Plugins are there to assist you and let you perform the desired action in a more convenient and speedy manner. Therefore, today we decided to come up with an exciting and interesting collection of 40+ fresh and cool jQuery plugins for our reader’s convenience. This compilation is targeted at the designers and developers who want to create amazingly interactive websites that are attractive and accessible to the broadest assortment of browsers.

With these plugins, the overall experience that users come away from your sites with will be both thrilling and enjoyable. Keep in mind that navigation, galleries and slideshows, are hot points for a site to shine (or at least for the jQuery in a site to shine). So, without any further ado, here is the complete list. Enjoy!

The Plugins

MotionCAPTCHA ( Demo | Download )
MotionCAPTCHA is a jQuery CAPTCHA plugin. It asks users draft the shape they see in the canvas with the intention of submitting a form.

Smart Validate ( Demo | Download )
It is a jQuery credit card validation plugin that makes credit card format validation an easy chore. It makes sure that the user has inserted a legitimate credit card number prior to making the actual transaction. Smart Validate supports the subsequent credit cards: American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Diners Club, and Discover.

Multi Node Range Data Slider jQ Slider ( Demo | Download )
JQ Slider is a totally customizable plugin taking in style and formatting, and selection units. Powered by JQuery and JavaScript, it is based on typical JavaScript and CSS that you can modify as per your demands.

Timelinr ( Demo | Download )
Timelinr is a trouble-free jQuery plugin that assists you in providing more life to tedious timelines. It supports horizontal and vertical layouts, and you can parameterize the mass of attributes: speed, transparency, etc.

Flexible Nav ( Demo | Download )
Flexible Nav is a small jQuery library that adds a stylish navigation bar on the right of the page. It amends the web page navigation and assists in creating different sections of a document, an article, or just any web page.

Lettering.js ( Demo | Download )
Lettering.js is a jQuery plugin for radical web typography. Web type is bursting all over the web but CSS presently doesn’t present absolute down-to-the-letter control. Lettering.js solves that! Kerning type, editorial design, manageable code, and so on.

jVectorMap ( Demo | Download )
jVectorMap is a jQuery plugin utilized to illustrate vector maps and envisage data on HTML pages. It applies SVG in all contemporary browsers like Firefox 3 or 4, Safari, Chrome, Opera, IE9, at the same time supplying legacy support for older versions of IE from 6 to 8 with VML.

ComboGrid ( Demo | Download )
Combogrid, similar to auto complete, when applied to an input field, allows users to rapidly find and choose from a pre-populated list of values when they type, but in a tabular and paginated method. Combogrid gives keyboard navigation support for choosing an item.

Recurly.js ( Demo | Download )
Recurly.js is a JavaScript library for custom-made transaction forms. It assists you in making safe, PCI-compliant transaction forms with completely customizable CSS.

SmartGallery ( Demo | Download )
SmartGallery is a synergistic image gallery that is particularly designed to hold up huge data. It is lightweight, lightening quick and totally customizable. Powered by jQuery, SmartGallery goes together with twelve transition effects including some matchless transition effects and thumbnail navigation.

TagBox ( Demo | Download )
TagBox is a jQuery plugin to assist put in tags like input in your forms.

jQuery Strong Password Plugin Power Pwchecker ( Demo | Download )
Power PWChecker is a free of charge jQuery plugin to help ensure secure passwords for consumers. This easy jQuery plugin can be incorporated effortlessly with any online form (sign up form/ user registration form) to check password strength and provide users clues for producing stronger, more secure passwords.

Xml Driven Vertical News Scroller Script Using jQuery vScroller ( Demo | Download )
vScroller demonstrates categorized and color-coded content in a vertical scroll. Feeds originate from standardized XML file and styled by means of simple CSS3 for a fresh and attractive interface.

Ideal Forms ( Demo | Download )
Ideal Forms is a little framework used to construct powerful and fine-looking online forms. It’s extremely simple to use and entails nominal html syntax. Completely style-able with CSS, no images required. Support for IE 7+, Firefox 3+, Chrome 3+, Safari 3.1+ and Opera 11+. Degrades gracefully with JavaScript disabled.

jQuery Sliding Content Bar Plugin: PushUp Content ( Demo | Download )
It is an elegant and fast content bar that you can incorporate effortlessly into any website or web application. PushUp Content Bar is trouble-free to customize and strong enough to trust in. You can put in your contact details, location map by means of Google Maps, and a straightforward contact form that visitors can employ to make contact with you.

Cuepoint JS ( Demo | Download )
Cuepoint.js is an open source plugin for adding up cue-points and subtitles to your HTML5 video.

FitVids.js ( Demo | Download )
FitVids.js is a lightweight, easy-to-use jQuery plugin for fluid width video embeds.

Gmap3 ( Demo | Download )
gmap3 is a jQuery plugin which allows many manipulations of the google map API version 3.

Shuffle Letters Effect: a jQuery Plugin ( Demo | Download )
This is a small tutorial that demonstrates how to make a jQuery plugin that will jumble up the text content of any DOM element – an attractive effect that can be applied in headings, logos and slideshows.

Skitter ( Demo | Download )
Skitter is a plugin for producing great-looking slideshows. You can modify every aspect.

jFontSize ( Demo | Download )
The jFontSize plugin was formulated to make the process of creating the famous buttons A+ and A- easy, which modify the font size on sites with extremely big texts (for instance blogs, journals, tutorials, etc). This tool is also applied to boost the accessibility of sites, assisting people who have visual problems to see the content better.

Mosaiqy ( Demo | Download )
Mosaiqy is a jQuery plugin for viewing and zooming in on photos working on Opera 9+, Firefox 3.6+, Safari 3.2+, Chrome and IE7+. Photographs are recovered from a JSON/JSONP data structure and indiscriminately moved inside the grid. All exclusive animations are taken over by your GPU on your current browsers by means of CSS3 transitions, minimizing the CPU overhead.

HTML5 File Uploads with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
It will permit people to upload photos from their computers by dragging and dropping them onto the browser window, feasible with the new HTML5 APIs used by contemporary browsers. The photographs will have a preview and a progress bar. At present, the photos are only stored in a folder on the server, but you could develop it any way you like.

jQuery PointPoint – A Plugin For Pointing To Things ( Demo | Download )
This jQuery plugin will help you draw users’ attention to a certain part of the page, in the shape of a little arrow that is exhibited next to their mouse cursor. This can be helpful for pointing to missed form fields, buttons that must be pressed, or validation errors that need to be scrolled into view.

jqZoomage ( Demo | Download )
It’s an uncomplicated zoom panel, letting your users mouse over portions of your little image, to gain a close up view. It is perfect for use on a product details page or similar.

ZOOMIFY, EXPLORE YOR IMAGES! ( Demo | Download )
If you have big images and you wish to let people explore them you can employ this tool; it includes zoom-in, zoom-out and pan functionality; it has configurable enlargement levels and it offers built-in image preloading.

JQUERY.MB.VERTICALSLIDER ( Demo | Download )
jquery.mb.verticalSlider allows you display a long list of components managing pagination, it can work with components already in the DOM of your page or loading them by means of Ajax when required. And it works with the mouse wheel of course.

jQuery Pagination revised ( Demo | Download )
The jQuery Paging plugin tries to resolve the problem of pagination in a variety of ways. It eradicates most other pagination executions by a simple and uncomplicated callback design.

Diapo ( Demo | Download )
Diapo is a free and open source jQuery slideshow plugin. You can recommend changes or enhancements if you wish. You can download it and employ it for free; you can also add it into your projects and put up for sale it as part of a larger project (donations are not required but asked to be considered in this case).

