Must have WordPress Plugins
There are so many WP plugins out there it can be difficult to sort through them all! Here is a list that I have compiled of must have/probably need plugins for any self-hosted WordPress blog.
Admin
- Google Analyticator – Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code.
- Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog to be indexed by Google search engines.
- All in One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines by adding the necessary meta tags to all of your blog pages.
- Simple Tags – Simple Tags is the successor of Simple Tagging Plugin. This is THE perfect tool to manage your WP tags. List tags, related posts, customized tag cloud and more.
- WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
- WordPress Automatic Update – WordPress Automatic Upgrade is a plugin that automatically upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.
Photo Galleries
- NextGEN Gallery – I don’t care what anyone says, this is the VERY best plugin for turning your blog into a photoblog, displaying multiple galleries on one page, whatever you need to do, there are endless possibilities with this plugin!
- FlickrRSS – If you just want to add a few photos to from your flickr gallery this plugin is super simple to use.
Add Videos to your Blog
- WP YouTube – Easily post your YouTube videos to your WP blog and automatically set the colors, borders, width, height and more of all of your videos.
Blog Customization
- Search Unleashed – Search Unleashed extends the standard WordPress search and provides a full text search with wildcards, logical operations, and highlighting across posts, pages, comments, titles, URLs, and meta-data.
- Favicon Manager – This is a small plugin that allows you to manage the favicon image for your WordPress installation.
- WordPress Related Posts Plugin – WordPress Related Posts Plugin will generate a related posts via WordPress tags, and add the related posts to feed.
- Breadcrumb NavXT – This plugin generates breadcrumb navigation bars for your WordPress blog.
- FD Footnotes – This plugin provides an extremely easy way to add elegant looking footnotes to your posts.
- Eco-Safe WP Plugin – Go Green on your WordPress blog and offer Printing Alternatives with this new ECO-SAFE wordpress plug-in.
- Separate Comments & Pings Plugin – This plugin quite simply separates your comments and your pings!
Feeds
- Feedburner Feedsmith – The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
- Feed Count WP Plugin – Feed Count 1.2 is the latest version of my WordPress Plugin that displays the number of subscribers to your feedburner feed.
Contact Forms
- Secure Form Mailer Plugin For WordPress – This is the best contact form plugin I have found. Easy to use, totally customizable, and allows for multiple forms to be used.
Comment Control
- @ Reply – This plugin allows you to add Twitter-like @reply links to comments. When clicked, those links insert the author name and a link to the comment you are replying to in the textarea.
- Email Commenters – Sometimes you want an easy way to e-mail all the people who commented on a certain post. Up till now that took a bit of work, now it’s as easy as installing this plugin, and clicking the link you’ll get underneath each post labeled “Mail the commenters on this post”!
- CommentLuv – The CommentLuv WordPress Plugin will visit the feed of the comment author and attempt to scrape the last post they made and display it under their comment, this way you can encourage people to join in the discussion of your posts and give something back straight away.
- Subscribe to Comments – Subscribe to Comments 2.1 is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments.
- Simple Recent Comments – This plugin returns a list of the most recent comments on any post of your blog in a simple, css customizable way, just add a template tag in to your theme.
- WP Comment Remix – WP Comment Remix adds a plethora of new options and features to WordPress. From Reply and Quote links for commenters, to a full upgrade to the edit comments pages in the admin panel, WPCR will save you time and effort when running your blog.
- Liz Comment Counter – Liz Strauss Comment Counter is a highly configurable badge (very similar to the Feedburner one, except it’s more configurable) to show off the number of comments your blog has.
- Show Top Commentators – Encourage more discussion from your readers, by displaying their names (linked to their website if desired) and number of comments they have made recently to your sidebar.
PHP in Posts
- Exec-PHP – The Exec-PHP plugin executes PHP code in posts, pages and text widgets.
