BAM: 5 New WordPress Plugins. Ahh Yeh.

I’ve been super busy this year, cranking out some useful new plugins. Nothing as awesome as Banhammer Pro, but some pretty useful new plugins nonetheless. So I’m launching a total of five new WordPress plugins. The first four basically are utility plugins designed to make WordPress life easier. The 5th and final plugin (for awhile at least), is Contact Form X, which I am now using as the contact form here at Perishable Press.

Contact Form X

I know what you are thinking, “wow another contact form plugin.” Yes there are a million contact form plugins, but none of the ones I’ve tried come anywhere close to my perfectionist coding standards. Sure there are lots of good options out there, but most either have too many useless features or not enough useful features. Contact Form X strikes that perfect balance between lightweight/fast and fully featured.

Like others, my contact page is a major communication channel for LOTS of different projects: books, plugins, tutorials, and all sorts of stuff. So I want the absolute best contact form plugin I can find. And as they say, if you want something done right, do it yourself. So that’s exactly why I developed Contact Form X. I wanted an awesome contact form with all the important features and none of the bloat. I basically poured 10+ years experience developing WordPress forms into this beauty. And it IS a thing of beauty :)

Disable Responsive Images

I’ve actually been using an un-released version of this plugin for years now. Finally decided to make it available to others. This plugin disables all of WP’s responsive-image functionality completely, including the auto-generated 768px-size version of each uploaded image. So it saves server resources while enabling you to implement your own responsive-image techniques.

Disable WP REST API

Another utility plugin that I’ve been using on my own WP sites for years. This plugin does one thing: disables the WP REST API for visitors who are not logged into WordPress. No configuration required, it just “works”. Even better? This plugin contains only 22 short lines of code (less than 2KB). So it is super lightweight, fast, and effective.

Enable Database Tools

I originally wrote this plugin a few years ago, just now getting around to making it available from the WP Plugin Directory. Enable Database Tools is a lightweight WordPress plugin that enables you to optimize and repair InnoDB and MyISAM database tables. It uses WP’s built-in database optimization tools to get the job done. There are lots of great database optimization plugins out there, but this one is aimed specifically at easily optimizing and repairing InnoDB tables. Although it also works on other types of tables, such as MyISAM.

WP Cron HTTP Auth

I develop most of my sites on a secure HTTP-Auth-protected domain. The only problem is that by default, WP Cron doesn’t work when HTTP Authorization is required. This simple plugin solves that problem by providing the necessary authentication to WordPress. Visit the plugin settings, enter your HTTP Auth credentials, save changes and done.

But wait, there’s more! Check out my collection of WordPress plugins »

Definitely got more good stuff in the works.. next up: complete redesign of Perishable Press :)

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Creative thinker. Passionate about free and open Web.