WordPress is the go-to place for anyone interested in starting a blog. With its flexibility and scalability, WordPress is great for any blog, whether for news, commentary, fantasy league, arts, sports, etc. A large number of how-to articles and tutorials make it easy for almost anyone to create a WordPress site and start blogging. Blogs can be considered personal stories in an online format, such as journals, diaries, etc.
One of the most popular types of blogs is sports blogs. Many plugins will help you get started with this kind of blog. With the right tools, creating, organizing, and managing content will be easy. Logically, being more organized and creating better content will give you a significant advantage over your competition. When looking into plugins you will use, make sure they have a great rating and are maintained and updated. Here are some of the best plugins you can use when creating a sports blog on WordPress.
1. WP Force SSL
Although it is not directly sports-related, it is important to every website. Having SSL enabled on your website makes it more reliable and credible. This further can improve the number of visitors to your website as well as your SEO rankings. With the WP Force SSL plugin, you can enable SSL, add SSL certificates, get notified if any SSL errors occur, scan for mixed content, etc.
The best part about this plugin is the ease of use and the simplicity of installation. After you enable SSL on your hosting panel, you can activate SSL on your website through the WP Force SSL plugin with one click. If you want, it will also automatically renew your certificates every 90 days. The mixed content scanner quickly scans if there is any mixed content and notifies you with a report after which you can manually fix those issues. This plugin is well worth your time and effort.
2. UnderConstructionPage
When running a WordPress site, especially a blog, you will have to do some maintenance from time to time. For some larger maintenance or upgrades, your website may become unreachable. To keep your good ratings and visitor satisfaction, you should notify visitors about your work in progress. UnderConstructionPage plugin allows users to create a maintenance mode or coming soon page in a few simple steps.
Other options include an on/off switch for under construction mode, automatic end date and time, Google Analytics Tracking ID, custom CSS, login button, etc.
3. WP 301 Redirects
If you want to add expirable content or for some reason change the location of the pages on your blog, having a plugin that will redirect to the correct URL is very useful. WP 301 Redirects helps manage and create 301, 302, and 307 redirects which improves SEO and visitor experience. Sending users to a 404 Not Found error page is not very good and should be avoided whenever possible.
With this plugin, redirection is easily configurable. The plugin allows users to choose from pages, posts, custom post types, archives, and term archives from the dropdown menu for redirection creation, setting custom destination URL, query string retention, 404 error log, export/import settings, etc.
4. SportsPress
Aside from the previous plugins that improve the general usability of all WordPress websites, there are specific plugins dedicated to sports blogs on WordPress. SportsPress is one of the most popular sports plugins available online. It is packed with features that enable users to create lists and profiles for players and clubs and manage leagues.
This plugin can be used for all kinds of sports, from basketball, football, baseball, and golf, to volleyball. Features include club profiles with player lists, automated league standings, club logos, event calendar, player statistics, season archives, CSV files, etc. Some of the use case scenarios for this plugin include creating a fantasy league website.
5. JoomSport
JoomSport is a sports league manager for your league, tournament, team, and club. It is a complex solution that helps build a strong sports blog. JoomSports offers essential features like league standings, teams with descriptions and statistics, players with their profiles, photos and achievements, fixtures, match results, game details, seasons, and leagues.
This robust structure allows the creation of different leagues with chronological seasons with match days and matches. Option of single and team competitions provide the option to run both single-player and team sports leagues. Other features include responsive and professionally designed bootstrap pages, round-robin and knockout matchdays, venue page with maps and descriptions, extra fields for additional sports data, CSV data import, Schedule generator, etc.
6. WP Club Manager
WP Club Manager is a WordPress plugin that provides the possibility to create and manage a club website easily. It is easy to set up, and you can then manage clubs, player profiles, performance data, staff, sponsors, tables, fixtures, results, and much more. Key features include multiple teams’ management in one club, player and staff profiles, player performance ratings, full player stats, club profiles with club stats, fixtures, automatically updated league tables, match stats, club sponsors management, venue details, and maps, custom appearance, etc.
Some of the supported sports are American Football, Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Football, Handball, Rugby, Lacrosse, etc. There are a plethora of themes available to use with the WP Club Manager plugin that adds extra functionality and a professional look.
7. Football Pool
This plugin provides logged-in users of the blog website the possibility to predict outcomes of matches and earn bonus points. Every contender can see scores and charts of other contenders. After the plugin is installed, it installs custom tables in the database with preloaded UEFA EURO 2020 data but can be modified and populated by any championship or sports data. Remember that if you disable the plugin, that data may be deleted from the database.
Key features include match outcome predictions, automatic calculation of the pool ranking, add bonus questions, add your teams and match info, import/export game schedule, configurable scoring options, use different leagues for different users, info pages for venues and teams, use built-in shortcodes to add the pool to your blog, charts where the scores are plotted, widgets for displaying info from the championship or the pool, etc.
8. League Table
This plugin is one of the best on the market for creating tables. You can easily create tables for sports leagues like football, basketball, etc. These tables can be customized and made responsive to fit in posts, pages, custom post types, widgets, and many other formats.
Key features include the ability to compare and match sports league results, place the logo of sports teams, import and export tables, link to table texts, choose colors, create unlimited tables, display sports results, widget support, responsiveness, etc. With the help of the embedded spreadsheet editor in the main menu of the plugin, you can move tables from common spreadsheet editors like Excel, Google Sheets, and others.
Conclusion
Since sports play an important role in some people’s lives, and others look at it as a way to relax, having a sports blog can yield a pretty large audience. If you want your sports blog to be successful, you should consider using these WordPress plugins we talked about. With them, you will cover important parts of owning and running a website. Whether you want to track stats of different sports and leagues or create a fantasy league, there is an option in these plugins. And for those who need an app to be developed for them, check out a mobile app development company qatar.
Other than these plugins, make sure you choose the hosting that can fulfill your needs and handle the visitors using your blog. Although it takes more time, managing the entire blog on your own is pretty rewarding since you can do anything you want with your blog.