Wordpress is the best platform for blogs, and recently became one of the best choices for an all-purpose CMS (Content Management System). It can be used for corporate websites, e-commerce sites, membership sites and any other purpose you might need. It is very easy to modify and has a large collection of great free plugins that will extend it beyond any imagination.

There are already countless plugin lists on the Internet that will help you do almost anything, so this article will focus on something else, less known – plugins that will help you easily modify a site’s menus and brand marks (logo, login screen and the like) without having to edit the code manually. They are also perfect if you’re a design/coding studio and your customer wants to customize it and edit the brand marks himself.

My Brand. This is a very easy to use plugin that will allow anyone to edit and customize the login page. You can set the background, font color, login box colors, logo and anything else you want. After you’re done, the login page will look like it was custom designed for your site. Until recently, the only way you could do this was by directly editing a few files in the Wordpress directory, so this plugin is quite an accomplishment.

Branded Admin. This simple plugin enables you to customize the header and footer on the Wordpress Admin page. All you have to do is install it and upload your logos, which will take the place of the standard Wordpress logos in the header and footer.

Admin Menu Editor. A very neat plugin that allows anyone to reorganize and edit the menus and how they appear in the Wordpress Admin area. You can change the title, access rights, icons and other things. It’s a great plugin to customize the admin page to your liking and needs.

Ozh Admin Drop Down Menu. This cool plugin removes your left sidebar from the Wordpress Admin area and replaces it with a vertical drop down menu, which gives you a faster, one-click access to all of the pages. It really speeds up the experience, as you don’t need to wait for the submenus to load when you click a menu item. You can also easily customize it to your liking (even change the color scheme).

Wibiya Toolbar. This simple plugin adds a Fecebook-like footer toolbar to any Wordpress site. It allows your users to submit your articles to Digg, post them on Facebook, tweet them and do other things, from anywhere on your site (the toolbar is always in the footer). You have to register for a free account and set up all the Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other settings before you activate the plugin, though.

As you can see, there really are few limits for the Wordpress CMS. With the above plugins, your clients can easily modify their site’s inner workings and brand identity themselves without you having to spend time on that.

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