other words, by improving the effectiveness, efficiency and usability, your visitors will actually enjoy visiting your blog, come back time after time and even participate in your online discussions.

Below, you’ll find a quick roundup of some of the best and most effective WordPress plugins I’ve come across…

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