The advantages WordPress has over other similar systems for building websites are quite obvious. It’s mostly free of cost and very reliable. What’s more, there is also a very large community of WordPress users that are willing to share their experiences and help you with any questions you might have.
Another thing that is great about WordPress is the huge variety of different plugins and themes that you can use depending on your needs. There are so many of them that they can be used for all kinds of different and specific websites – from learning platforms, small business websites to streaming and gaming review websites.
In this article, we will go through some of the best WordPress plugins that you can use when building a game review website. And the gaming niche is quite special, due to the fact that, first, fun but less competitive market, and, second, you already have great WP themes like Xion, Game Addict, and many more others on tap. But before we turn to more specific plugins we will mention a few more general ones that every website needs to use.
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Tools for Detecting Plugins Used by a Website
First, you need to determine what plugins you want to use. When planning to build a WordPress website, the best and easiest way to get ideas is to browse the internet and look for websites similar to the one you have in mind. In other words – check on the competition. While doing that, you will find some that are sticking out, and have elements that are close to your vision. Some will even inspire you and open you up for new possibilities.
After making a list of websites that have elements that you like, it would be very useful if you could somehow replicate those elements when building your website, wouldn’t it? Well, you are in luck. Some tools will help you detect exactly what plugins are used by the WordPress websites you liked.
There are plenty of automated online detecting tools that are easy to use and will help you do just that.
- First, you can use something like Built With. It will help you determine the technology behind the website you like.
- And if you determine that it’s WordPress, you can proceed with using WordPress-specific tools, such as WordPress Plugin Checker, to find out exactly what plugins are used on a particular website.
General Purpose Plugins
Regardless of what exact niche of the market you operate in, your website needs some general-purpose plugins that will make it more functional and visible.
WordPress Contact Form 7
This is one of the most popular plugins, and you can see why: being able to get some feedback from your readers is one of the essential functions of a blog. This plugin is very easy to integrate and use. Contact Form 7 offers a high level of customization, and for this reason, many choose to use it even with themes that offer integrated contact forms.
Yoast SEO
In search results, your website needs to perform as well as possible. SEO plugins help you do just that: optimize your website so that it’s much more visible and easier to find. Yoast SEO is exactly such a plugin. It comes with many features, such as meta keywords and description management, social features, built-in content analysis, rich snippets, and many others.
Niche-Specific Plugins
Since pursuing a professional gamer career or gaming blogger career requires not only playing video games on your computer, but also being able to stream your match or a game on a website, or embed videos or photos. It is important to know how to include them, especially if you run a gaming blog.
Let’s take a look now at a few plugin options that can be of great use when building a game review website specifically.
bbPress
Discussion boards are the life-of-the-gaming-party. With bbPress you can easily build a functional and great-looking discussion board. The plugin is very easy and simple to use and can be of huge importance for you. With a good discussion board, you will be able to cultivate and maintain a community around your website.
StockPack
This is an optimized image search plugin for Unsplash, Adobe Stock, Getty Images, iStock, Pixabay, Pexels, and Depositphotos with 430 million+ images available. StockPack will be of great use for you when searching for specific gaming-related images for your reviews.
My Arcade Plugin
MyArcade is a great plugin that you can use to offer free games to the visitors of your website. It has the option of manually choosing every game you want to publish or the plugin doing all of that work for you automatically. It’s already being used by more than 100,000 websites.
Twitch TV Easy Embed
Twitch TV Easy Embed will do exactly what its name implies: help you embed your Twitch.tv streams in an easy and manageable way. Your visitors will be able to watch your stream directly from your website, and you will be able to also embed the Twitch chat. For a professional gamer, this is a must-have.
WP Product Review Lite
WP Product Review Lite is a review plugin that can help you to interact with your readers using improved comments. It enables you to publish your reviews in an easier-to-read way and will help you generate money by adding a ‘buy now’ button to your posts.
GeoTargeting Lite
If you want to offer dynamic content based on your users’ location GeoTargeting Lite is the plugin for you. It will auto-detect your visitors’ real IPs and you will be able to specify which countries are capable of seeing the content on your website.
Plugins for Building an iGaming/Casino Review Website
If your website is an even more specific gaming niche, such as online casino affiliate or a single iGaming review, it’s important to remember that just as with regular gaming websites, affiliates are also mostly built with standard plugins, but they include some very specific casino-related add-ons that help them enhance site performance.
For example, there’s Casinos.co.za, a website dedicated to providing players from Africa with all the relevant online casino information: from what websites to visit, to where to find abundant bonuses and promotions, what games to play, what payment methods to use, how to improve their skills, and so on. While this casino affiliate website is also built with WordPress plugins, it uses some additional casino-related tools for better optimization:
VegasHero Plugin
VegasHero comes with a wide range of demo games, it automatically updates the list of games and allows you to pick out which ones you want to incorporate into your website. The plugin can easily be inserted into any WordPress website, and your visitors can try a game before deciding on visiting an actual online casino that hosts it. Pretty neat solution.
Casino Affiliate Plugin
Casino Affiliate will enable you to turn your website into an affiliate and promote online casinos. You will be able to store and display online casinos and promote the brands. This plugin can transform your website into a revenue-generating machine.
Conclusion
We already mentioned that there is a huge array of plugins that you can use while building your WordPress game review website. We covered just a few of them that we thought are the most obvious and useful choices.
But to find the ones that are right for you, you will have to do some digging on your own. Remember what we wrote in the beginning, browse the internet and make a list of websites that impress you and are the closest to the vision you have.
Regardless of the specific niche your website is a part of, every website needs to be functional, simple, well-designed, and easy to use. And just as important is to have original and interesting content that will make your readers want to come back.
