Get Some Sexy AJAX Functionality With These Free WordPress Plugins

If you pay much attention to trends and developments in the WordPress universe, you’ve no doubt heard something about the web programming technique known as Ajax, and how it can be used to make your WordPress site more dynamic, engaging and downright sexy.

If you haven’t, then it’s high time you got schooled.

The mighty Ajax

Ajax, sometimes capitalized as AJAX, is a kind of lopsided acronym for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. Without venturing too far into the technical mumbo-jumbo, Ajax is essentially a tool that allows you to update part of a web page with new content, without having to reload the entire page.

Ajax is often the technology behind contact forms, pop-up windows, maps, and other dynamic elements of a website.

Ajax is not a programming language in itself, but rather a method of combining various standards, like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, to achieve the desired result.

Properly explaining how Ajax works is beyond the scope of this article, but if you’re interested in some heavier reading then I would suggest you take a look at these:

• Ajax Wikipedia Article
• How to Use Ajax in WordPress (Smashing Magazine)
• Ajax Tutorial on W3Schools

Ajax and WordPress

Ajax has been widely deployed in WordPress plugins and themes over the last few years, and there’s a fairly good chance that you’re already using the technology, in one capacity or another, on your own site.

Nonetheless, you might be interested in exploring other ways you can harness the power of Ajax to massively increase the wow-factor of your WordPress project. If you don’t fancy yourself a programmer, then it’s probably best to start with a few good plugins.

Some free Ajax-powered plugins for WordPress

These are five great plugins that will add sleek and sexy Ajax-powered goodness to your WordPress site. They’re all available for free in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

• Contact Form 7 – The classic free contact form for WordPress, simple and highly customizable.
• Ajax Comment Preview – I covered this one in more detail last week – article is here.
• Search Autocomplete – Adds automatic drop-down suggestions to the search field on your site.
• WP-Polls – Popular plugin for embedding Ajax-powered polls in WordPress posts and pages.
• AJAX Read More – Adds a simple, expandable ‘read more’ link to your post excerpts, without needing to reload the page.

Over to you – what are your favorite Ajax-powered WordPress plugins? Share your recommendations with us.

_{Images: Bigstockphoto (Ajax) and Bobbi G Mac.}

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• ajax