One of the biggest advantages to using WordPress for your blog is the quality and quantity of available plugins (most of which are free). The right plugins will help to increase your productivity and improve the usability and effectiveness of your website. If you are not familiar with WordPress plugins the first place to go is the plugins page on the WordPress Codex.
When looking for the plugins that will make the biggest improvements to your blog, there are a number of plugin directories:
List from the Codex
More from WordPress
wp-plugins.net
dev.wp-plugins.org
www.wpplugins.org
We’ve created a list of our favorite plugins below:
Akismet - Most blogs get hundreds, if not thousands, of spam comments every week. Akismet is an extremely effective plugin that will virtually eliminate spam comments. The frustrating and time-consuming task of sorting through spam comments is no longer necessary with Akismet.
Google Sitemap Generator - Sitemaps can be one of the most effective ways to get your pages indexed by Google. Fortunately, this plugin makes the process of creating a sitemap for your blog easy.
Ultimate Tag Warrior - One of the most popular WordPress plugins, Ultimate Tag Warrior will improve your blog’s visibility in search engines like Technorati. Adding tags to your posts is easy with Ultimate Tag Warrior.
Related Entries - This plugin can help to increase the number of pageviews you receive from the average visitor. At the end of each post the plugin will add a brief list of posts that are related to that particular post. It makes it easier for readers to find content that they are interested in, and they don’t even have to search for the content!
FeedSmith - This plugin redirects requests for an ordinary WordPress feed to your FeedBurner feed. This allows you to track the readers of your feed through FeedBurner’s program.
Search Pages - WordPress’s search function provides your readers with an easy and quick way to find what they are looking for on your blog. However, if you are using WordPress as a CMS to create static pages in addition to blog posts, those pages will not be included in the search results. The search pages plugin changes this and allows pages to be searched as well as blog posts.
WordPress Database Backup - Backing up your database is a smart move for any blogger. This plugin makes it easy to protect your blog against a situation that could otherwise be catastrophic.
Google Analytics and FeedBurner Stats - Two of the most useful programs for monitoring your blog’s traffic are Google Analytics and FeedBurner. This plugin allows you to easily see all of this data from your WordPress dashboard.
PXS Form Mail - Adding a contact form on your blog or website is a great way to allow your visitors to provide their feedback and interact. Creating and effective form is fast and easy with PXS Form Mail.
Gravatars - You’ve probably visited blogs that display a small picture of readers when they have posted comments. Gravatars makes this possible for your blog if users have a picture registered with gravatar. Pictures allow readers to connect better and it encourages more feedback.
AdRotator - If your blog contains advertisements, AdRotator allows you to advertise multiple products. AdRotator will automatically rotate the ads that you have selected.
Sociable - Most of your blog readers and RSS subscribers are probably users of social media websites like Digg, Netscape and Delicious. Sociable gives your readers the ability to bookmark your posts straight from your pages.
Amazon Media Manager - The Amazon Media Manager plugin helps you to effectively promote affiliate products from Amazon. You can easily create affiliate links with attractive promotions that can help to increase the income from your blog.
Some similar articles to this one, listing favorite plugins, can be found at:
Silentbits.com
Wolf-howl.com
PingMag
Staska.net
Lorelle.wordpress.com
9 comments from readers
1 The PostPost Plugin << Vandelay Website Design Jul 19, 2007 at 6:24 pm
[…] I recently came across a very useful WordPress plugin, PostPost. It’s not one that you’ll see on most people’s list of top plugins, including my own (I hadn’t come across PostPost at the time of writing that article, or it would have been on the list). […]
2 Vic Aug 3, 2007 at 12:11 am
This is a great list of plugins. This type of list is priceless for the new kid on the block.
Thanks
Vic
3 Vandelay Design Aug 3, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Thanks Vic. I’m glad you’ll be able to use some of the resources.
4 Tay Sep 12, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Steven,
I was browsing through some of your older posts and happened upon this one. I always love lists of plugins, and this is a great one.
I definitely need to install Ultimate Tag Warrior and also Related Posts. But I always have trouble with the related posts plugins. I have tried two differents, their most recent versions, and even some of their older versions. The related posts plugin is one I’d like to have the most, but I always get errors when I try to run the installation script, and my brain just isn’t technical enough to manually install.
Would you mind telling me what you did to install the Related Entries? Did you ever get any error when trying to run the first time installation script?
Thanks,
Tay
5 Vandelay Design Sep 12, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Tay,
Actually, when I published this post I was just starting to use plugins and I was really going off of other people’s recommendations more than anything. If I made the list now it would be a lot different. I had trouble with the related entries plugin too. I didn’t get any errors but it just didn’t show anything. I thought maybe it was because I didn’t have enough posts published yet. I didn’t mess with it at all, I just moved on. Thanks for bringing it up because I really want to get one of those plugins here. I’ll look into it in the next few days and I’ll email you about it.
6 Tay Sep 13, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Thanks Steven. The related posts plugin, I do believe, would really help my blog a lot in terms of getting more pageviews and exposure to older posts, and it’s one I’ve always been interested in, but I never even could get the installation script to work no matter what I did.
Thanks,
Tay
7 jenny Oct 2, 2007 at 7:33 am
Really excellent.Thanks for all.Thay are very helpful
8 Vandelay Design Oct 2, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Jenny,
Thanks for visiting and taking the time to comment.
9 Geciktirici Nov 27, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Thanks Steven..Links are helpful for me..