I was recently looking for a plugin to display related posts with thumbnails at the end of each post. There are several plugins to do this and I wanted to choose the best one. An average WordPress user reads the description and quickly installs a plugin to see if it works for them or not. Many WordPress users are often spending a lot of time trying new plugins, uninstalling old ones, upgrading or troubleshooting plugins. This is not an ideal situation; the purpose of these plugins is to make things easier so that website owners can concentrate on publishing great content.
So, how do you spend less time troubleshooting plugins? The most wonderful thing about an open source development environment is that it puts responsibility not only on developers but also on users by providing them choices to make smart decisions. In this post we will discuss these choices to find out how we can choose better plugins.

1.1. Read Description of the plugin

Most plugin authors try their best to describe what the plugin does on the very first page. Sometimes if you are looking at a plugin that does something similar to many other plugins, the plugin author would let you know how their plugin is different or better than other plugins. For example, I was looking for “Related Posts” plugin that displayed relevant posts with thumbnails so I sorted out the plugins that matched the thumbnail part.

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Adding maps to your WordPress blog post is really simple, you can just go to the Google Mapsand get the embed code or use Google Maps API to quickly display static maps. But sometimes you want to do more with maps. For example, providing directions, adding different layers to your maps, or geo-tagging your content. Thankfully, there are many Maps Plugins for WordPress that can help you do all these things.

Google Maps API allows developers to build their own apps using the Google Maps. Using this API plugin authors have written some excellent plugins for WordPress. Some plugins are more feature rich than others and some are written to take advantage of some specific feature.

Free Plugins

Google Maps All in One Plugin

The lite version or the free version of this plugin is available on official plugin repository. The full version is available at WPMU Dev for a small subscription fee. This plugin allows you to add a map while writing a post, add a map to any widget area in sidebar, footer, it allows you to set zoom level, units, images limit, and you can add CSS for alignment purposes. The only downside is that, if you are using the free version, it adds this ugly link at the end of the each map. Despite the ugly link back, this plugin is quite good. I liked the intuitive interface it offers to add your map. This interface alone simplifies the whole process and makes it quicker and easier for the user to add maps.

Google Maps All in One Plugin »

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was not much of a Twitter fan, I just recently rediscovered the potential of it and how useful, fun, and addictive it is. Now I understand why people want a Twitter App with everything. As a platform WordPress is no different, it has so many Twitter plugins available for WordPress powered websites. These plugins allow you to add twitter functionality into your website, allow your users to interact with your content on Twitter, and make sharing easy and fun.

Free Plugins

Twitter Follow Me Box

The first thing that any Twitter user might want on their WordPress website is a follow me button. There is a simple way to generate a follow me button from Twitter website. However, there are many other different ways to make your Follow Me button more compelling. Twitter Follow me box, is one such way. It adds a “Follow Me bird” on either sides of your website. This bird just sits there and scrolls as visitors scroll your content.

• Adds Follow Me box with Twitter bird on either side of your layout.
• Follow Me Box scrolls down as user scrolls your website.
• You can change the color of the box and the bird as well.
• You can also set the height from the top.
• Easy to configure and use.

Twitter Follow Me Box »

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Instagram is a free photo-sharing app you can get on your iPhone which has become really popular over the last year or so. You snap a photo, then apply one of the built-in filter effects to it and then upload it – you have followers like Twitter who can see your updates and you also have the option to share the photos on Twitter / Facebook etc.

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