The Obligatory WordPress Plugins post

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I know what you’re thinking - “Oh no, not ANOTHER one of those ‘list o’ plugins’ posts!” - and essentially, that’s what this post is - a list of super helpful WordPress plugins that I have found usefull enough to install and use them on this blog.  I browse through posts like this from time to time in hopes of finding another great widget or integrated/automated tidbit. In fact I’ve found a greater percentage of the plugins I currently use from posts just like this one. It’s frustrating to visit a blog and think, “Wow, I love how they’ve done ’this; or ‘that’!” only to find the blogger hasn’t disclosed what plugin they are using to accomplish it. 

For that reason, I’ve chosen to post about my active WordPress plugins. Thanks to WP-PluginsUsed  (one of the plugins installed) the content of this post will be dynamic showing only the plugins I currently have active on my blog. As I expand or remove plugins, the post’s content will alter to reflect those changes - meaning that the post should never be out of date with the site.

One of the things I like about these sorts of posts is the opportunity to get a real ‘in-use’ review of a plugins functionality and customizability. Since every plugin listed here is currently in use on the site, you can be sure that each plugin has been styled, integrated and tested for functionality. So lets get right to it then!

WordPress plugins I use on this blog

There are 30 plugins used: 27 active plugins and 3 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins

  Advanced-Admin-Menus 2.2.1
Andy Staines | visit site
Extended admin panel navigation with convenient drop down menus, for quick and easy access to secondary pages. Now “Write a post”, “Comments in Moderation”, Widgets” and “add a link” are all just a single click away.(especially useful if you find yourself on a slow server/PC - reduce page loads, reduce wait time)

  Akismet 2.0.2
Matt Mullenweg | visit site
Nobody likes reviewing and deleting tons of bot-posted spam comments every day, and with Askimet you don’t have to. Askimet is an old favorite and longtime companion of WordPress that helps block unwanted spam comments to your blog. The plugin checks your blog comments to see if the comment has the look of spam about it. You can always review the spam comments it flags, to make sure it’s spam, but it’s pretty acurate. The Askimet plugin requires a WordPress.com API key, which only takes a minute to set up. You can display the plugin’s stats using <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template.

  All in One SEO Pack 1.4.3.9
uberdose | visit site
This plug-in lives up to it’s self description - “Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog”. The All-In-One-SEO-Pack plugin makes basic SEO a cinch, by providing core SEO functionality(unique Titles & Meta Descriptions per post/page) and solves most common WordPress duplicate content issues.

  BackUpWordPress 0.4.5
Roland Rust | visit site
A simple to install and set-up plugin that amkes backing up your WordPress blog a sinch! Every siteowner or blogger should back-up their blog regularly. The BackUpWordPress plugin allows you to set automatic back-ups to occur daily, weekly or monthly and which back-up the WordPress DB, Files & Folders into use .tar.gz or .zip files. Quick, easy, convenient and a real life saver if anything ever goes wrong.

  DoFollow 4.0
Kimmo Suominen | visit site
Stop spammers not commentors. The DoFollow plugin allows the blog author to remove the [ rel=nofollow ] from comment links, allowing search engine spiders to follow comment links. The plugin offers a number of setting which allow the blog author to determine which links will become search engine friendly and which will remain “nofollow”.

  Enhanced WP-ContactForm 1.1
Joost de Valk | visit site
Keep in touch! Sometimes your readers/friends need a convieniant way to drop you a note that may not be appropriate for the public comments. This enhanced contact form (another sweet Joost de Valk plugin) allows blog authors to place a token in the code of a page or post which renders a simple, effective contact form. [The result is emailed to the blog author including the referal information so you can tell how the visitor came to your blog and which page compelled the contact.]

  Exec-PHP 4.3
Sören Weber | visit site
This simple little plug-in makes it possible to insert and executes <?php ?> code with-in your posts, pages and even text widgets. This super simple plug-in requires no setup or maintanance and is perfect for when you need to use PHP code in a page or post (sometimes required by other plugins)

  FeedBurner FeedSmith 2.3.1
FeedBurner | visit site
This is an iteration of the popular plug-in originally authored by Steve Smith. The plugin actively detects the various URLs used to access your feed (IE www.domain.com/feed/ or www.domain.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.) and consolidates subscribers so you can track subscriptions more accurately.

  Gregarious 1.9.10c
Ankur Kothari | visit site
Gregarious is a social bookmarking script-gone-wild! This plugin adds dynamic Digg & Reddit buttons to your posts & pages with tons of customization features. Features include the Share This which is included and integrated into the plugin’s controls. (I opted to keep the stand alone version of Share This)

  Highlight Author Comments 1.0.0
Rob Marsh, SJ | visit site
Allows authors to select & set a unique style to comments posted by the author making them stand out a bit. An excellent plug-in for active blogs with lot’s of comment activity.

  Link Indication 3.2
Michael Woehrer | visit site
This is a nice little plugin that attaches CSS class attributes to site links. With the help of the otions menu and a little CSS you can customize links pointing to various file types (IE PDFs, MP3s, JPGs) as well as links pointing to specific websites (IE flickr galleries, wikipedia & IMDB entries, YouTube video pages)

  MyAvatars 0.2b
Andrea Micheloni & Napolux | Andrea Micheloni & Napolux“>visit site
Another great plugin for blogs with active commenting. This plugin allows you to integrate www.MyBlogLog.com avatars into your Wordpress comments - with-out losing Gavatar functionality! Degrades nicely when guests with no estalished avatar comment on the blog.