Make Money
- WP Affiliate Store Plugin – If you make money on your WordPress blog with LinkShare, Commission Junction, ShareASale, Performics, LinkConnector, or Betty Mills, then try this plug-in. It allows you to Add products to your WP blog from any of the major affiliate networks, Click the POP button on your WYSIWYG post editor to add affiliate product links directly into your posts, and Build affiliate stores for your sidebar, footer, static pages, under a post, or randomly after posts.
- Cafepress WP Plugin – This plugin brings together the CafePress API, WordPress and the PrestoGifto API to allow you to layout your products, adjust thumbnail sizes, pick colors, fonts and more. With this plugin, you can choose any of the 59 million products that CafePress sells and put them in your sidebar, after your posts, in your footer or on a full page.
- Adsense Manager – AdSense Manager is a WordPress plugin for managing AdSense ads on your blog. It generates code automatically and allows positioning with Widgets. Version 3.1.x now supports AdSense, AdBrite, AdGridWork, Adpinion, Adroll, Commission Junction, CrispAds, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN and WidgetBucks.
Social Networking
- Last.fm Records Plugin – This plugin shows cd covers on your WordPress weblog. It connects to last.fm and grabs the list of cds you listened to recently and tries to find the cover images at last.fm.
- Simplelife – Simplelife takes your feeds from around the internet and aggregates them into one online trail.
- Twitter Tools – Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.
- Delicious for WordPress – Easily display your latest delicious bookmarks on your blog with this plugin.
- WP-Profilactic – The WP-Profilactic Plugin publishes your LifeStream or informs readers where to find you online by parseing your aggregated online activity feed from Profilactic.
- Social Links – Social Links is a sidebar widget that displays icon links to your profile pages on other social networking sites.
- Socialize Me – With the Socialize Me! Plugin for WordPress you can connect with people on services like: StumbleUpon, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Pownce, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace and many, many more.
- Ping.fm Custom URL – Works with Ping.fm’s Custom URL feature to collect blog entries, microblog entries, and status updates and post them to your blog.
Author: daniWeb designer/front-end web developer who hugs trees, loves animals, and is totally addicted to social media. :) Find me @ danimcdaniel.com or tweet me @dani!
Hi! I'm Dani and I'm a Web Designer, Front-End Developer, & Wordpress Junkie!
Oh, Nice find! I’ll be using a few of those soon.
Thanks!
Really useful collection of WordPress Plug-ins, very lean and low in fat.
There are some that I use, and some that I don’t because I dont’ need them and some that I will be using thanks to this reminder.
Great stuff,
Graham
ImJustCreative
So many great ones that I’ve seen and one’s that I’ve missed. Your site is the best and is going into google reader. Thanks!
Jeremy Heslops lastest blog post..Trying out Seesmic and Josiah says HI! on http://jheslop.com
Wow!! These are some great plug ins I am excited to try out on my blog. Thank you so much for sharing such great information. Blessings.
Joyce Jacobsen
Joyce Jacobsens lastest blog post..Bang-up Time to Begin an Online Internet Business? on [site]
Thanks!
Hi:
I admire greatly the way comments are displayed in alternating
colored boxes.
Please, identify which plugin, if any, you used to achieve this feature.
Thanks.
robert
Robert A. Kearses lastest blog post..Use This Article Marketing Service To Dramatically Increase Your Link Popularity And Page Rank on [site]
Best plugin recommendation page ever. Thx
Watch Anime Onlines lastest blog post..Anime Episodes; Naruto Shippuuden 80, Bleach 190 & Gundam 00 on [site]
An excellent list, in spite of my Socialize Me! Plugin is in there, mucking things up!
I’ve never managed to get Exec-PHP working on my blog, for some reason. I’ll give it another pop.
Thanks, speak soon…
Wayne Smallmans lastest blog post..And the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy is… [del.icio.us] on [site]
Very nice list of plugins. I’m going to be using some of them shortly. Thanks for the post!
Anuj Seth – lab209s lastest blog post..7+ Server Virtualization Software on [site]
Wow, what a great list of plugins, there’s a couple I’m definitely going to check out.
pabs lastest blog post..WE Design Change on [site]
sharing for thanks.. i wish the successfrom now on writing.