Cool Dropdown Login Form with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
This is a trouble-free jQuery dropdown login form; it’s simple to implement, lightweight, and does the whole lot you need it to.

simpleSlider ( Demo | Download )
simpleSlider for jQuery is an extraordinarily effortless and useful image-slider with a lot of effects.

Craftyslide ( Demo | Download )
Craftyslide is a small (just 2kb) slideshow built on jQuery. Craftyslide attempts to be unusual by providing a trouble-free, no-frills way of displaying images packaged into a small, fresh and proficient plugin.

jmFullWall ( Demo | Download )
jmFullWall is a jQuery plugin for the introduction of an inspiring portfolio.

Wave Display Effect with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
This plugin allows you illustrate images and content in a distinctive form – a wave. The idea is to primarily have some smaller thumbnails rotated and placed in the shape of a sine curve. As soon as you click on a thumbnail, the images will be zoomed in and you can see a medium sized version.

jQuery Widget ( Demo | Download )
jqxWidgets is a complete and inventive widget library rested on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library. It authorizes developers to deliver professional, cross-browser compatible web applications, while considerably minimizing their development time.

Elastislide – A Responsive jQuery Carousel Plugin ( Demo | Download )
Elastislide is a responsive jQuery carousel that will adapt its size and its behavior in order to work on any screen size. It uses the jQuery Touchwipe Plugin which allows you to obtain the wipe event on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

FlexSlider ( Demo | Download )
FlexSlider is an overwhelming, completely responsive jQuery slider plugin. It has easy, semantic markup, slide and fade animations, and is supported in all main browsers so you won’t have any compatibility problems. Flexslider is built for beginners and pros in a similar way.

Draggable Image Boxes Grid ( Demo | Download )
The idea is to have a draggable grid that shows boxes of thumbnails and menu like items. Once clicked, the thumbnail will expand to the full size image and the menu item box will expand to a fullscreen content area.

Responsive Image Gallery with Thumbnail Carousel ( Demo | Download )
In this tutorial Codrops shows you how to generate a responsive image gallery with a thumbnail carousel using Elastislide. Inspired by Twitter’s “user gallery” and upon a request to demonstrate a combination of Elastislide, we want to execute a quick to respond gallery that adapts to the view-port thickness.

grumble.js ( Demo | Download )
grumble.js furnishes special tool tips devoid of the common limitations of north/east/south/west positioning. A grumble can be revolved around a given component at any angle, all 360 degrees. Any distance can be defined. Any CSS style can be enforced. FX queues for animating multiple grumbles. And it works in IE6+, and current browsers.

Elycharts ( Demo | Download )
Elycharts is a clean JavaScript charting library, simple to use and totally customizable. It aids you in making good looking interactive charts on your web pages or web applications, with loads of useful features: legend and label support, mouse tracking, tool tips, templates, animations, and more.

spin.js ( Demo | Download )
spin.js is an inspired CSS3 loading spinner. You can amend every single parameter: number of lines, length and thickness of lines, radius, trail, speed of spinning, and whether there’s shading or not.

wordCounter jQuery Plugin ( Demo | Download )
A trouble-free word counter plugin for jQuery. When active, the counter div shows the word count from the target text field. The target could be a text area or a text box. Depending upon the choices supplied, the count could be the total amount or remaining amount of words entered into the target text field. If the negative numbers choice is furnished in that case the count will demonstrate a negative value if the word limit has been passed.

(rb)

  

Previously, on Noupe. We brought you a handful of ways to expand on the functionality of any WordPress based site using some inspired plugins and/or themes to elevate this CMS beyond its humble beginnings as a blogging platform. With ways to turn WP into a Discussion Forum, an Online Shop, and a Helpdesk. Today, that mission continues.

Excerpt from Part One

Theme designers and plugin developers have been pushing the boundaries of what WordPress can do for some time. This has accelerated since the introduction of Custom Post Types into the WordPress core as it allows developers to use WordPress in a lot of weird and wonderful ways.

Today we will begin showing you examples of themes and plugins that let you use WordPress in ways you may have never thought possible.

As we mentioned last week, in this installment we will show you how to extend the possibilities of your WP site to make it a Wiki, an Arcade, a Job Board, a Membership based site, a Review site, or just a Q&A site. Now let’s get at it.

Wiki

Due to the sheer amount of content they contain, Wikis are a good way of making money online (take Star Trek fan wiki Memory Alpha for example). They are also a useful addition to blogs and websites as it allows readers to contribute to the site. As you would expect from a CMS, WordPress handles Wikis easily.

Theme

WikiWP – FREE

In A Nutshell: A free WordPress theme that’s based on the Wikipedia design.

Pros

• SEO friendly.
• Clean design (though perhaps a little dated).

Cons

• Hasn’t been updated for years so new WordPress features aren’t built into this theme.

WordPress Wiki Theme – $30

In A Nutshell: A premium WordPress design that uses WordPress to create a wiki.

Pros

• 6 colour schemes to choose from.
• Features sliding sidebar menus and a dedicated FAQ page.

Cons

• Hasn’t been updated with WordPress 3.0 features such as featured images.

Plugins

Wiki – $39

In A Nutshell: A premium WordPress plugin that lets you convert any post or page into a Wiki.

Pros

• Entries can be edited directly on the page without having to access your admin area.
• Works with WordPress, WordPress MU and BuddyPress.
• Perfect for adding a Wiki to an existing website.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• eSimple Wiki – A basic free Wiki plugin for WordPress.
• Wiki Embed – Lets you embed wikis onto any WordPress page or post.
• WikiPress – An open source plugin that lets you collaborate with other users in your admin section via a Wiki.

Arcade

There are quite a few premium products that allow you to build an arcade website using WordPress. Most plugins come packaged with a theme and charge a little extra for the games to be included in the zip file.

MyArcadePlugin Lite – FREE | My Arcade Plugin – €29.95

In A Nutshell: A feature rich arcade WordPress plugin that lets you install a whopping 29,000 games.

Pros

• Games can be downloaded and posted automatically.
• Great looking design and can be customised with your own brand in minutes.
• Leaderboard support to encourage visitors to come back.

Cons

• Free version of the plugin is very limited.

WP Arcade – $33

In A Nutshell: A premium arcade theme store that comes packaged with a plugin that automatically grabs games from MochinMedia.

Pros

• All themes come with 5 colour schemes.
• Advertising and Google Analytics integration.
• Huge amount of customisation through the themes unique options page.
• Good price for an arcade solution.

Cons

• There are currently 10 themes available however they are all very similar.

WP Arcade Engine – $29

In A Nutshell: A premium arcade plugin for WordPress.

Pros

• The plugin can be set to publish new games every day automatically.
• Support for any type of game type.
• Includes a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee.

Cons

• The plugin retails for $29 however you don’t get any games for this price. You will need to pay an additional $29 to get a game pack.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• WP Mini Games – Allows you to easily embed flash games onto posts, pages and sidebars.
• ArcadePress – An fulley fledged open source arcade solution.
• WP Games Embed – Lets you embed flash games into your posts and pages using shortcodes.

Job Board

There are a lot of job related plugins available for WordPress though 3 stand out from the rest: the Job Board and Jobroller designs and the very useful Job Manager. I recommend Job Manager for those of you who want to add a job section into an existing WordPress website.

Themes

Job Board – $65

In A Nutshell: A premium theme that uses WordPress to power a job board.

Pros

• Complete control using a dedicated theme options page.
• Coupons feature to allow certain customers discounts.
• Automated payment collection via PayPal.
• Very easy to brand.

Jobroller – $99

In A Nutshell: Turn your WordPress website into a fully functional job board.

