A quick question for WordPress users:
WordPress Plugins – which ones do you use?
18 months ago in a post titled (I’ll show you mine if you show me yours) I shared the WP Plugins I used and asked readers to tell us which WordPress plugins they used. The response was great and I then compiled a list of WordPress Plugins for ProBloggers which summarized everyone’s favorite WP Plugins.
That was a year and a half ago so today I thought it might be time to do the exercise again.
I’ll kick us off with a few of my personal favorite WordPress Plugins and then will open it up for you to submit yours:
- Ad Rotator – this is what rotates the 468 x 60 ads that you see at the top of ProBlogger.
- AdSense Deluxe – for inserting AdSense (and other types of ads) into posts
- Akismet – comment spam filtering (which has stopped just under 2 million comment spams on ProBlogger since I installed it).
- Democracy – Poll plugin (the one I currently use here at ProBlogger in the sidebar)
- Landing Sites – I have used this off and on with my blogs – it greats readers arriving from search engines with suggestions for further reading
- Popularity Contest – a modified version of this runs the ‘Best of ProBlogger’ section on the front page of ProBlogger
- Random Redirect – a cool little plugin that I use on DPS offer readers a random post from my archives (people do actually use it)
- Related Posts – not the sexiest plugin but pure gold at driving people deeper into your blog (also good for SEO)
- Share This – a plugin that lets your readers share your post via email or social bookmarking
- Subscribe to Comments – used by quite a few ProBlogger readers to track comments left on posts
One WordPress Plugin that I’m keen to experiment with in the coming months:
- What Would Seth Godin Do – a plugin that encourages new visitors to a blog to sign up as an rss subscriber
So now it is over to you. Which WordPress Plugins do you classify as your favorites?
Please limit your answer to 10 if you can (if you have more – get it down to your 10 ‘must have plugins’). I’ll compile a summary of all the plugins submitted in a week or two. Stay tuned to ProBlogger’s RSS feed to be notified of that post.
Nice “poll”. I`ll write about it on yannickeckl.com – but there are only a few plugins..
anyway..Great idea!
Askimet
Better Comments Manager
Google Sitemaps
MyVideo
SEO Title Tag
Similar Posts
WP Post Ratings – Am thinking about getting rid of this one.
Thanks for the tip about Democracy! I’ve been looking for a better polling solution than PollDaddy…love the look, but the PollDaddy code makes my feed go wonky.
Love Gregarious. Great plugin.
Dagon Design’s Sitemap Generator (http://www.dagondesign.com/) is a must when sorting posts by date doesn’t cut it.
Hey People!
Here are my favourite WordPress plugins:
All in One SEO is my most favourite WordPress plugin. It’s got all SEO related options.
Next comes Full Text Feed plugin. In case I’m using the tag on my posts, this plugin will prevent the more tag from being added to the RSS feed, so no chances of partial feeds due to the use of post excerpts.
3. FeedBurner FeedSmith Redirects original feed to FeedBurner feed.
4. Live – Monitor blog traffic real time.
5. – A plugin I use for easy navigation inside the Admin panel.
Err.. I missed to link to the fifth one – it’s the Lighter Admin Drop Down Menus Plugin – http://www.italyisfalling.com/lighter-admin-drop-menus-wordpress-plugin
I needed to do a poll for my next promotion after the current contest and will check Democracy out.
One I like is “Live”.
It list the 16 last pages viewed and referrer in real time.
Thanks for the list
The two most useful plugins that I have discovered lately are:
1. Instant Upgrade – which allows one-click WordPress version upgrades.
2. PlugInstaller – which allows you to install and upgrade plugins without ftp (just put the .zip file address in and click).
Hey Darren,
WWSGD is well worth adding, it sure helped me increase subscribers almost right away.
A couple I really like:
Filosofo Uncheck Default Category is simple, but elegant, it unchecks that nasty uncategorized thingy when you click a different cat.
In-Series this one helps keep a series at clickable access to each post that is part of that series.
Just 2 that I find really useful behind the scenes.
