Plugins are a brilliant and necessary way to extend and customise the functionality of WordPress and there are tens of thousands of WordPress plugins in the WordPress world.

Some are great, many are good and there are a few that can be disastrous to your website.

Additionally, as WordPress plugins are commonly covered by the GPL license, many are free which can lead to a few problems:

1. They are buggy, or worse, they include malicious code
2. The author released them for WordPress version 2.x and they no longer work with WordPress version 3.x or above and the author has moved on
3. They conflict with another plugin you already have installed causing unknown and unusual error conditions

At Shartech we have put a lot of time and effort into bringing you the best plugins for your WordPress site and we purchase developer licenses for many of the Premium Plugins that are commercially available so we can install them on all of our sites.

We can never cover every eventuality though so there will be times when you need to find and use a particular plugin to achieve a specific task.

For that situation we have prepared a list of the plugins we currently support so you can look at this list first.

If the specific plugin you want to use is not on this list then we have not tested it and will not state that it will work – so you are on your own with it unfortunately…..

If you want us to test a plugin before you use it then please complete the short form in the sidebar to the right of this page and we will schedule in a test of your plugin. We will not purchase a plugin just to test it for you though so if it is a premium plugin you will either have to provide us with an activation code or a licensed copy of the plugin…

PLEASE NOTE: WordPress is regularly updated and many plugins are not. A plugin that works today might not necessarily work tomorrow. We will not certify or repair any plugin – even the ones we use and recommend – although the reason we use and recommend these plugins is due to the fact we have used them for quite a while and they have a great record for reliability and regular updates so we are confident in their continued usage.

Plugins Used and Recommended on Shartech Websites

Plugin	Function
Admin Menu Editor	Allows for protection of admin menu areas from view and access
Akismet	WordPress default spam protection
All in One SEO Pack	Additional on site SEO settings
Backupbuddy	WordPress backups
Billboard	Easy to use Sponsor Ad and linked image management tool.
Carousel	DisplayBuddy Series – Carousel lets you display a sliding image Carousel.
Collision Testimonials	Easily add, edit, and delete client testimonials for your website
Copious Comments	Displays your top commented posts with a graphical post count in a widget or via shortcode.
Easy Theme and Plugin Updates	Allows us to quickly and easily update our iThemes plugins
Executable PHP Widget	Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well.
Facebook Tab Manager	Makes WordPress function as an editor for tabs you can embed in a Facebook page for your business
Genesis Simple Hooks	Allows you easy access to the 50+ Action Hooks in the Genesis Theme.
Genesis Simple Sidebars	Allows you to easily create and use new sidebar widget areas.
Google Analyticator	Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics.
Google XML Sitemaps	Generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
Gravity Forms	Easily create web forms and manage form entries within the WordPress admin.
H1 Supercharge	One of our own plugins – allows you to set your own H1 for every page and post for supercharged on page SEO
NextGen Gallery	A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the Web 2.0.
PluginBuddy Mobile	Create custom mobile versions of your site for mobile platforms.
Rotating Images	Rotate images using transitions, such as fade or slide, or static random image on page load.
Rotating text	A plugin that rotates text using animation to fade the text in and out.
Shadowbox JS	A javascript media viewer similar to Lightbox and Thickbox. Supports all types of media, not just images.
Simple Image Widget	Sign this widget you can easily place an image and link in the sidebar.
Slidedeck Pro for WordPress	Create SlideDecks on your WordPress blogging platform and insert them into templates and posts.
Slideshow	Lets you display images anywhere on your site with fully customizable animated transitions and advanced effects.
Social Profiles Widget	Allows you to insert social profile icons into your sidebar via a widget.
Shartech Site Options	One of our own – Provides common config functions for Shartech websites
Theme test Drive	Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one.
TinyMCE Advanced	Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE, the visual editor in WordPress.
Ultimate Google Analytics	Enable Google Analytics on your blog.
uPricing	A prcing Table plugin for WordPress
Video Showcase	Embed Youtube and Vimeo videos with thumbnail image links.
Wishlist Member	The most comprehensive membership plugin for WordPress users.
WordPress.com Stats	Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
WordPress.com Stats Smiley Remover	Quickly removes the smiley face placed in the footer of your site by the WordPress.com Stats plugin
WordPress Duplicate Content Remover	Simple, yet effective SEO plugin that prevents search engines from indexing WordPress pages that contain duplicate content
WP-Cycle	Creates an image slideshow from the images you upload using the jQuery Cycle plugin
WP-DBManager	Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of database.
WP-EVP	Plugin to easily embed EasyVideoPlayer videos into WordPress posts!
WP-Spamfree	Anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam.
WP e-Commerce	Provides a WordPress Shopping Cart.