My Favorite WordPress Plugins
Since converting my blog to Standard Theme a few weeks ago (read about why here), several people have written me to ask, “What WordPress Plugins are you now using?” Rather than answer these people individually, I thought I would post my current list in the hopes of stimulating your thinking plus getting a few ideas from you.
Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/gwmullis
One of my favorite things about WordPress as a blogging platform is the ability to extend its features through plugins. Unfortunately, the more plugins you use, the more it slows down your blog. As a result, features have to be balanced with speed.
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Admittedly, I use more plugins than I probably should. Nevertheless, I am currently using the following and am happy with the performance:
| Plugin | Description |
| Add Post Footer | Adds the “Disclosure of Material Connection” content to the end of my posts. However, you can use it to add any static content to the end of your posts. |
| Askimet | Checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and then flags them accordingly. It is amazingly accurate. |
| All in One SEO Pack | Optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines (Search Engine Optimization). |
| Better Adjacent Post Links | Adds two enhanced commands to replace WordPress’ “Previous post” and “next post” functions. |
| Drop Caps | Adds drop caps to your posts and pages. It comes with some cool CSS styling and lots of options. |
| GigPress | Provides a database for entering, managing, and displaying speaking engagements. Check my Speaking page for an example of what it can do. |
| Google XML Sitemaps | Generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog. |
| Gravatar Signup Encouragement | Displays a message to commenters without a Gravatar with link to Gravatar’s signup page. It displays your avatar image next to your comment. (You have one of these, right?) |
| MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate | Manages, tracks, cloaks and shortens an unlimited number of affiliate links from one central location. |
| NextGEN Gallery | A full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with dozens of options and features. For example, I use it to manage these images for my speaking engagements. |
| nRelate Related Content | Continuously analyzes your blog content and displays other related posts from your blog at the bottom of each post. This is designed to keep people on your site by providing other related content. |
| Public Post Preview | Provides a way for you to give a link to others for public preview of a post before it is actually published. |
| Redirection | Manages all your “301 redirects,” so that readers don’t get a “page not found error” (404 error). |
| RSS Footer | This plugin makes it easy to add a line of content or even ads to the end of all the articles in your feeds. |
| Scribe SEO | Quickly checks your content against SEO best practices utilizing the Scribe Content Optimizer. A “must have” if you are serious about increasing your blog’s traffic. |
| SexyBookmarks | Provides an attractive, easily-configurable social bookmarking menu to your posts and pages. You can add virtually any social service, including Twitter, Facebook, Email a Friend, StumbleUpon, et.c |
| Smart Ads | Automatically adds advertisements before and after your post’s single page content—or even in the middle of a post. |
| Subscribe to Comments Reloaded | Allows your readers to subscribe to comments and manage their subscriptions. |
| Thank Me Later | Automatically sends a thank you e-mail to first-time commenters. You can customize the message. I use it to invite commenters to subscribe to my blog. |
| VaultPress | Backs up everything on your WordPress blog, several times a day. It was created by Automattic, the people who created WordPress. |
| WordPress.com Stats | Provides simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system. |
| WP-Print | Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page. |
| WP Categories and Posts | Adds in a template tag you can use to display categories and sub-categories and the posts underneath those categories. I use it for my Archives page. |
| WP Greet Box | Displays a different greeting message to your visitors depending on which site they are coming from. Very cool. |
| WP Super Cache | A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static HTML files. It makes your blog load much faster. This is a must-have plugin. |
I also use BeaconAds to manage my advertising. It is super easy to use, but it is not technically a plugin.
Question: What plugins are you using that other bloggers should consider? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
Posted on November 5, 2010
In: Social Media
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