Using grids in web design to layout elements have become a very popular design approach. Grid layouts can be used more or less everywhere, however, Grid design is most commonly seen in newspaper and magazine layouts which consist of columns of text and images. I believe WordPress is one of the best platforms to build websites right now due to its endless supply of awesome themes, widgets and plugins.

Here, in our today’s post we have unfolded 15 best free Grid WordPress Widgets which will enable developers and designers alike in creating responsive Grid layout designs infused with visually captivating effects. These Grid widget plugins can be used to optimize fluidity,enable re-sizable columns and scrolling data to match the headers as well as being able to add data-grid behaviors such as: column re-sizing, paging, sorting, row and column styling, and more to your tables.

While compiling this list, it’s always a possibility that I missed some other great resources. Feel free to share it with us. You may be interested in the following modern trends related articles as well: Photography Free Themes for WordPress, Political Premium WordPress Themes, Free Responsive HTML5 CSS3 Website Templates and Parallax Scrolling Website Designs Examples.

1. Our Team Showcase

The best way to display your employees, team members, or any type of list. Multiple appealing templates,SEO friendly, re-order functionality. This plugin allows you to add, edit, search and display your team members on any page, or in a widget quickly and easily. It comes with a couple of different styles to choose from. Re-order team members with a simple drag & drop.

Our Team Showcase

2. Flickr Justified Gallery

Plugin that allows you to show your Flickr photostream, photosets, galleries, group pools, or tags in your blog, with a very elegant and awesome layout. Create a gallery with the same style of Flickr or Google+! Awesome thumbnails disposition with a justified grid, calculated by a fast javascript algorithm called Justified Gallery!

Flickr Justified Gallery

3. Portfolio Gallery

Portfolio Gallery is perfect for using for creating various portfolios or gallery within various views. The product allows adding descriptions and titles for each portfolio gallery. It is rather useful whoever using with various pages and posts, as well as within custom location.

Portfolio Gallery

4. Pizzazz Portfolio Plugin

Pizzazz is a simple WordPress portfolio plugin that helps you to engage your audience by displaying your work in a clean, 1 page, image based, portfolio. This approach is important because research has shown that having to wait for a new page to load to get additional information worsens your visitors.

Pizzazz Portfolio Plugin

5. Creative Image Slider

Creative Image Slider is a jQuery image slider with amazing visual effects. It has integrated Creative Popup wizard, to make the slider more attractive! It is packed with a live-preview wizard to create fantastic sliders in a matter of seconds without coding.

Creative Image Slider

6. Responsive Column Widgets

Or if you are a developer and looking for an easy way to render some outputs in responsive columns, this plugin will be handy. Pass your arrays to the plugin filter. Then the plugin will take care of it for you. The main feature of this plugin. It displays widgets horizontally with a grid system. With the shortcode, you can embed the responsive widgets in post and pages.

Responsive Column Widgets

7. Page Builder by SiteOrigin

Page Builder by SiteOrigin is the most popular page creation plugin for WordPress. It makes it easy to create responsive column based content, using the widgets you know and love. Your content will accurately adapt to all mobile devices, ensuring your site is mobile-ready.

Page Builder by SiteOrigin

8. Weekly Schedule

The purpose of this plugin is to allow users to create one or more schedules of weekly events and display these schedule on one or more pages as tables. Users can style their schedules using stylesheets based on the category of items and can assign information to items that will be displayed in a tooltip.

Weekly Schedule

9. Event Organiser Posterboard

Adds an ‘event board’ to display your events in a responsive posterboard. To display the event posterboard simply use the shortcode [event_board] on any page or post. Full width pages work best. The shortcode supports the same arguments as the events list shortcode. This includes the ability to display only a particular category, or events satisfying a certain query.

Event Organiser Posterboard

10. Simple Download Monitor

This plugin is very useful for managing and tracking your digital file download counts. You can password protect your downloadable files and documents too (visitors will require a password before downloading the file when you use this option). There is an option to show an ajax file tree browser so your visitors can browse all your files and download the ones they want.

Simple Download Monitor

11. Grid Columns Media Button

This plugin adds a media button to the post editor to easily insert the [column] shortcode and additional parameters from the Grid Columns plugin. It should work with any editor (post, page, custom) and will add a “Insert Column” button next to the media button. The button will open a popup modal window where you can adjust the shortcode parameters.

Grid Columns Media Button

12. FlatFolio – Portfolio & Gallery

Thanks to its extraordinary features, it will transform your old portfolio in a beautiful gallery multifunctional and really smart. Prepared on a grid fully responsive, you’ll get your projects always impressive and easily browsable.

FlatFolio - Portfolio & Gallery

13. Grid Gallery with Custom Links

Displays gallery in a grid. You can add custom links to all images and captions. With the Grid Gallery, you can easily add elegant navigation option to any theme. Compatible with all browsers and mobile devices. Easy to add to any page or post – just insert a shortcode. You can add custom links and captions to each of the images.

Grid Gallery with Custom Links

14. Content Manager Light

Build custom page layouts. Create as many rows and columns as you need. Insert any of the ready to use content items to fill in content in your columns. All settings are easily done in a nice and intuitive interface. Most of the styles for the content items will be inherited from your theme, but some will come with the plugin.

Content Manager Light

15. PixGridder

PixGridder is instead very simple, because it only allows to split your page into rows and columns by moving the functions available on your tinyMCE editor from the whole page to each column you decide to split your page into. In this way you can use the plugins you prefer with the shortcodes you prefer.

PixGridder