Some of the plugins I use that make my blogging a little easier…
– Admin Drop Menu
– Better Comments Manager
– Clean Archives Reloaded
– Live Comment Preview
– 404 Notifier
Some of the plugins I use that make my blogging a little easier…
– Admin Drop Menu
– Better Comments Manager
– Clean Archives Reloaded
– WP-Cats
– Live Comment Preview
– 404 Notifier
Admin Drop Down Menu: By Ozh http://planetozh.com/
WP-Polls, WP-PageNavi, WP-PostViews, WP-UserOnline: By GaMerZ http://www.lesterchan.net/blogs
Gravatars: By Kip Bond http://zenpax.com/gravatars2/
Terong Related Links: By Erwin Kodiat http://www.terong.com
I like the all-in-one bookmarking button plugin from socialmarker.com – It’s a good alternative to the “share this” button, since it’s a little more obvious to people who aren’t as familiar with social bookmarking. Might not matter, but can’t hurt. I’ve also fiddled with Gregarious a little – it combines the share this button with a digg button, or whatever else you’d like.
Instant Upgrade is a nice, easy way to upgrade your wordpress installation.
Subscribe to comments is essential, in my opinion.
I use WWSGD, and I think it has good potential.
Ultimate Google Analytics makes stats nice and easy.
And finally, WordPress Text Ads by Alex Choo has good potential for cutting out the middleman on text link ad sales.
sorry for the double comment :-) – my bad! patience is a virtue when your broadband crawls to an almost halt… ;-)
Darren, nice idea and it’s pretty cool to see what plugins you use.
Although, can we submit old posts? Because some blogs I know and even I have posted this long ago.
Anyway, here’s mine:
http://www.carlocab.com/top-10-best-wordpress-plugins-according-to-me/
WP-Ajax-Edit-Comments: http://www.raproject.com/wordpress/wp-ajax-edit-comments/ – it allows commenters to edit their own comment within a period of time specified by the blog admin.
Recommendit: http://www.webministerium.de/artikel/32/recommendit.html – it allows readers to recommend posts they liked to new readers (you can see this is action in my blog’s sidebar)
I’ve got most of those, but I am thinking of replacing “What woudl seth godin do” now that I have Who See Ads up and running:
– Who Sees Ads – useful for a lot more than displaying ads
– Show top commentators
– Get recent comments
– Full text feed
– aLinks
– Samsarin PHP Widget
– Share this
I’m using
All in on Seo package – for my seo
Google Sitemaps – creats automaticly sitemaps very usefull
Landing Sites is one of the BEST plugins out there, shame that no one got to develop it a little more.
If you don’t mind clicking through to my site where I maintain a colophon page. I have listed all the plugins there. As you will see, I’m quite a plugin whore :)
My favorite is the plugin that creates a drop cap for the first letter of each post. I never thought it was possible, but it is so easy!
ALL IN ONE SEO is AMAZING!!! Definitely a must install! (Sorry for shouting, but it’s my new blogging infatuation).
–FeedSmith to be sure that FeedBurner is tracking all RSS subscribers
–Google Sitemaps
–Head Meta Description (if you don’t put in a manual page description with All in one SEO it will take the first sentence or so and make it your description
Greg, maybe you could share with us the name of the plugin?
whoa… thank you..
I think I will use some of this plug ins ..
I used spam karma for spamming ..
And top commentator plug ins..
Some of my plugins that I consider important:
AdSense Deluxe
Akismet
Executable PHP widget
Feedburner Feed Replacement
Full Text Feed
Redirect Old Slugs
runPHP
Show Top Commentators
AdSense Deluxe is a must though. I just discovered Admin Drop Menus from the previous comment. Installed it and is loving it. Thanks guys for sharing.
Ultimate Tag warrior – I still using this than latest 2.3 build-in
All in one SEO – Make my life easier to insert meta thingy
Extended Live Archive – AJAXy archive for better digging old post. check my archive page for example
My most favorite plugin is the ONECLICK INSTALL!! I LOVE it:) I use others but that one makes getting the others a breeze.
My #1 must-have plugin:
** WP-Cache — It will save your butt in periods of traffic spikes, plus it will make your webhost happier.
Some others:
* Google Sitemaps Generator
* Optimal Title
* Feedburner Feedsmith
* Related Posts
* runPHP
* Democracy Poll
* Custom Query String
* Sociable
* WPAds
Thanks for the list!
I had no idea Seth Godin had a plugin. I am a huge fan of Seth’s ideas.
These make blogging about the confusing world after college bearable!
– Admin Drop Down Menu
– Adsense Deluxe
– Feedburner Feed Replacement
– Google (XML) Sitemaps
– Google Analytics
– Spam Karma 2
– Ultimate Tag Warrior
– aLinks
– Adhesive
This is a great list, always looking for things that integrate well with my blog.