Pros

• Easy to use theme options area.
• Options for job seekers and employers. Job seekers can also upload their resume/CV for employers to see.
• Five different colour schemes.
• Social media integration.

Plugins

Job Manager – FREE

In A Nutshell: An open source job plugin that doesn’t scrimp on features

Pros

• Can create multiple job boards.
• Applicants can apply directly through the website.
• Good template system that allows you to customise the job area into your existing WordPress design.

Cons

• If you are looking for a dedicated job website, it may be better to use an all in one job solution such as the premium themes mentioned as you would need to use this plugin with an existing design.

WPCareers – FREE

In A Nutshell: A free plugin that lets you create a searchable resume (CV) database.

Pros

• Users can modify descriptions at a later date and upload their own photos/images.
• Can manage job seekers and employers.

Cons

• Limited features when compared to other options.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• CareerBuilder Jobs – Power your own job board through CareerBuilder.
• Job Listing – An open source plugin that lets you create a fully customisable job board on your website.

Membership

WordPress is the perfect platform for a membership website. The premium member plugins are better supported however free alternatives have a huge range of features too.

Members Only – FREE

In A Nutshell: Make your content viewable only by signed in members.

Pros

• Can specify what page the member is redirected to when they log in.
• Can protect RSS feeds for members too.

User Role Subscriptions – FREE

In A Nutshell: A user role subscription plugin that allows you to restrict content to paid subscribers.

Pros

• Can modify the email template for new subscribers.
• Automatically deletes expired subscribers.
• Can accept payments via PayPal.

Cons

• Quite limited. There are better alternatives available.

WP-Members – FREE

In A Nutshell: A membership system that restricts content to signed in users.

Pros

• Can block pages, posts, both or neither by default.
• Registration process can be changed to suit your needs.
• Private member area can be determined.
• Well documented.

Cons

• No support for paid membership.

Members – FREE

In A Nutshell: A user role and content management plugin.

Pros

• Capabilities of users can be modified.
• You can control what user groups can see specific content.
• RSS feeds can be restricted.

s2Member – FREE | s2Member Pro – $69

In A Nutshell: An feature rich membership plugin.

Pros

• Includes 4 membership levels: Free, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
• Works with multiple payment gateways.
• Can setup one off or recurring payments.
• Can restrict content and downloads to specified member levels.

Membership – FREE | Membership Premium – $39

In A Nutshell: Transforms WordPress into a fully functional membership site.

Pros

• Can offer free memberships that turn into paid memberships after a set number of days.
• Unlimited membership and subscription levels.
• Can restrict access to members only in lots of different areas including posts, pages, comments, categories, galleries and more.
• Well documented, well supported and updated regularly.

WP-Membership – $25

In A Nutshell: Sell your content with this premium membership plugin.

Pros

• Can setup unlimited membership levels.
• Payments can be made via PayPal and the dashboard shows sales for that month.

Cons

• Limited number of member options compared to other paid membership plugins.

CMS Members – $59.50

In A Nutshell: A solid membership plugin that boasts some great features.

Pros

• Create unlimited memberships.
• Built in mass mailer.
• Accepts PayPal and 2Checkout as payment from new members.
• Content within a post or page can be restricted to different member groups.

MagicMembers – $97

In A Nutshell: A premium membership plugin that has a huge amount of features.

Pros

• Works with a huge number of payment gateways.
• Integrates with popular auto responders.
• Premium content can be restricted on a ‘Pay Per Post’ basis.
• Categories can be protected and RSS feeds can be restricted to paying members too.

Wishlist Member – $97

In A Nutshell: One of the most popular premium membership plugins available today.

Pros

• Sequential content delivery for those who want to drip-feed content to members.
• Flexible membership options including free, trial or paid. Members can also migrate to other membership levels after a set period of time.
• Works with many shopping cart systems.
• Integrates with many popular WordPress plugins.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• DW Members Only – Redirects any unregistered members to the login page.
• Membership Database – Manage a member database for your club or association.

Review Website

The surge to make money through review websites has died down a little however there are still some good premium plugins out there for those of you who are looking to launch a review website.

My Review Plugin – $90

In A Nutshell: A flexible rating plugin that can add ratings to any WordPress post, page or product.

Pros

• Can use stars, letters or percentages to grade items.
• It’s easy to build horizontal and vertical comparison tables.
• Add ratings to any area of your site automatically with a one-click install.
• 45-day money back guarantee.

WF Review – $89

In A Nutshell: A review plugin that was created specifically for affiliate marketers.

Pros

• Import CSV feeds from affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and ShareASale to create thousands of products in seconds.
• Support for comparison tables.
• Amazon ratings stars are fully customisable via CSS.

WP Review Engine – $99.95

In A Nutshell: A premium rating plugin that can be customised easily.

Pros

• Rating comments and rating tables can be styled easily via the admin area.
• 13 star images, 23 buttons, and 6 comparison table image sets are included with the plugin.
• Add comparison tables to any post or page on your site.
• 30-day money back guarantee.

Q & A

The following themes and plugins allow you to create a question and answer website. This type of website has become very common due to the popularity of sites such as Yahoo Answers, Stack Overflow and Quora.

Themes

WP Answers – $89

In A Nutshell: Turn WordPress into a cash generating question and answer website.

Pros

• Pull content directly into your website from Yahoo Answers.
• Full Facebook and Twitter integration.
• Packaged theme comes in 6 custom colours.
• Intuitive points system that gives members points for answering questions.

Plugins

Q&A Lite – FREE | Q & A – $39

In A Nutshell: Add a questions and answers section to your existing WordPress website.

Pros

• WYSIWYG editors for both questions and answers.
• Integrated reputation points system.
• User profile pages for those who use the question and answer service.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• Question and Answer Forum – Easily add a question and answer area to your website.
• FAQ Builder – Create a FAQ area easily on your website.

Overview

Throughout the course of these two articles we have shown you how flexible the WordPress is and how it can be used for a variety of purposes. The products that have been listed in this article can be split into two categories: plugins that integrate with your existing WordPress powered website to add extra functionality to an area of your site and themes or plugins that use WordPress to completely change how WordPress is used (e.g. a discussion forum).

When you are using a product that uses WordPress to power the main areas of your website, you need to consider the stand alone scripts that are available. For example, The G Forums uses the WordPress platform to create a discussion forum. It achieves this through custom theme templates therefore it couldn’t be integrated into an existing WordPress website. The script retails for $29 and has very basic features therefore, in my opinion, you would be better off using a PHP bulletin board such as phpBB or Simple Machines instead. If however you wanted to integrate a forum into your existing website, a plugin such as bbPress may be better than phpBB or Simple Machines.

Another factor to consider is plugins. The official WordPress plugin directory has over 15,000 plugins. The number of add ons available for stand alone scripts is sometimes poor therefore if you need additional functionality on your website, a WordPress product is a good choice (e.g. one click installs of forums, sitemaps, member areas etc).

Also, if you know of any great free or premium WordPress products that extend the functionality of the platform, please share it with other readers in the comment area.

(rb)

  

For a platform that started its life as solely a platform for blogging, WordPress has come a long way over the last few years. It’s certainly earned the right to be known as the most popular Content Management System (CMS) on the net with speculation that between the self hosted script and its hosted service WordPress.com, it powers over 25% of the web (WordPress.com exceeded 50 million websites last week!).

Theme designers and plugin developers have been pushing the boundaries of what WordPress can do for some time. This has accelerated since the introduction of Custom Post Types into the WordPress core as it allows developers to use WordPress in a lot of weird and wonderful ways.

