If you’re a WordPress publisher or writer, your browser is how you interact with your site; it’s where content is researched, drafted, edited, proofed, and published. If you spend a large proportion of your working day inside a web browser interacting with WordPress, it makes sense to customize the browser so that it’s capable of supporting the most efficient WordPress workflows.
I’m a writer and I spend a good chunk of my day inside WordPress inside a Chrome browser window. I’ve tried just about every Chrome extension that’s even vaguely related to online writing and WordPress. I’d like share the ones that have stuck with me.
WordPress Site Manager
If you work on multiple WordPress sites, this one is a must. WordPress site manager stores the details of your WordPress sites and allows you to easily navigate between the major pages of each. And because it stores the usernames and passwords of each site, it can automatically log you in.
Google Docs To WordPress
The WordPress editing interface has come on leaps and bounds over the last few releases. It’s now both pleasant and safe to write within WordPress. But for many writers and publishers, Google Docs is an essential part of the collaboration and editing process. As you might have guessed from the name, Google Docs To WordPress lets you export your content from Google Docs into a WordPress site. It even does a good job of handling image placement.
WPSniffer
I’m a curious fellow, and I like to see the choices that other bloggers have made on their sites, especially if it’s something that I admire. WPSniffer is a simple little extension that will tell users which WordPress theme a site is using.
As a side benefit of using this extension, you’ll find out that many of the sites you use every day are using WordPress.
Grammarly
Even the best writers make typos. Even worse, it can be almost impossible to find the mistakes you’ve made in your own copy (until two seconds after you hit “publish” that is). Grammarly is an excellent last line of defense against the “invisible” spelling error. It works in most online text editing windows, including WordPress.
Grammarly will also check grammar, with varying success. If you ever find that verbs and tenses in your sentences have a mind of their own, you should check this extension out.
WordPress Admin Bar Control
Personal WordPress irritation number one: doing design work or modifying a theme while the black admin bar is obscuring parts of the page. With this Chrome extension, turning the admin bar on and off is a simple click.
Related Content By Zemanta
Finally, this is an extension I’ve used for many years. Related Content will help you find images and links to include in your content. It’s great for quick image searches from within the WordPress interface. I find the way that it suggests links to authoritative sources based on my content very useful. But possibly my favorite aspect of Zemanta is automatic tagging. I always forget to add tags to my blog articles, but Zemanta will intelligently scan the content and suggest tags for me to choose from.
These are my six favorites, but there are plenty more on the Chrome Web Store. If you have a WordPress or blogging related Chrome plugin you’d like to share, drop us a line in the comments below.