  NextGEN Gallery 0.74
NextGEN DEV-Team | visit site
A fantastic, full featured photo gallery integrated directly into WordPress! Upload, organize, tag and display your photos as single images, galleries or slideshows. If you’re looking for a feature-rich gallery plugin for WordPress, then this is it!

  NextGEN Gallery Widget 1.12
KeViN | visit site
A sister plugin to the NexGEN Gallery plugin. This plugin adds ’single image’, ‘random images’ and ‘newest images’ widgets for easy integration of gallery images into your blogs sidebar.

  Related Posts 0.1
René Ade | visit site
A must have for active bloggers, this plugin automatically procides a list of related blog posts (from your blog) based on shared tags. This is a great plugin for keeping visitors intereted in your website by helping them find more of your content they might be interested in.

  RSS Footer 0.5
Joost de Valk | visit site
Stop letting scraper sites outrank you using your own content! Concieved and requested by blogging superstar “ShoeMoney and developed by WordPress Plugin guru Joost De Valk, this genius plugin allows blog authors to append content before or after your post content with-in RSS feeds. This allows you to add a link back to your blog, or to the specific blog post and helps cycle readeers & link value back to the original site when your RSS feed is used by scraper sites.

  Samsarin PHP Widget 1.2
Chris Pettitt | visit site
A very simple, but extremely useful plugin that introduces alternate ‘Text Widgets’ that allow you to insert PHP code. Great for intigrating little PHP scripts (IE MyBlogLog widget, musice players etc) into your side bar.

  Share This 2.1b1
ShareThis and Crowd Favorite (crowdfavorite.com) | visit site
One of my favorite additions, the ‘Share This’ plugin integrates a clean yet powerful set of social networking tools including a myriad of popular bookmarking site chicklets (IE Digg, StumbleUpon etc) and a clean & easy to use ‘mail-to-a-friend’ tab. Unleash the power of Web 2.0 on your blog with integrated social media/networking functionality!

  Shashin 1.2.3
Michael Toppa | visit site
A plugin for integrating Picasa photos in WordPress.

  Simple Tags 1.2.4
Amaury BALMER | visit site
This is a great plugin for anyone crazy about the new tagging features in WordPress 2.3+. This lugin adds a ton of tagging usability and features to help bloggers assign and maintain tags on their blog. From an advanced tag cloud widget & improved ‘related posts’ control, to suggesting tags and auto-completing tag entries based on existing tags this plugin is a must-have for any tag-loving blogger.

  Smart Archives 1.9.2
Justin Blanton | visit site
This plugin is a simple plugin that allows bloggers to organize and style a clean single-page archive of their posts. The authors archive page has over 5 years of blog posts oputlined in a clean, well organized page - cataloged for easy access to users & search engines alike.

  Subscribe To Comments 2.1.2
Mark Jaquith | visit site
Another great plugin for sites with active commenting. This plugin allows readers to opt-in to receive notifications when new comments are posted to an entry - perfect for following up on comments, and keeping readers connected. This plugin is based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess

  Top Commentators Widget 0.999
Lorna Timbah | visit site
Another great plugin for bloggers with active commenting or wishing to encourage active commenting. This plugin rewards active commentors by posting the top commentors URL on the homepage widget. Start encouraging YOUR visitors to post their comments!

  What Would Seth Godin Do 1.3
Richard K Miller | visit site
Markting giant Seth Godin advocates “using cookies to treat returning visitors differently than newbies” providing a unique and hopefully deepening exerience for returning visitors. In that spirit this plugin allows you to displays a custom welcome message to new visitors for a set number of visits (IE “Welcome to AzAkers.com! Visitors are welcome to comment and encouraged to sign up for our RSS feed!”)

  WP-PluginsUsed 1.00
Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan | visit site
Great plugin for sharing information about your active/inactive plugins with fellow WordPress bloggers. This list can be integrated into a post or a page using simple tokens.

  WP-PostRatings 1.20
Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan | visit site
This is a fun little plugin that inserts an AJAX based rating block to your posts/pages. The WPO-PostRatings plugin has tons of button style options & rating types to use(IE simple Digg-like +/- or star, % or points based).

  WP-PostRatings Widget 1.20
Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan | visit site
This is a sister to the previous plugin whci provides a sidebar widget that displays a set of the most popular posts/pages based on reader votes.

Other Great Plugins

I’ve tried out lot’s of great WordPress plugins, but there are a few that really stand out. Several were just too fantastic to delete, even though I might have found alternatives that I preferred for one reason or another. Generally it was because of some minor feature, styling issue or some other little thing. These are great plugins and definately deserve consideration.

  Lucia’s Link Love 0.3
Lucia Liljegren (visit site)
Encourage reader comments by rewarding frequent commentors with some link love. Lucia’s plugin allows you to remove the “nofollow” declaration from comment links, but only after the user has commented a set number of times.

  Picasa Web Album Widget 0.6.2
Stefan Venken (visit site)
A clean easy to integrate plugin that allows blog authors to add a widget to the side bar whcih displayed a set number of images from random or selected Picasa galleries.

  piflasa 0.1
Doingz (visit site)
A clean plugin that allows you to insert Flash gallery showing images from a selct Picasa web album. in a nice way and in any size in a flash slideshow. Despite the Picasa recently providing similar functionality, this plugin remains quite useful and integrates beautifully.

 What about your WordPress plugins?

Have a post or page on your blog that lists your plugins?  Have a plugin of your own you want to recommend/share with the community? Have comments on my plugins? Your comments and plugin recommendations are welcome -Lets talk about it WordPress plugins!

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(+6 rating, 6 votes)

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