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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or remove plugins, the post’s content will alter to reflect those changes - meaning that the post should never be out of date with the site.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 32 plugins used: 28 active plugins and 4 inactive plugins.
Active Plugins
admin-menus 2.5.3
Andy Staines | visit site
Drop Down Admin Menus for WordPress 2.5 (New Admin UI)
Akismet 2.1.6
Matt Mullenweg | visit site
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.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
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.
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 4.7
Sören Weber | visit site
Executes <?php ?> code in your posts, pages and text widgets.
Fun with Sidebar Tabs 0.5.2
Andrew Rickmann | visit site
Adds a tabbed sidebar to your theme
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.
Lightbox 2 2.7.5
Rupert Morris | visit site
Used to overlay images on the current page. Lightbox JS v2.2 by Lokesh Dhakar. Mad props to Tanin for his crucial regular expression code! You rock!!
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 0.98
NextGEN DEV-Team | visit site
A NextGENeration Photo gallery
NextGEN Gallery Widget 1.22
NextGEN DEV-Team | visit site
Adds a sidebar widget support to your NextGEN Gallery
No Ping Wait 2.0
Robert Deaton | visit site
Speeds up posting by moving generic pings to execute-pings.php
Post Ideas 2
Aaron Robbins | visit site
Keep track of all your great article or post ideas. Activate plugin and then choose Manage > Post Ideas.
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!
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!”)
WordPress Mobile Edition 2.1a
Alex King | visit site
Show a mobile view of the post/page if the visitor is on a known mobile device. Questions on configuration, etc.? Make sure to read the README.
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.
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.
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.
Shashin 2.1
Michael Toppa (visit site)
A plugin for integrating Picasa photos in WordPress.
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!
Related Tags:
blogging • free tools • SEO tools • social • WordPress
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Very Good list of plugins. Anyone with a blog should be incorporating some of these.
Thanks so much, I really like these!!
Update:
I’ve updated the list today with the new NEXGEN photo gallery plugin (with companion sidebar widget). The Picasa one is still great, but the NEXGEN plugin is brilliant!! Perfect for what I was looking for - a plugin to equip my WordPress blog with a fully integrated photo gallery system.
Hi, Sorry about the slow reply, I just got back from holidays. But thanks for the comment on my site. Your list is great too
Thanks for checking it out and for the comments
Update:
I’ve added a few more and found alternative for a few others since the orginal post just a few weeks ago.
Namely RSS-Footer (Joost de Valk), DoFollow(a more direct alterantive to Lucy’s round-about plugin) and Enchanced-Contact-Form which is already a hit with several of my friends
For those trolling around looking for more great plugins check out Jacobs post - “WordPress Plugins You Must Have” - Where he has listed a number of great plugins - some of which I’m checking out and may end up using myself.
Great resource. Many thanks. I’m building a Wordpress.org site, and these are just the job.
These are all great plugins, but be sure to check out similar posts from other WordPress bloggers - you’re likely to find a few more plugins perfectly suited for your WordPress project.
I know everytime I check out these kinds of posts I end up finding something else I like.
[...] Shashin plugin recently made the 20+ WordPress Plugins that Rock list by Jayson Akers. I have a slew of new features I want to add, but unfortunately I’m [...]
Some other great plugins I’m using:
Bad Behavior - block spambots
BotTracker - track bots and block bot hacks
Spam Karma2 - the best blog spam blocker
Comment Timeout - automatically close comments on old posts
Comment Relish - Thanks a first-time commenter via email
Live Comment Preview - previews the comment below the comment form as you type
FireStats - a terrific stats package for the WP Admin panel, I also use it for country flags on comments
CSS Compress - removes whitespace to lighten your stylesheet
Date Exclusion - exclude dates for “timeless” content
wp-cache - this classic will significantly increase average page load speed.
Berri-PersonalizedCare - personalized welcome messages
Genki Announcement - display announcements on your blog outside posts
Jacob
Thanks for the plugins! I must have downloaded a dozen or more. I’m a WP newbie… so let’s see how long it takes for me to install them!
Great list of plugins. Use some of them, but have found new ones to check out. Much appreciated.
http://www.nela.in
Nice list! Thanks…
A great list, Jayson. I’m off to check out some of your recommendations now!