Today we will begin showing you examples of themes and plugins that let you use WordPress in ways you may have never thought possible. Most of the newer themes and plugins in this list use custom post types however some older scripts still use a custom solution.

One of the main benefits of using WordPress instead of a stand alone script is the versatility it offers you. You quite literally have thousands upon thousands of plugins and themes that you can use on your site. You shouldn’t underestimate how useful this is!

Many plugin developers use the freemium business model so if a lite version of the plugin you want to purchase exists, it makes sense to download that first and try it out.

In this first installment we will look at ways to expand your WP site into a Discussion Forum, an Online Shop, and a Helpdesk. So without further ado, let’s get the show on the road

Discussion Forum

Due to the popularity of WordPress, there are bridges available for most popular discussion forums such as IP Board, phpBB and vBulletin. These bridges allow you to merge the user database from WordPress and the forum software.

Sadly, most forum solutions for WordPress are quite basic. This is not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion as there are lots of stand alone alternatives available with many features. They do however tend to have more features than is always necessary therefore if you are looking for a lighter solution you may want to try one of the solutions below. Here’s hoping that the conversion of Automattics forum bbPress from a stand alone script to a WordPress plugin will prove to be a success.

Themes

The G Forums – $29

In A Nutshell: A premium design that uses WordPress as a backend for a discussion forum.

Pros

• PSD of theme and icons included with purchase.
• Ability to add a slideshow on set areas of the forum.

Cons

• Basic design.
• Better free stand alone alternatives available therefore no real need for using WordPress instead of a more developed feature rich script.

Plugins

bbPress – FREE

In A Nutshell: Automattics forgotten bulletin board project.

Pros

• Allows you to add a WordPress forum to your existing WordPress site at the click of a button.
• Forum integrates directly into your existing design.

Cons

• Very slow development and the community is very quiet.
• Very little documentation.
• Very few plugins available at the moment.

Simple Press – FREE

In A Nutshell: A forum plugin that integrates with your WordPress website.

Pros

• Integrates with your existing WordPress installation.
• Updated regularly and well supported by its developers.
• Boasts many features that simple solutions such as bbPress lack.

Cons

• Forum design feels a little outdated.

Mingle Forum – FREE

In A Nutshell: Another open source forum solution that plugins directly into your existing WordPress design.

Pros

• Works with WordPress 3.0+.
• Integrates with your existing WordPress installation.
• SEO friendly URLs.
• Can create a corresponding forum post whenever a new post is added on your WordPress website.

Cons

• Default forum design looks very dated.
• Developer has indicated he no longer has time to update plugin.

WP Forum Server – FREE

In A Nutshell: A WordPress 3.0+ compatible discussion forum plugin.

Pros

• Integrates easily into your existing WordPress website.
• A basic forum though it should be more than sufficient for many users.

Cons

• Default forum design is very basic looking.
• An improved version of the plugin exists. Strangely, the purchase link does not work therefore there is no way to actually buy and no details of what the price is.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• Vanilla Forums – An light open source forum script that integrates well with WordPress.
• WP Forum – The original forum plugin that WP Forum Server was based on.

Online Shop

E-commerce is one of the areas where WordPress is leading the pack with many solutions matching or even bettering popular free alternatives. There are a few good plugins available however most developers tend to be integrating their shopping cart into a unique theme. With more than 50 premium e-commerce themes available and more being released every month, WordPress is a great choice for launching an online shop.

Themes

SimpleCart – FREE

In A Nutshell: A free e-commerce theme from developer Chris Wallace

Pros

• One of the few existing free e-commerce designs.

Cons

• A very basic design.
• Hasn’t been updated for years.

ShopperPress – $79

In A Nutshell: A premium e-commerce solution for WordPress.

Pros

• Product is open source therefore can be used on an unlimited number of websites.
• Package comes with over 20 online shop designs.
• Huge amount of features. Is Google Adsense and Analytics ready, works with over 20 payment gateways and has data import tools for Amazon, eBay and CSV files.

Cons

• Many designs have a similar feel and look.

eStore – $39

In A Nutshell: A beautiful e-commerce design from theme developers Elegant Themes.

Pros

• Comes with 5 unique colour schemes.
• Comes with it’s own unique options page to give you complete control over your site.
• Additional features such as shortcodes, thumbnail resizing and advertisement integration.

Cons

• Is not a complete e-commerce solution. You will have to find a suitable e-commerce WordPress plugin in order to use the design efficiently.

Store Front – $65

In A Nutshell: A complete e-commerce solution from theme developers Templatic.

Pros

• Store lets you sell physical products or digital products such as e-books, digital art etc.
• Includes 5 colour schemes.
• Multiple payment gateways.
• Built in affiliate module

Plugins

DukaPress – FREE

In A Nutshell: An open source e-commerce solution.

Pros

• Allows you to sell physical or digital products.
• Multiple payment gateways available.
• Integrates with your existing WordPress website.

Cons

• Lacks many advanced features.
• Default design is very basic.

eShop – FREE

In A Nutshell: A versatile open source e-commerce solution.

Pros

• Various methods for listing products.
• Multiple payment gateways.
• Includes stock and tax options.

Cons

• Default design is very basic so best used with a good e-commerce theme.

GetShopped – FREE

In A Nutshell: A feature rich free e-commerce solution that’s been downloaded over 750,000 times.

Pros

• Integrates with any WordPress design.
• Multiple payment gateways.
• Marketing tools built in that allow you email customers, blog and post about your products on Facebook.
• Well documented, regularly updated and active support community.

Cons

• Would have to customise your existing design or purchase a suitable e-commerce design in order to launch your shop.

WP Store Cart – FREE | WP Store Cart Pro – $29.99

In A Nutshell: A flexible, featured rich e-commerce solution for WordPress.

Pros

• Easy to setup due to a web based ‘Setup Wizard’.
• Size and colour of products can be set.
• Can be used to sell physical or digital products (or both).
• Coupon and discount system bult in.

Cons

• Limited number of payment gateways currently available.

JigoShop – FREE

In A Nutshell: Another great open source e-commerce solution that you should consider.

Pros

• Localisation options that allow you to set your currency, tax by location and modify shipping costs accordingly.
• Very easy to setup and use.

Cons

• Limite number of payment gateways compared to alternatives that are available.
• Integrates perfectly with the Jigotheme however that will set you back $79.

Cart66 Lite – Free | Cart66 – $89

In A Nutshell: A good premium e-commerce solution which has a limited version of the script available for free.

Pros

• Multiple payment gateways.
• Integrates with popular plugins and services such as Gravity Forms, ZenDesk, MailChimp and iDevaffiliate.
• A limited version of the plugin is available for free.

MarketPress – FREE | MarketPress Premium – $39

In A Nutshell: A flexible e-commerce solution that integrates with WordPress, WordPress MU and BuddyPress.

Pros

• Can be used to sell physical or digital products.
• Free version of the script boasts a lot of great features such as temporary sale prices, coupon codes, order management alerts and much more.
• Ability to link to external websites such as Amazon, ClickBank and E-Junkie in order to increase affiliate commissions/li>
• 3 CSS themes included with the premium version.

Cons

• In comparison to some other e-commerce plugins, the number of payment gateways available to you is quite limited.

WordPress eStore – $49.95

In A Nutshell: A premium e-commerce plugin that fails to justify its price.

Pros

• Easy to use.
• Will work with your existing WordPress design.
• Integrates well with a number of other WordPress plugins.

Cons

• There are free alternatives that have more features.

Shopp – $55

In A Nutshell: A feature rich premium e-commerce solution for WordPress.

