Google Plus is a social networking and identity service run by, obviously, the search engine ginat Google.
Every website and blog seriously needs to have social networking on their sites, and nowadays needs Google Plus their alongaside their Facebooka dn twitter. The Monkeys here have spent hours looking for the good ones, and we now present to you our thoughts on the Best Google Plus Plugins For WordPress.
The Google+ service is still seen by many as “new” even though it was launched on June 28, 2011.
Google+ is available as its own stand alone website and on mobile devices. Google+ lets its everyone to +1 (exactly the same as “like” in Facebook) and recommend items (“post to wall”) across their web to their friends and contacts in their Circles.
If one person adds another person to their circle, they will be added to their (normally quite wide and large) social connection network. Google allows you to either hide or show the +1 tab on your profile page and all your +1′s are manageable from the +1 tab.
From Google:
The +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”
Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.
+1′s DO influence a website’s search performance, so be to integrate like NOW.
Anyway onward to our top 5 recommendations:
Google+ WordPress Widgets
GoogleCards
A simple plugin that adds a google+ widget for linking to your google+ profile and showing your number of followersJohn Henson of PlusDevs developed a handy widget to display your Google+ profile to your WordPress site.
The widget is as simple as WordPress widgets come and only requires you to add your Google+ ID.
Sadly there is no option in the GoogleCards to add someone to your Google+ Circles without leaving the site but we hope that this will be integrated to GoogleCards once the Google+ is launched officially and the Google+ API will be released.
Scriptrr WordPress Plugin
The Scriptrr WordPress Plugin is one of the more customizable ones available.
This Plugin not only lets you include your Google+ profile image and a useful “add to circles” button, but in addition it also lets you display other social media profile icons and accounts you have linked with your Google Plus account.
This of course is an optional setting which is easy to customize.
As you can tell by the image above the admin panel is really straight forward, which makes it easy to incorporate this plugin in your sidebar. Once you have it installed, customized and have dragged this widget to your blog’s sidebar it should look something like this:
That’s it, you’re all set and now people can add you to their circles directly from your blog.
Google Plus Widget
The Google Plus Widget plugin adds a Google Plus profile widget to your WordPress site along with the option to include the Google +1 button.
The plugin links to you Google+ profile and shows the number of followers in your circle as well as allowing users to add you to their Google+ circle.
It will also display a custom plugin title and your Google profile picture.
This version of the Google Plus Widget plugin accounts for Google’s recent changes in the structure of their Google+ profile pages.
The Google Plus Widget plugin uses a simple cache state to store your Google Plus profile data and eliminate the need to request information from Google+ on every page load.
Google Plus Button on every post
After displaying the Plus widget in the sidebar you now need to include the Google+ button into each and every post so that your blog readers can easily +1 your posts, pages and attachments.
Jetpack for WordPress
Those of you who know us, know that the Monkeys use Jetpack for a LOAD of reasons. Sharing is one of the best and easiets features, including the Google Plus integration!
Jetpack supercharges your self‑hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.
What is Jetpack?
Back in the day, there were great features available to WordPress.com users that were not available on self-hosted WordPress installs. Jetpack is a plugin that connects to WordPress.com and enables awesome features, powered by our cloud infrastructure.
What features does it have?
- WordPress.com Stats: Simple, concise site stats with no additional load on your server.
- Comments: enables your visitors to use WordPress.com, Twitter, or Facebook accounts when commenting on your site.
- Subscriptions: Allow users to subscribe to your posts and comments to receive a notification via email.
- Contact Form: Easily insert a contact form any where on your site.
- Sharing: The most super duper sharing tool on the interwebs. Share content with Facebook, Twitter, and many more.
- Spelling and Grammar: Improve your spelling, style, and grammar with the After the Deadline Proofreading service.
- Gravatar Hovercards: Show a pop-up business card of your users’ gravatar profiles in comments.
- Shortcode Embeds: Easily embed videos and more from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare.
- WP.me Shortlinks: Enable WP.me-powered shortlinks for all of your Posts and Pages for easier sharing.
- Beautiful Math: Mark up your posts with the markup language, perfect for complex mathematical equations and other über-geekery.
- Extra Sidebar Widgets: Easily add images, Twitter updates, and your site’s RSS links to your theme’s sidebar.
- Enhanced Distribution: Share your public posts and comments to search engines and other services in real-time.
Some of these features use the powerful WordPress.com cloud, others are popular features provided for the convenience of not having to install and manage several separate plugin installations.
Download here or search for “Jetpack” in the Pluugins > Add New menu.
WordPress Google +1 Button – Advanced Plugin, Includes Redirection
Adds the Google +1 button to your website’s posts. Has a variety of options for button style and position, and exposes a wp_plus_one_button
action for custom integration with the theme or other plugin.
One of the things we like about this plugin is that it has lots of design and layout option to match it with your website theme.
It has loads of customisation options such as size, enable/disable the +1 button and different layouts.
- Adds the Google +1 button to posts, pages, attachments, and custom post types (enable/disable for each)
- Allows you to disable the +1 button on specific pages in that post/page’s metabox
- Four display styles (standard, small, medium, tall)
- Enable / disable the +1 count on the buttons
- 4 position options for top and bottom of the post (independent) – (float left, float right, no float, or none)
- NEW – +1 button widgets
- NEW – redirect the user to a custom URL after clicking the +1 button