Top Must Have Wordpress Plugins
Updated:09/10/2008
You knew it was coming! After switching from blogspot to wordpress, I just had to put in my 2 cents on the best wp plugins to have:)
This is my absolute favorite!!! Installs any plugin or theme without having to upload them manually via ftp. Can also delete theme and plugin folders. Once you install this puppy, there won’t be any use for that ftp crap!
This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values.
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. A great way to reward those who visit and comment often.
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. I love this. I have my backup mailed to me nightly.
Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and encourages visitors to subscribe to your feed!
A text widget with support for including PHP. I LOVE this one. It keeps me from having to go into the theme editor and insert php code.
Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. A great way to keep your readers on your blog longer.
Displays Technorati links on your blog admin Dashboard.
Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. Again, this keeps me from messing with the theme editor.
This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
Plugin to easily incorporate FeedBurner’s StandardStats into your blog.
Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www.
Emails commenter when an admin replies to the comment, if commenter is not subscribed to email updates via Subscribe-to-Comments.
This gives you threaded comments and a “wandering” comment form.
Add custom footers (copyright, notices, advertisements) to the bottom of your posts in your RSS feed.
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”
Rotates Ads randomly from a specified text file
If you run adsense on your blog, then this is the number one plugin to implement. Adsense Deluxe allows you to automatically insert Google Adsense with ease.
This plugin is an extremely efficient page caching system that will make your site much faster and responsive. This plugin is very useful for handling sudden bursts of traffic coming from social bookmarking sites like Digg and Slashdot. WP-Cache basically creates static versions of your pages so that they can be served to your visitors without querying the MySQL database.
This plugin will automatically create a Google compliant sitemap of your Wordpress blog to ensure that all of your pages are indexed in Google. This is one plugin you definitely don’t want to be without.
If you’re looking to avoid email spam, then this is the plugin for you. This plugin allows people to contact you without actually emailing you.
This plugin will automatically look for an RSS feed at a commenter’s site and insert a link to their latest entry. Don’t worry, it’s a “no_follow” link so you won’t be involuntarily passing on link juice, but you will be helping publicize the people who take time to say something at your site.
This plug-in sends a “thank you” note including your link and where to find your RSS feed to someone after they leave their first comment at your site.
Leaving comments open on old entries is not a good idea. You are inviting spammers. Install this plugin to close comments on older entries automatically. You can also configure it on a per-post basis to allow more popular discussions to continue.
Install this plug-in and it will do that dirty work for you, automatically adding META tags to your front page and single entries
When you’re the blogger, you’ve got the luxury of going back to edit your misspellings, fix grammatical errors or just plain polish up your writing. Commenters don’t have that option. Give your commenters the option to edit themselves and you just might find them eager to leave comments on your blog.
A very cool plugin that allows you to put in keywords and find relevant photos from Flickr with Creative Commons License. VERY NEAT!
This is one of my faves! If you’re writing a series of post and want them to be organized and connected with each other, this is the plugin to have! See my brief tutorial on the in-series plugin.
Love this…to see it in action, check out my chick page. It’s capable of doing much more but l love the index type of page.
GREAT for hiding your site while you finish redesigning it, etc. Only you can see the front and backend. Everyone else will just see you message.
This is my preferred form builder and you can make all kinds of forms with it.
Unfortuntely scrapers are gonna feed of what ever content they choose and there’s not much you can do about it so use them to your advantage! Activate this plugin and put in your links and when a scraper feeds off of you, you will be getting backlinks from them.
Just what is says, easily let your readers print your posts with or without photos, comments, urls, etc. Easy to use, lots of options. You can see an example of it here at my food blog.
A VERY COOL sharing button is added to your post. It expands when hovered or clicked on and gives options for stumbling & more, printing, saving to computer, and emailing! VERY COOL!
A must if you get lots of comments, especially if do lots of giveaways with tons of entries! VERY handy!
Get rid of the default search that comes with wordpress. Install this puppy for a more tailored search for your readers!
HERE ARE A COUPLE OF PAID PLUGINS WORTH HAVING IN MY OPINION
This is an ad manager and it kicks ass. IT does a lot more but the ad managing alone is worth having. It does everything for you and no kidding! The cost is $37 but you can easily make that back with just a couple of referrels because it also has an affiliate program!
For affiliates. Cloaks your links and is very powerful. Fairly new but from MaxBlogPress, which has a very good reputation.
This is a link cloaker basically that lets you keep your affiliate links private and have them disguised in the way you want. You can definitely find other link cloakers out there but this one is my preference and requires very little effort.
There is a free version but for a small price, you can have the full awesome version. Hold your own auctions on your own website! Very cool and I’ve sold cowboy boots, etc. with it!
MAXBLOGPRESS PLUGINS
Adds a horizontal add at the top of your blog for announcements, etc. Not annoying at all!
YOU choose how many posts you want on your pages. Lots of page options.
Correct pinging unlike the default wordpress pinging.
Easily add & change your favicon!
Takes uneccessary words out of your title for SEO optimization.
Ad Manager
Does what it says. Check around for duplicate posts!
Whew! There’s my list. It turned out to be much longer than I thought it would be but they are all worth having! I hope this helps you guys out:)
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Thanks for the link :)
You bet!
I have added two so far, I hope to add more later! Thanks for the tips!
I found a couple of more that are neat…I’ll try to update it later :D
[...] my list. I recommend the first one highly. It has made things soooo much easier!! Top Must Have Wordpress Plugins | Blogging with Cents I have so many or I would display them here. __________________ A Cowboy’s Wife Blogging with [...]
[...] Top Wordpress Plugins [...]
Awesome! Thanks for posting these :)
Karah’s last blog post..First a Clint Bowyer jacket
[...] the most views, links or traffic? This winner from Alex King (which I found via Lori’s list of must-have plugins) makes such stats simple to track. You can even show off your more popular posts in the sidebar if [...]
[...] Let me tell you people, it’s super fast!
They all sound wonderful ~ but how about a How-To to FTP to get them into our WP plugin directory! I’m clueless! Whaaaa
Cindi, I’ll work on this for you….who is your host?
[...] you’re a WordPress user, Blogging with Cents had a great post recently about the must-have WP plugins.
Very Cool List!!! Specially that we are building our blog now using wordpress!!! Thanks for sharing!!!
If you could give me some advice on how to transition to a hosted blog so that I can use the plug-ins, I would be most grateful! I currently have a wordpress.com blog and apparently I can’t use plug-ins unless I have a hosted site or wordpress.org. Any recommendations? I am new at all this :)
Hi….you might find my ebook handy for this.
http://bloggingcents.com/ebooks/shwb2.htm