Pros

• Supports the sale of physical and digital products.
• Automatically calculates shipping rates for numerous mailing services.
• Works with a huge amount of payment gateways.
• Regularly updated and quick response times for customers who need support.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• Ecwid Shopping Cart – A fully functional e-commerce solution that lets you add a shopping cart to your website in minutes.
• WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart – Lets you add an ‘Add to Cart’ button to any page or post.
• ArtPal – Integrates PayPal into your WordPress powered website.
• Google Checkout Shopping Cart Plugin – Easily add Google Checkout buy buttons to your website.
• TheCartPress – A flexible open source e-commerce solution.
• Zingiri Web Shop – A free e-commerce plugin that lets you sell digital or phyiscal products online.
• Quick Shop – A WordPress MU compatible e-commerce plugin that shows what the user has in their cart via a sidebar widget.
• FoxyShop – A plugin that lets you integrate the FoxyCart shopping cart into your website.

Helpdesk

There haven’t been too many A+ helpdesk products released for WordPress as yet though WooThemes recent release SupportPress is encouraging and is a great example of what can be achieved using custom post types.

Theme

SupportPress – $100

In A Nutshell: A premium design that uses WordPress to power a fully functional helpdesk.

Pros

• Has a fantastic knowledgebase feature built in. Customers are asked to check the knowledgebase before submitting a ticket and existing tickets can be converted into knowledgebase entries too.
• Email notifications can be customised.
• Optimised for use on mobile phones.
• Very easy to use.

Cons

• Those of you on a budget may find $100 expensive for this product when there are free stand alone alternatives such as SysAid and SpiceWorks.

WebHelpDeskHQ – $55

In A Nutshell: A premium WordPress helpdesk design.

Pros

• Support requests can be turned into knowledgebase entries.
• Support tickets are stored in a forum and can be set to be viewed publicly or just privately by staff.
• Includes a WordPress iPhone application.

Cons

• Not as advanced as some other helpdesk solutions.

Plugins

WordPress Advanced Ticket System – FREE | WordPress Advanced Ticket System Premium – €50

In A Nutshell: A free plugin that adds a complete ticket system to your existing WordPress website.

Pros

• Users can create tickets without having to sign up as a member.
• Each ticket can be assigned a category and priority.

Cons

• Basic looking design.
• Most features are only available in the premium version of the script.

Zendesk for WordPress - Plugin is FREE though ZenDesk prices start from $9 per month

In A Nutshell: A plugin that helps you integrate the feature rich ZenDesk helpdesk service into your WordPress website.

Pros

• Logins are synced between your website and ZenDesk i.e. no need for customers to sign in twice.
• Can turn blog comments directly into helpdesk tickets.
• Access tickets directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Cons

• Whilst the plugin is free, ZenDesk packages start from $9 per month. The service is worth the money however those on a budget may prefer a solution with no recurring costs.

You May Also Want To Consider…

• Support Tickets – A basic ticket support system for WordPress.
• IzzyHelp – An integration plugin for users of the IzzyHelp helpdesk service.

To Be Continued…

That wraps up this installment of ways to expand your WP based site. Be sure to check in next week as we deliver more ways you can use this powerful CMS to create a Wiki, an Arcade, a Job Board, a Membership based site, a Review site, or just a Q&A site.

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Here we present some useful plugins and tutorials that will let you create awesome forms for your websites — whether it’s a sign up form or contact us form. You can enhance its functionality and usefulness with these plugins. Since these forms are used by the visitors of your website to interact with you, they are of great importance and for this reason you cannot just ignore them as they play an important role in the success of your website. So here we have gathered a bunch of jQuery Plugins, Tutorials and Resources which will help you in improving the effectiveness and beauty of these forms

Useful jQuery Plugins

Turn Any Webform into a Powerful Wizard ( Demo | Download )
The FormToWizard plugin helps you to turn any webform into a powerful wizard with jQuery “steps left” information.

toChecklist plugin ( Demo | Download )
The toChecklist plugin for jQuery will give you the functionality of a SELECT box without the need to ctrl+click items to select them.

FlexBox ( Demo | Download )
FlexBox is a jQuery plugin that is intended to be a very flexible replacement for html textboxes and dropdowns, using ajax to retrieve and bind JSON data.

A fancy contact form ( Demo | Download )
Providing a simple and reliable means of feedback from site visitors is a crucial part of any web presence. The most simple and common feedback channel are contact forms. In this tutorial we are going to make an AJAX contact form which leverages modern web development techniques.

Jquery Collapser ( Demo | Download )
Jquery collapser is a multi purpose collapser plugin made for expanding and collapsing elements.

asmSelect – Select Multiple Form Fields ( Demo | Download )
asmSelect is a jQuery plugin that answers some of these issues. A progressive enhancement is applied to the select multiple that makes it much easier to use. This enhancement automatically hides the original select multiple, and instead presents a regular select showing the available options, and an HTML list showing the already-selected options.

JQUERY: DFORM ( Demo | Download )
The jQuery.dForm plugin allows you to create your HTML forms programmatically from

A jQuery Inline Form Validation ( Demo | Download )
When it comes to form validation, it’s hard to have a versatile solution that works with every form. Figuring out how to display errors is not a simple task. When an error needs to be displayed, the script creates a div and positions it in the top right corner of the input. This way you don’t have to worry about your HTML form structure. The rounded corner and shadow are done with CSS3 and degrade well in non compliant browsers.

JQuery plugin for input text field filtering ( Demo | Download )
This is simple JQuery plugin for filtering text input field by using regexp. Only allowed characters will be inserted into input field, others will be silently dropped.

jQuery Show Password Plugin ( Demo | Download )
This plugin works by adding a text field that takes the value of what is typed into the password field. Then, when the link is clicked the password field is hidden and the text field is shown.

Simple Validation Plugin ( Demo | Download )
A simple validation plugin that comes in at about 1.5kb.

AutoSuggest jQuery Plugin ( Demo | Download )
AutoSuggest is a very lightweight jQuery plugin that makes auto-completing extremely easy.

How to create Skype-like Form buttons using jQuery ( Demo | Download )
If you use Skype then you have probably noticed that animated button for adding more people to a chat. When you click on it the icon on the left “jumps” for a few times. In this tutorial Janko Jovanovic is going to show you how to create the same button using jQuery and some simple CSS.

Create an AJAX/jQuery/PHP Contact Form ( Demo | Download )
This tutorial uses XHTML, CSS, jQuery and a little PHP to make a pop-up/modal contact form that validates whatever is entered into the form and then uses AJAX to send the form without refreshing the page.

JavaScript image combo box ( Demo | Download )
Are you tired with your old fashion dropdown? Try this new one. Image combo box. You can add an icon with each option. It works with your existing “select” element.

jQuery plugin: Password Valida ( Demo | Download )

prettyCheckboxes ( Demo | Download )
This script is for people who wants to have a consistent look for checkboxes across browser or those who simply want them to look better. By using this script you wont loose any of the regular inputs usability.

Boxy – Facebook-like dialog/overlay, with frills ( Demo | Download )
Boxy is a flexible, Facebook-style dialog box for jQuery with support for dragging and size tweening.

Enlarge input fields on focus ( Demo | Download )

WordPress contact form without a plugin, using jQuery ( Demo | Download )
There are lots of WordPress plugins for contact forms, but wouldn’t it be nice to have more control over the markup? In this tutorial, Trevor is going to show how to use a custom page template to create a contact form in WordPress without a plugin.

Build An Incredible Login Form With jQuery ( Demo | Download )
In this tutorial, we’ll create a sliding panel, that slides in to reveal more content, using JQuery to animate the height of the panel. In this case, we will be creating a hypothetical login for the new tutsplus area that’s coming soon.