I used to have subscribe remind plugin at unneglectable, but with a new design things got a little bit crowded witht he extra line, so modified it and using the same idea only on single post pages now
Besides that I use the popularity contest plugin
too new a blog to make use of various other useful plugins.. planning to incorporate related posts now…
Great list!!! Once again Darren, you make the life of a blogger easier and easier with what you do on Problogger.
Here are a few plugins I use on my site. They are listed in order of importance.
Akismet – Excellent comment spam blocker.
Google XML Sitemap Generator – Great for letting Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all other search engines where your content is.
wp-cache – Increases your web server’s load capacity many times for when you’re dugg. It also makes your popular pages load very quickly.
Plugins I can’t live without
*Adsense Deluxe
*Akismet
*Popularity Contest
*Related Posts
*SlashDiggicious
*Recent Posts
*Recent COmments
*Iimage Browser
*WP Backup
*Firestats
So many good plug-ins these days its hard to just pick 10.
I find the plugin “aLinks” to be quite powerful… it allows to create links automatically on all the posts.
It has modules to handle wikipedia, amazon, cj, clickbank types of links.
Very useful list of plugin.. A MUST GET plugin list I would say. Thanks for sharing!
I’m still using blogger since my blog is new but sooner later I’m going to make the switch to wordpress :)
I have about 15 plugins and don’t really want to share them all but here are some of the main ones I use:
All in one SEO Pack – Good for SEO very good indead brings me lots of traffic without it my blog on google would be nothing
Text Link Ads – This is most common plugin whoever uses TLA
Subscribe to Comments – Same as yours Darren
Other plugins are my own creation that I don’t share for public…my favorite one is google adsense for sidebar….
Wow, I have too many to list here, but I use every one of them. I like your choices Darren. I use some of the same ones.
I use Akisment
Code Auto Escape (for posting source code)
Digital Fingerprint
DoFollow
Feedburner Feedsmith
Google XML Sitemaps
Related Posts and ST Add Related Posts to Feed
Subscribe To Comments
WP-Cache
WP-Grins
There’s an error to the related posts and you can’t even access the wasabi site.
I would love to use popularity contest but when I did a few weeks ago, I got some error and couldn’t even access my blog. I had to go to my hosts ftp and delete the plugin in from there.
I use Akismet, Social Bookmarking RELOADED,Wordpress Download Monitor.
I am looking at adding more plugins in the near future. I honestly don’t have so much on my blogs so i feel these are what i need for now.
If Darren wouldn’t mind, i would trying using the Popularity Contest Plugin one of these days ;)
I actually just wrote a post about the one’s I use here. Darren, I don’t normally put links in comments, but I hope this is appropriate.
Hi Darren,
I’ve just posted http://searchforblogging.com/index.php/2007/09/29/how-to-use-wordpress-for-your-small-business-blog-part-4/ which shows my top 10 WordPress Plugins.
Darren, can you check the link on the Related Posts plugin?
I use Akismet and DoFollow on all my WP blogs. I also use
WP Post Ratings
Similar Posts
Feedburner
Thanks for all the plugin lists, time for me to do some research!
I use the next plugins
All in One SEO Pack
SEO Slugs
WPAds
WP-Cache
Related Posts
Popular Posts
Top Commentators
Mainly plugins I use are related to seo and some on advertising, if i would list all the plugins the list would become too long (just teasing). But mainly, I have implemented some hacks to my theme (of course related to seo).
Running a personal blog my list is different.
The plug-ins I need:
Categorical Links
Comment Time Out
Contact Form
Digital Fingerprint
Permanent Redirect
Smart Comments
SRG CleaN Archives
WordPress Database Back-Up WordPress Automatic Upgrade which has worked well for me on the last two upgrades, but I’ve not used with the new full upgrade to 2.3
Maybe it’s just me, but with the Seth Godin Plugin, I’ve found that when I visit the sites using it, even in the same online sitting, the message appears every time, and not just on the 1st occasion.
It’s a great idea, but off the top of my head, I’ve yet to witness it only appear on my 1st visit to a site, and not every single time.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s something worth looking out for.
* Who Sees Ads: In addition to supporting all ad types, it lets you set conditions so that only search engine visitors see your ads, or the first 2000 viewers, etc. etc.
* LMB Quicktags: Lets commenters take advantage of quicktag buttons, and insures that HTML code won’t get mistyped. Also allows for custom quicktags.