Thanks for all the great information. I really like the theme of your blog job well done.
I am loving it
Thanks for the great list! Do you know of anymore PHP plug-ins for Word Press? I’m new to it and I’m trying to find some better resources for the PHP side of it. I’ve heard that you can use Word Press to make a custom CMS for any site, not just blogs. Thanks!
Good list! To add to the Make Money section above, I found a lot of good info in WordPress Goldmine. It’s more of a tutorial than a plugin, but maybe it will someone out. Cheers!
This is one of the most complete list of plugins I was able to find. Thaks a lot!
thanks for compiling such a great list
Web Design by Jason Arons lastest blog post..What are Long Tail Keywords? by Dean Dreyer on [site]
Thanks. I’m always curious to see what other plugins bloggers find highly useful. I suspect the automatic upgrade will save me the most time with the number of blogs I have!
This is a really good list, thanks for taking the time to put it together.
Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to compile such a great list of plugins. There are certainly a few in there that I was not aware of and will be using in the future.
Best regards,
Dave Ovenden
DaveOvendensHQ.com
Dave Ovendens lastest blog post..Autopilot Your Way to Success on [site]
Great post AniDan. I just realize I still need to put some important plugins in my blog. More success to you.
There are so many tools out there for free. Analytics is an amazing tool. Google has more to come
Web Design
Hey, nice navigation. Did you code this theme?
You know what, the first thing I saw when I click on your site is your template. Looks neat.
Sorry, but as a designer, I appreciate such beauty. And you have a nice post as well. Thanks for sharing.
This is really a must for me to bookmark. You brought up a good point and thanks for that.
I really liked your blog!
Awesome info posted! Thanks a lot! I’ll definitely use few of them:)))
Ekaterinas lastest blog post..Jim Rohn on “Personal Development” on [site]
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
This is nice. Thank you
Your blog rocks dude!
Very nice information. Thanks for this.
Very nice information. Thanks for this.
Finally something new for me to learn and I am already subscribed. You can contact me if you need to.
Please post more on wordpress design, I would like to know more about it
Thanks, that must have taken a loads of work to put that together. This is a great summary.
Very nice information. Thanks for this.
This post is really a must bookmarked for me! Thank you so much.
Just asking, do you use Aweber? If so, can you provide more information on this? I am subscribed to your rss to check if you are going to post something on Aweber.
Cool, Thanks! N
Great post! i keep finding all these extensions and plugins for blogengine but wordpress is pretty scattered and it can get frustrating. Thanks for all the help.
Hello,
Super post, Need to mark it on Digg
Thank you
AnnaHopn
Does the blog we post to need to be around our niche in order to rank higher?
Finally something new for me to learn. As a start, I will need to gain more knowledge and I find yours really very useful..I am already subscribed, do contact me if you have new post
THANK YOU!
This sure is a great post. This is really helpful specially for newbies like me. Most of the WP plug ins mentioned above are not familiar with me since im new to the industry. Keep up the good work my friend
Yea! This is a great plugin! Thanks for sharing more information
But, what about nofollow links? Does the search Engine use it too? I heard that it is useful also but do not know why.. hope to hear a reply
great info and plugins, thank you.
Arron Daviess lastest blog post..10 Tutorials in site building I’m sure you’ll find interesting.
Wow- that’s a huge collection of WordPress Plug-ins. It would be a great guide for me to do wordpress plug-ins much easier. Thank you for this helpful post Dani.
thanks.. very good article.. nice site..
We know even though we all are in blogging industry our needs are different. But this place provides a bunch of resources for most of the blogger s. This site is worth diamonds.Thanks a bunch
An excellent list, in spite of my Socialize Me! Plugin is in there, mucking things up!
I’ve never managed to get Exec-PHP working on my blog, for some reason. I’ll give it another pop.
Thanks, speak soon
Very good, congratulations article
Wow- that’s a huge collection of WordPress Plug-ins. It would be a great guide for me to do wordpress plug-ins much easier. Thank you for this helpful post Dani.