In-Field Labels jQuery Plugin ( Demo | Download )
This is a simple plugin that turns properly formatted HTML forms into forms with in-field label support. Labels fade when the field is focussed and disappear when text entry begins. Clearing a field and leaving brings back the label.

jQuery Keypad ( Demo | Download )

How to Enhance Forms Using jQuery UI ( Demo | Download )
jQuery makes creating UI so much easier without compromising speed and quality. In this tutorial we are going to enhance form using jQuery UI, so let’s get started

Autocomplete ( Demo | Download )
Autocomplete an input field to enable users quickly finding and selecting some value, leveraging searching and filtering.

jqTransform ( Demo | Download )
This plugin is a jQuery styling plugin wich allows you to skin form elements.

jQuery Validation ( Demo | Download )

Submit A Form Without Page Refresh using jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Submit a contact form that sends an email, without page refresh using jQuery, This tutorial will help you creating a form that can be submitted without page refreshing, using JQuery.

Selecting Multiple Select Form Elements on the Fly ( Demo | Download )
The following jQuery tutorial offers a simplified solution to selecting related select menu options within a form.

timepickr ( Demo | Download )
jquery.timepickr was created in a attempt to make the process of inputing time in a form as easy and natural as possible.

AJAX forms ( Demo | Download )
The jQuery Form Plugin allows you to easily and unobtrusively upgrade HTML forms to use AJAX.

jQuery AlphaNumeric ( Demo | Download )
jQuery AlphaNumeric is a javascript control plugin that allows you to limit what characters a user can enter on textboxes or textareas.

Give Your Characters a NobleCount ( Demo | Download )
NobleCount is a customizable jQuery plugin for a more improved counting of the remaining characters, and handling of resulting behaviors, of a text entry object, e.g. input textfield, textarea. Also, NobleCount supports pre-existing text within the text object and jQuery chaining.

Password Strength Indicator and Generator ( Demo | Download )
In the example about you will see two password boxes and with them you have a generate password link and an icon showing you the strength of your password.

“SAFE SUBMIT” AJAX REQUEST BUTTON HANDLER ( Demo | Download )
If you want to disable your ajax submit buttons when clicked to disallow double submits, jquery.safesubmit makes it simple and safe.

JQByte StickyForms ( Demo | Download )
StickyForms is a jQuery plugin that automatically saves all form fields into cookies, and then autofills those values on any form that shares element IDs across your site.

A BETTER FORM – SPAM-LESS ROBOT-LESS FORMS ( Demo | Download )
A Better Form is a jQuery plugin I designed to help eliminate spam comments, spam emails and other automated form submissions.

Simple chained combobox ( Demo | Download )

Changing Form Input Styles on Focus with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
This tutorial will show you how to spice them up with CSS classes and default values that change according to which form item is selected. All with just a splash of jQuery.

Ajax Upload; A file upload script with progress-bar, drag-and-drop ( Demo | Download )
This plugin uses XHR for uploading multiple files with progress-bar in FF3.6+, Safari4+, Chrome and falls back to hidden iframe based upload in other browsers, providing good user experience everywhere.

Select Multiple Form Fields ( Demo | Download )

Masked Input Plugin ( Demo | Download )

Elastic – Make your textareas grow ( Demo | Download )
This jQuery plugin makes your textareas grow and shrink to fit it’s content. It was inspired by the auto growing textareas on Facebook. The major difference between Elastic and it’s competitors is it’s weight.

jQuery “Highlight” Plugin ( Demo | Download )

Ajax Fancy Captcha ( Demo | Download )

File Style jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Browsers do not let you style file inputs. File Style plugin fixes this problem. It enables you to use image as browse button. You can also style filename field as normal textfield using css. It is written using JavaScript and jQuery.

Emblematiq Niceforms ( Demo | Download )
You basically know a web form when you see one as they always look the same and they’ve kept this look over the years. Try as hard as you might but web forms can only change their appearance so much. Some may argue that this is a good usability feature, and I tend to agree, but there comes a time when you just need to style web forms so that they look different. How do you do that? Niceforms comes to the rescue!

Uploadify – a multiple file upload plugin for jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Uploadify is a jQuery plugin that allows the easy integration of a multiple (or single) file uploads on your website. It requires Flash and any backend development language. An array of options allow for full customization for advanced users, but basic implementation is so easy that even coding novices can do it.

Progress Bar ( Demo | Download )
It’s a very simple widget with a small API that exposes a limited number of properties and methods, but it can still be highly effective and is great for providing visual feedback to visitors on the percentage of a process is left before it is complete.

Uniform – Sexy forms with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Uniform masks your standard form controls with custom themed controls. It works in sync with your real form elements to ensure accessibility and compatibility.

jQuery.uiSelect ( Demo | Download )

Autocomplete ( Demo | Download )
By giving an autocompleted field focus or entering something into it, the plugin starts searching for matching entries and displays a list of values to choose from. By entering more characters, the user can filter down the list to better matches.

Useful jQuery Resources

• All About jQuery: Plugins, Tutorials and Resources
  A bunch of exciting and awesome jQuery plugins for your personal use.
• jQuery Techniques and Plugins
  40 useful but obscure jQuery plug-ins that will hopefully help you improve the user experience on your websites.
• Useful jQuery Plugins for Slideshows, Graphs and Text Effects
  35 powerful and effective jQuery plugins and techniques for slideshows, graphs and text effects.
• 50 Useful Coding Techniques (CSS Layouts, Visual Effects and Forms)
  An overview of useful CSS/jQuery coding tips, tricks and techniques for visual effects, layouts and web form design to help you find solutions to the problems you are dealing with or will have to deal with in future.
• Amazing and Fresh jQuery Plugins
  25 of the best newly (or, pretty close to new) released jQuery plugins.
• 40 Exceptional jQuery Interface Techniques and Tutorials
  Explore the strengths of jQuery in letting web developers create impressive client-side-based user interface components.
• 40+ Excellent jQuery Tutorials
  Various jQuery Tutorials for your source of inspiration.
• 50 Useful JavaScript and jQuery Techniques and Plugins
  Useful JavaScript and jQuery techniques, plugins and tools that may help you improve the user experience for your site.

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]]> http://www.noupe.com/jquery/50-useful-jquery-plugins-to-enhance-your-forms.html/feed 24 http://www.noupe.com/jquery/useful-jquery-plugins-to-enhance-html-tables.html http://www.noupe.com/jquery/useful-jquery-plugins-to-enhance-html-tables.html#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:23:33 +0000 Nousheen Aquil http://www.noupe.com/?p=43840

  

  

This post contains 40 varieties of functional jQuery tables plugins that let you achieve the maximum functionality and flexibility that you cannot get with the classic ways of using HTML tables. With the right jQuery plugin, you can create dynamic tables in which users can identify and sort out all the sections they want. These plugins will help you in creating user friendly and dynamic tables with ease.

Useful Tables jQuery Plugins

Visualize: Accessible Charts & Graphs from Table Elements ( Demo | Download )
Visualize is a plugin that can scrape data from an HTML table and generate charts using the HTML 5 Canvas element. This plugin is particularly useful because the data for the visualization already exists in the page in a structured tabular format, making it accessible to people who browse the web with a screen reader or other assistive technology.

Using jQuery To Manipulate and Filter Data ( Demo | Download )
When a webpage is designed to display large tables of data, a great amount of consideration should be dedicated to allowing the user to sort through the data in a structured manner. In this tutorial, author will go over four techniques: hover effects, zebra rows, filtering, and sorting.

TableRowCheckboxToggle ( Demo | Download )
It generically adds the toggle function to any table rows you specify based on the CSS class names. It will by default toggle any checkboxes within the table row. However, you can manually exclude checkboxes based on name, id or css classes in the script.

