I don’t know why I am wired this way, but I love freeware and free stuff. I’ve been a computer geek for over 25 years and I have spent countless hours searching for free software! I guess it has been my way of “treasure” hunting. It may not be gold, but it is as good as gold! It is funny, but not surprising how this has transferred into my WordPress website design and development! For the record, I know there is no such things as a “free” plugin. Developers spend many hours of coding, testing, and supporting their “free” plugins. As your financial situation allows, be sure to click the Donate button and give some cold hard cash! The developers deserve it!

This first post about Free WordPress Plugins that will enhance your website design and development is going to cover the more visual plugins.  The next post will cover WordPress plugins that deal with the guts (the back-end/behind the scenes functionality)!  My comments will be in bold after each description.  And now for :  My Favorite, Free, WordPress Front-end Plugins!

Columns (Responsive)

• WEN’s Responsive Column Layout Shortcodes by webexpertsnepal. This Plugin easily adds responsive ( BootStrap ) columns layout into posts and pages by wrapping content with a shortcode. Yes, I could add a class to my <div> to make my columns responsive, but…why not just click a button!  By installing this plugin, I can choose from 2-6 responsive columns at the click of a button!  Sweet!  Saves me time!

Fonts

• WP Google Fonts by Adrian Hanft, Aaron Brown. The WordPress Google Fonts Plugin makes it even easier to add and customize Google fonts on your site through WordPress. A very simply way to add Google fonts to your website! I love having many font options and this plugin does the trick!

Slideshows/Sliders/Galleries/Testimonials

• Photo Gallery by WebDorado. This plugin is a fully responsive gallery plugin with advanced functionality. It allows having different image galleries for your posts and pages. You can create unlimited number of galleries, combine them into albums, and provide descriptions and tags. Here is a demo. Very cool responsive photo gallery plugin!  It is fairly intuitive, easy to add images, and looks beautiful!
• Slideshow by Stefan Boonstra. Very good! Simple to use! Simple, straightforward, and responsive! What more could you ask for!
• Testimonials Widget by Michael Cannon.  Testimonials by Aihrus lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your WordPress site. Here is a demo. This is an excellent plugin for adding a Testimonials slideshow to your website.  It is widget based and works great!  You can also put them directly on a page via a shortcode. I’ve used this on many of my website projects.
• Easy Logo Slider by JW Themes. Easy Logo Slider is plugin that helps users to upload the logos of clients along with title, short description and website URL.  Here is a demo. Just recently came across this and it works great! It is nice a clean, and … Responsive!

Social Media Icons

• Social Media Icons by arstropica. Plugin/Widget for Social Media Icons. This plugin contains a huge list of social media icons! Very easy to display too via a widget!

Calendars

• Google Calendar Events by Phil Derksen, Nick Young, and Ross Hanney. Parses Google Calendar feeds and displays the events as a calendar grid or list on a page, post or widget.  Publish an event, event list or interactive calendar from a public Google Calendar to a WordPress post/page/sidebar.
• My Calendar by Joe Dolson. Accessible WordPress event calendar plugin. Show events from multiple calendars on pages, in posts, or in widgets. Very intuitive interface!  Love it!

Forms

• Ninja Forms by WP Ninjas, LLC.  Forms created with a simple drag and drop interface. Contact forms, Email collection forms, or any other form you want on your WordPress site.   Love the interface.  Very simple and easy to navigate. No code involved.
  
• Fast Secure Contact Form by Mike Challis. An easy and powerful form builder that lets your visitors send you email. Blocks all automated spammers. No templates to mess with. I actually really like this plugin, but seem to keep forgetting about it for some reason!
• Contact Form 7 by Takayuki Miyoshi. Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. This is a code based form, but it is fairly intuitive.  Very popular and has a lot of options!
• Really Simple CAPTCHA by Takayuki Miyoshi. Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for my Contact Form 7 plugin.
• Contact Form DB by Michael Simpson. Save form submissions to the database from Contact Form 7, Fast Secure Contact Form, JetPack Contact Form and Gravity Forms. Includes exports and short codes.

Widget Specific

• Display Widgets by Strategy11. Simply hide widgets on specified pages. Here is an example.  Adds checkboxes to each widget to either show or hide it on every site page.  Each page has a different slideshow in the sidebar. Love the simplicity and versatility! NOTE: Looks to be abandoned as it is no longer being updated.  People are recommending Widget Logic.  I have also used JetPack, but which has some nice features, but is not as flexible for hiding/displaying widgets on certain pages.
  
• Widget CSS Classes by Cindy. Add custom classes and ids plus first, last, even, odd, and numbered classes to your widgets. Seriously? Custom classes on individual widgets?  Awesome! Now you can go into your stylizing frenzy!

eCommerce

• WooCommerce By WooThemes. An e-commerce toolkit that helps you sell anything. Beautifully.
• WooCommerce Menu Cart by Jeremiah Prummer, Ewout Fernhout. Extension for WooCommerce that places a cart icon with number of items and total cost in the menu bar. Activate the plugin, set your options and you’re ready to go! Will automatically conform to your theme styles.

Well, there you have it, My Favorite, Free, WordPress Front-end Plugins that I use for my website design and development! I hope you find them useful!  Be sure to check out the next post covering the back-end WordPress plugins!