WordPress has been my favorite platform for musician websites for quite a while now. One of the main reasons for this is how easy it is to extend and enhance your website by using plugins. In the first part of this series, I mentioned some of my favorite plugins for band and musician websites; here are a few more that I use regularly and recommend.
Please note that not all plugins will be useful for everyone – it all depends on what you want to achieve with your website!
Disqus
Disqus is my favorite commenting plugin as it allows users to comment using their Twitter, Facebook, Google or Disqus accounts, but also allows visitors to comment as guests. It’s perfect for those who don’t want to give away their credentials, or don’t have accounts with these networks. As well as offering great commenting functionality, it also suggests related posts for visitors, turning them into engaged readers, rather than just passing visitors. From experience, I can see that people often click on the posts suggested by Disqus, so it’s a feature that’s well worth activating.
NextGen Gallery
There are countless gallery plugins available for WordPress, but NextGen Gallery is the one that I’ve found which has the right balance between being easy to use, looking good and offering a decent range of features and options. It certainly beats the default galleries built into WordPress (sorry, guys!) and can be used with various lightbox plugins for added visual impact.
Contact Form 7
Again, there are so many contact form plugins to choose from, but Contact Form 7 has always been my #1 choice. It’s reliable, easy to customise and is easily extendable via extension plugins, also available from the WordPress plugin depository. I’ve used this on many client websites, and especially love how you can set up an auto-responder for people who contact you using the form.
GigPress
In Part I of this series, I recommended BandsInTown as a plugin for listing shows. I still stand by this, as it’s a fantastic plugin. However, for those of you who don’t use Facebook, Gigpress would be my next choice for a show management plugin. A little tricky to customise (you’ll need a good working knowledge of CSS, HTML and some PHP to change the appearance), but a very sturdy and easy to use tool. A great alternative to BandsInTown.
Stratus
Stratus is a a plugin I’ve only recently come across, but I love it. Stratus allows you to add a full width Soundcloud player across the top or bottom of your WordPress site. You can choose any track, or any set for the player, and you can customise the appearance too. Customisation will require a working knowledge of CSS, but for most, the default color scheme should be sufficient. One word of note though: if you do want the player to continue playing across all pages without interruption, you will need to have an AJAX enabled theme to make this happen!
Facebook have created a plugin which allows for easy implementation of some of their popular widget features (i.e. like box, activity feed, comments). You also can set it up to automatically share posts to your timeline or band page.
Looking for more?
If you like this post, please check out my recent guest post for Cyber PR where I discuss ways of selling merch/music direct-to-fan via your WordPress website.
See part I of the series here: Essential WordPress Plugins for Musicians (Part I)