Tablesorter ( Demo | Download )
Tablesorter is a jQuery plugin for turning a standard HTML table with THEAD and TBODY tags into a sortable table without page refreshes. tablesorter can successfully parse and sort many types of data including linked data in a cell.

Grider ( Demo | Download )
Grider is a plugin for jQuery that makes your life easier when you need to edit or create a table that handles a list of items. It helps you to do calculations in a very simple way.

Tablify – Fancy Tables ( Demo | Download )
Tablify is a cross-browser JQuery plugin built to extremely simplify beautifying of standard HTML tables. Its advanced configuration options allow all the styles to be completely redesigned according to the website look and feel. Comes with 3 default styles, and 5 more styles in supplied extension.

Creating a “Filterable” Portfolio with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
If you have worked in your field for a while, there is a pretty good chance that you have a rather extensive portfolio. To make it a little easier to navigate, you will probably be tempted to break them into different categories. In this tutorial, you can learn how to make “filtering by category” a little more interesting with just a little bit of jQuery.

Table Drag and Drop JQuery plugin ( Demo | Download )
Dragging and dropping rows within a table can’t be handled by general purpose drag and drop utilities for a number of reasons, not least because you need to move the whole row, not just the cell that receives the mouse events. Re-parenting the row also requires specific code. Sadly also, effects like fadeIn and fadeOut don’t work well with table rows on all browsers, so we have to go for simpler effects.

List Reorder ( Demo | Download )
List Reorder is a jQuery plugin that allows you to reorder any simple ordered or unordered list. List Reorder is easy to use and does not require any additional markup. Its look and feel is completely customizable using a set of CSS classes.

ENHANCED TABLE, JQUERY-UI THEME ROLLER READY ( Demo | Download )
Author have written this jquery plug-in to improve basic usability for a common html table element, which can be the foundation for a larger control or functions applied to the table. This includes the ability to navigate through the rows of a the table by using either the mouse or the keyboard and select one or many rows.

DRAGTABLE ( Demo | Download )
Maybe you want to sort the columns ascending/descending by clicking into the table-head. No problem! Use a handle to drag the rows.

Table Pagination ( Demo | Download )
This jQuery plugin is used to create a pagination element under a table element. You can customize your pagination needs through various settings.

ColumnHover ( Demo | Download )
A jQuery-plugin that highlights whole columns in a table when hovering over them. It’s supporting tables with colspans and rowspans, too!

uiTableFilter ( Demo | Download )
jQuery plugin for filtering table rows:

PicNet Table Filter ( Demo | Download )
The PicNet Table Filter is used in production in several PicNet projects so it has been tested production ready. The table filter was born out of our Visual Analytics (Mouse Eye Tracking) project and has received great feedback.

NReco jSquared ( Demo | Download )
This plugin allows you to organize advanced search user interface like in Google Squared.

HeatColor ( Demo | Download )
HeatColor is a plugin that allows you to assign colors to elements, based on a value derived from that element. The derived value is compared to a range of values, either determined automatically or passed in, and the element is assigned a “heat” color based on its derived value’s position within the range.

Expand table rows with jQuery – jExpand plugin ( Demo | Download )
jExpand is ultra lightweight jQuery plugin that will make your tables expandable. Typical for line of business applications, this feature can help you organize tables better. This way, tables can hold more information such as images, lists, diagrams and other elements.

DataTables ( Demo | Download )
DataTables is a plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library. It is a highly flexible tool, based upon the foundations of progressive enhancement, which will add advanced interaction controls to any HTML table.

Scrollable HTML table plugin for jQuery ( Demo | Download )
This JavaScript code can be used to convert tables in ordinary HTML into scrollable ones. No additional coding is necessary.

Flexigrid ( Demo | Download )
Lightweight but rich data grid with resizable columns and a scrolling data to match the headers, plus an ability to connect to an XML based data source using Ajax to load the content.

JQTreeTable ( Demo | Download )
With this plugin you can have a treeview in your table, users still get the plain table even thought they disable Javascript.

Ingridd ( Demo | Download )
Datagrids don’t have to be difficult to use anymore – say Hi to Ingrid! Ingrid is an unobtrusive jQuery component that adds datagrid behaviors (column resizing, paging, sorting, row and column styling, and more) to your tables.

jQuery ColumnManager plugin ( Demo | Download )
A jQuery-plugin that toggles the visibility of table columns as well as supports the tables with colspans and rowspans.

FireScope Grid ( Demo | Download )
FireScope Grid is an open source (GNU Public License, v2) jQuery component that adds datagrid behaviors to your HTML tables, regardless of the server-side technology being used. Included in the plugin is a navigation bar that is automatically appended at the beginning or end of a table that enables users to page through results, filter results by any column or sorted on the fly without need to refresh the entire page.

jqGrid ( Demo | Download )
jqGrid is an Ajax-enabled JavaScript control that provides solutions for representing and manipulating tabular data on the web. Since the grid is a client-side solution loading data dynamically through Ajax callbacks, it can be integrated with any server-side technology, including PHP, ASP, Java Servlets, JSP, ColdFusion, and Perl.

TableFilter ( Demo | Download )

TinySort ( Demo | Download )
TinySort will sort any nodetype by it’s text- or attribute value, or by that of one of its children.

Table Drag and Drop JQuery plugin ( Demo | Download )
This TableDnD plugin allows the user to reorder rows within a table, for example if they represent an ordered list (tasks by priority for example). Individual rows can be marked as non-draggable and/or non-droppable (so other rows can’t be dropped onto them). Rows can have as many cells as necessary and the cells can contain form elements.

Fixed Header Tables ( Demo | Download )
a jQuery plugin by Mark Malek:

KeyTable ( Demo | Download )
KeyTable is a Javascript library which provides keyboard navigation and event binding for any HTML table. With KeyTable Excel style table navigation can be employed to provide features such as editing of a table without requiring a mouse. As a further bonus, KeyTable integrates seamlessly with DataTables.

TableEditor ( Demo | Download )
TableEditor provides flexible in place editing of HTML tables. User defined handler functions can easily be dropped in to, for example, update the data source via an AJAX request.

GraphTable ( Demo | Download )
The graphTable plugin lets you take a simple HTML table and turn the data in it into a graph using jQuery and flot.

jGridEditor ( Demo | Download )
This jQuery plugin allow you to add on-the-flight cell editing functionality in your table You may configure it to perform AJAX queries and returning changed content or error messages.

HTML Table to CSV ( Demo | Download )
This is a small JQuery utility which allows you to export any HTML table as CSV file. It’s a very handy tool to use specially during development of reporting projects. It is also useful when you have some 3rd party JQuery table search plugin attached to your table.

FLOATING HEADER PLUGIN ( Demo | Download )
A jQuery plugin that makes the header of a table floating if the original header isn’t visible due to scrolling. The plugin will automatically choose the thead tag as the header for a table. If thead isn’t found it will search for rows marked with the class ‘floating’. The behavior can be changed by the settings forceClass and markingClass.

kiketable.rowsizable ( Demo | Download )
This plugin, applied to a number of HTML tables, provides the behaviour of resizing their rows by clicking over a handler/ helper.

Animated table sort ( Demo | Download )
This plugin allows you to animatedly sort a table based on a column’s s, or on the content/value of a child/descendant element within those s. The various s fly to their new homes, giving a nice effect. It also supports sorting on REGEXP matches. You can also control whether row relationships are maintained, whether it sorts on ascii or numeric and ascending or descending.

