With the festive season fast-approaching, people are busy decorating and illuminating their homes in time for the Christmas holidays. So why not prepare your WordPress website for the festive period with some Christmas plugins? Greeting your visitors with festive cheer doesn't have to cost a cent either. All mentioned plugins for Christmas holiday cheer are available at no charge via the WordPress plugin directory.
Some of these Christmas WordPress plugins however do offer an optional Premium Version, should you feel the need to go that extra mile in providing your visitors a more unique Christmassy environment. You can spread your festive cheer in a matter of moments, directly from your WordPress dashboard. Equally as important, removing your WordPress plugins once the festivities come to an end is just as straight-forward using your WordPress dashboard interface, no code or files to manage. Now let's get started with these great plugins for Christmas cheer:
- Christmas Countdown Widget
- Snow Flurry
- Xmas Widget Little Elf
- Christmasify!
- Christmas Panda
- Holiday Countdown
Christmas Countdown Widget
The Christmas Countdown Widget allows you to add a self-updating countdown to Christmas widget to your WordPress site. The plugin simply adds a new widget to the Widgets page that you can drop into any widgetized sidebar of your choosing. Via the use of a simple shortcode, you're also able to insert Santa's countdown timer amongst the content of any of your posts or pages.
Snow Flurry
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! is precisely what the Snow Flurry plugin allows you to do with your WordPress website. Recently rewritten to ensure modern browser and device compatibility, this simple plugin allows you to implement a falling snowflake effect on your WordPress website. This plugin also offers several customization options and settings that allow you to control a variety of factors when generating the snowflakes.
You can select the snowflake size, total number of visible snowflakes, determine the falling speed, choose your snowflake color and disable snowflakes after time. Simply play with the snowflakes size, falling speed, color, etc. and eventually make your selected changes according to your liking. Then hit the save button to see the wintry snow effects appearing on your WordPress website. This certainly is a nice Christmas animation.
Xmas Widget Little Elf
Engage with your visitors over the Christmas period with the Xmas Widget Little Elf plugin. The plugin adds a single widget that you can drop into any of the widgetized areas across your WordPress theme. This allows you to add a customizable Christmas greeting complete with optional animated extras in almost any location your WordPress theme allows for. With this Christmas plugin it's easy to say "Happy Holidays" and engage your visitors!
You can even personalize your custom messages by greeting your logged-in members by name. A professional Premium Version of the Xmas Widget Little Elf plugin is also available which comes with a variety of additional selectable options, prices start from $14. Xmas Widget Little Elf definitely is a cool plugin to add some holiday cheer.
Christmasify!
The Christmasify! WordPress plugin is a compact suite of Christmas-related features you can add to any WordPress website you like. Via a basic options page, you can choose to activate (or de-activate) any of the following festive fun features for the Christmas season. Are you ready to make your WordPress site Christmassy?
With this Christmas plugin for WordPress you can display falling snowflakes, play some Christmas music, show animated flying Santa, add Christmas decorations for images or display Christmas text font. Simply install the plugin, open the options page and check the checkbox alongside each of the Christmas features. Then hit the save button to Christmasify your WordPress website nicely. All the effects are togglable so you can choose the ones you want.
Christmas Panda
The Christmas Panda plugin is a comprehensive plugin that offers you the ability to implement a variety of Christmas elements to your WordPress website. By using a simple interface, you can select any of the following Christmas elements for your website: customizable Christmas banner, closable Christmas pop-up image and falling snowflakes effect. This is a great plugin to add some Christmas decoration to your WordPress website.
The Christmas Panda plugin offers a generous range of selectable Christmas images that you can choose from too, as well as a handful of alignment options allowing you to get things just right. Decorate your WordPress website with Christmas trees, Santa, snowfall or just display a pop-up to remember your visitors that it's Christmas.
Holiday Countdown
The Holiday Countdown plugin provides the ability to add a customizable countdown timer to your WordPress site. Suitable not only for a Christmas countdown, but also for other dated events such as other seasonal holidays, promotional periods, and the like. Either via the use of the built-in widget, or by adding a shortcode to your content, you can implement a real-time countdown timer.
The free variation of the POWr Holiday Countdown plugin does require registration to properly function. However, it still does come equipped with a comprehensive options panel that allows you to completely customize your chosen timer. An advanced Premium Version is also available, offering enhanced customization options and usage allowances, with prices starting from $3.99 per month.
Compatible with MH Magazine
All Christmas plugins featured in this article have been fully tested using our popular MH Magazine WordPress theme on your behalf to ensure a smooth installation process. There are quite a few Christmas plugins available for you to make use of via the plugin directory. But many of which aren't included in this article as they're quite old and haven't been updated in a number of years. Some of which no longer install at all on the latest version of WordPress.
The benefits of festive decorations
Adding festive Christmas decorations to your WordPress website is not only fun to do. It can also result in increased user interaction and engagement on your site. Welcoming your website visitors into an environment that has been sprinkled with festivities can be beneficial in a number of different ways:
- Encourages visitors to stay on your site for longer.
- May generate more clicks on your website content.
- Could lead to additional sharing of your content across social media.
- Inspires visitors to become customers by making a product or service purchase.
- Might increase website user engagement.
- Could draw visitors attention to specific areas you like.
Providing you adhere to our conclusion below, you can complement your WordPress website's appearance if you choose which Christmas plugins you would like to deploy over the Christmas period in a careful and thoughtful manner, with your website visitors experience in mind.
Don't go overboard with snow effects and festive Christmas cheer!
Be selective in which Christmas plugins you choose to keep installed during the festive period. Just like real Christmas decorations, it's easy to go overboard! Create a festive environment on your website without detracting from your actual content too much. You don't want to put visitors off by bombarding them with Santa's popping up everywhere. Some decorations may cover up your content, advertisements, or menus. Be sure to test most important pages of your website with your decorations in place. You certainly don't want to lose business because of decorations.
Don't be obnoxious with your decorations either. Just because you like hearing Jingle Bells on every page load doesn't mean your visitors will too, especially if they're trying to read your content or make a purchase. In some cases it's better to avoid the temptation of adding music to your site. One or two wintry elements should be sufficient to get visitors into the wonderful spirit of Christmas. What's your favorite Christmas plugin?