READABLE TABLES ( Demo | Download )
A little plugin to highlight rows and columns on tables making them easier to use if you have large amounts of data… So something small for something large!

pfSelect – click drag select for huge datasets ( Demo | Download )
This lightweight select plugin allows you to select elements easily by click-drag select, shift select or ctrl select within a huge dataset and without any speed decrease. It adds a mouseover event to each specified element (by default elements with class “selectable”) and doesn’t calculate any marquee rectangle as the Jquery UI plugin does. Therefore it has no performance issues with hundreds of elements. Use this plugin if you have tons of elements and you need fluid interactivity.

Sortable Tables ( Demo | Download )
jQuery Accessible RIA, a collection of strictly WAI WCAG 2.0 and WAI ARIA conform web applications based on the popular Java-Script framework jQuery (using the UI Widget Factory).

jQuery Thead – Visible table headers ( Demo | Download )
The jQuery Thead plugin simplifies the navigation in tables that have lots of rows and require scrolling. It enforces the visibility of the table header and ensures that the column names are always accessible for the user.

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]]> http://www.noupe.com/jquery/useful-jquery-plugins-to-enhance-html-tables.html/feed 18 http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/building-community-sites-with-wordpress-15-plugins-to-get-started.html http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/building-community-sites-with-wordpress-15-plugins-to-get-started.html#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:46:19 +0000 Cameron Chapman http://www.noupe.com/?p=40618

  

Most bloggers would love to see more of a sense of community among the regular visitors to their blog. Sure, discussions sometimes take place in the comments of various posts, but it all seems a bit disorganized and they never really get off the ground. There has to be a better way to create a real sense of community on a WordPress blog.

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Most bloggers would love to see more of a sense of community among the regular visitors to their blog. Sure, discussions sometimes take place in the comments of various posts, but it all seems a bit disorganized and they never really get off the ground. There has to be a better way to create a real sense of community on a WordPress blog.

The good news is that there are plenty of great plugins out there that can help you get your visitors more involved in your blog. Some are simple: they let your users submit content they think is useful, or make it easier to have a real discussion in comments. Others are more complex, on par with full-featured social networks like Facebook. All of them can help you create a community surrounding your blog and your content.

Encourage User-Generated Content

Even if you post on your blog every day, sometimes it would be nice to have some help. So why not ask your regular visitors to submit content they think your other visitors might find useful? Of course, they can do this already by emailing you or adding a link in the comments, but then you still have to do most of the work. The plugins below will simplify getting these user submissions to a publishable state on your blog.

Community Submitted News

Community Submitted News lets any visitor to your blog submit content. All content is sent to a moderation panel and nothing is made public until it has been approved by an administrator (which prevents spam postings from being made live). It’s a great idea if you have an active community surrounding your blog but don’t always have time to write original content. It also gives your blog’s readers a more active role in content creation.

WordPress Wiki

WordPress Wiki was created by the same developers who created the WP e-Commerce plugin. It’s a full-featured wiki plugin for WP that lets you specify certain posts or pages as editable as wiki pages, while leaving other pages or posts in their traditional, un-editable format.

FV Community News

FV Community News is another plugin that lets users submit posts from other blogs to your site for inclusion. It includes a moderation panel and works within a widget on your site. It also has built-in spam protection and give administrators the ability to edit submissions.

TDO Mini Forms

The TDO Mini Forms plugin lets your subscribers or even non-registered users submit or edit posts and pages. Submissions are kept in “draft” form until approved by an administrator. The same can be done with edits. It can even be configured to work with Akismet to filter out spam submissions.

Encourage Interaction

Even if you’re not interested in setting up a social network surrounding your blog, wouldnt’ it be nice to see your visitors able to better interact with each other, and for you to be able to interact with them more easily? Whether this means setting up a forum or just making it easier for discussions to take place in your comments, the plugins below will help.

Gigya Socialize

The Gigya Socialize plugin lets you incorporate social APIs (like Facebook Connect, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and MySpace ID) to your site and let your visitors become more engaged. Visitors can invite friends from their preferred social network. It also lets you publish status and newsfeed updates directly to your social networks.

WP-Forum

Adding a forum to your blog is an easy way to increase interaction among your visitors. WP-Forum is a simple discussion forum plugin. It can be used with a single WP blog or with WordPress MU.

Threaded Comments

Adding Threaded Comments to you WP blog lets you turn the comments section on every post into a discussion, where users can reply directly to other users and have their response appear directly under the original comment (rather than just in chronological order). It’s a great option for encouraging your visitors to engage not just with you, but with each other as well.

Comment Per Paragraph

Comment Per Paragraph is actually a WP theme, but it has some valuable features that can really add to the interaction on your blog. Basically, this theme lets your visitors comment on each paragraph within a post, rather than just at the end of the post. It makes commenting or discussions on specific points within your post much easier and more user-friendly.

Digress.it

Digress.it is a plugin that lets your visitors add notes in the “margins” of a blog post, much the same as one would in a book. The difference here is that these notes are visible to everyone, and anyone can add a note. It can be used in an educational setting, to annotate a post, or even to offer criticism.

Feedback by Paragraph

Feedback by Paragraph is another plugin that lets users leave comments on individual paragraphs within a post. Comments are shown in a Thickbox pop-up. Comments here respect settings of individual posts as far as who is allowed to post, and moderation policies are also honored. The fact that paragraph-level comments are kept separate from the main content is a nice feature that makes it easy to implement without requiring any kind of redesign.

Turn WordPress Into a Social Network

If you want to go all in and create a social network on your WordPress-powered site, the plugins below are the place to start. They range from very simple plugins that basically just let you set up user profiles to full social networking packages that let your users do almost everything they can do on mainstream social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn.

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is a powerful set of social networking plugins for WordPress. It’s quick to install and set up, and can be as complicated or simple as you want. One of the nice features about BuddyPress is that you can turn on or off specific features whenever you want, making it as powerful or simple as you need.

Mingle

Mingle is a simple social networking plugin for WordPress. It works with most WP themes, and lets you set up profile pages, friend lists, profile page posts (like status updates), profile activities, social comments, and email notifications. It’s not as full-featured as BuddyPress, but it’s also simpler to set up and works with a wider range of themes.

Customize Your Community

The Customize Your Community plugin lets you not only change your WP login page, but also makes it so subscribers to your site are redirected to a profile editing page rather than the WP backend. It changes the way your registration, login/logout, and lost password pages look so they no longer contain any WP branding information. Users with roles set to anything other than “subscriber” will still see the traditional WP backend, though login/logout pages, etc. will show the customized design.

Community Blogs for BuddyPress

This plugin lets you create group or community blogs with multiple authors within BuddyPress. Administrators on a BuddyPress site can use the plugin to give a member registered user status to any blog they choose within the site (or multiple blogs). It’s a great option for extending the collaboration features of a BuddyPress site.

Profiler

Profiler creates user profiles for every registered user on your blog, including Gravatar images. It also creates a members directory and can be used with the User Photo plugin and the Whisper plugin.

Conclusion

Think through the kinds of social interactions you’d like to take place on your blog and then find a plugin that will help you foster those interactions. The above list isn’t exhaustive, so if you know of other great WP plugins for building community around your content, please add them in the comments below!

Further Resources

• 20+ WordPress Plugins for your Membership or Community Site – A great roundup of plugins useful specifically to membership sites (including paid membership sites).
• 10 WordPress Plugins to Help Build Community – A collection of plugins that can help build a sense of community on your blog.
• Creating a Social Network Using WordPress MU – A tutorial for setting up your own social networking site from Holdfire.
• How To Build a Social Networking Site Using WordPress – A great article from MakeUseOf.com on using BuddyPress to create a social network.

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