Below I have composed a list of the 20 must have wordpress plugins I am currently using with my WordPress self hosted blog.
I have thoroughly researched blogging (and wordpress plugins) for the past 2 weeks, about 3 hours per day and have fiddled around with many, many plug ins and I have finally chosen these 21 great plugins to keep, which will aid in making my blog more search engine friendly, efficient and user friendly.
I hope that you find this information useful as I sure wish there was a full list like this when I started up my blog. The list is in alphabetical order with links to the plug in page.
Any other comments or suggestions of great wordpress plugins would be appreciated.
The 21 Must have plug-ins
This plugin allows you to add MyBlogLog.com or Gravatar.com or Avatars.pl avatars to WordPress comments. By b4it.Why? This is very useful for adding personalisation and a human feel to your comments.
Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By uberdose.
Why? This is a must have for search engine optimisation, no questions asked.
This shows an overview of the recently active articles and the last people to comment on them. Original idea and code fixes contributed by Michael Heilemann.
Why? This is a must have for user interaction and gives readers more reason to comment on your blog.
Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. By Janis Elsts.
Why? Why would you want broken links in your website? You need this to check your website with ease.
- FeedBurner FeedSmith
Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plug-in detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
Why? This easily tracks your readers in a simple and easy way, so you can track your readers more carefully.
Add Gravatars to your WordPress theme in a way that customizes easily and degrades nicely. By Austin Matzko.
Why? An alternative to 4Avatars. This is very useful or adding personalisation and a human feel to your blog.
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
Why? So your website is easier to crawl and to become more Search Engine Friendly.
Adds a sidebar widget that shows the most popular posts. Requires the Sidebar Widgets plugin from Automattic and the Popularity Contest plugin by Alex King. By Thomas Watson Steen.
Why? So your users can find your most popular articles in a breeze.
Adds MyBlogLog widget to your blog. A community post. By MyBlogLog Team.
Why? So you can see what readers are looking at your blog and so you can interact with them easier.
A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the WEB2.0(beta). By NextGEN DEV-Team.
Why? Add galleries and photos to your blog with ease, easy resizing, thumbnails, galleries and more!
Remove the nofollow tag from your blog‘s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc: By Michele Marcucci.
Why? So your readers can benefit from commenting and reading your blog.
This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behaviour of your visitors to determine each post‘s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values. By Alex King.
Why? So your users can find your most popular articles in a breeze. Readers will stay for longer.
Keeps track of what your visitors are searching for. By Bennett McElwee.
Why? So you know what your readers are looking for.
This powerful yet easy-to-install contact form features exceptional accessibility and usability while still providing extensive anti-spam and anti-exploit security features. A marriage of communication and peace-of-mind. By Mike Cherim and Mike Jolley.
Why? Self explanitory – security.
Simple Tags Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3. Auto completion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags ! By Amaury BALMER.
Why? Have a better internal linking system inside your blog and your readers can find related articles easier.
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.
Why? So readers can received updates of a particular post without having to come back and check all the time.
Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Adapted from Show Top Commentators plugin. By Lorna Timbah.
Why? This makes readers want to comment more on your blog as they get rewarded for it by being on your blog.
Why? Same as simple tags, so you have a better internal linking system inside your blog and your readers can find related articles easier. It has some other nifty features as well.
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
Why? So you have an idea of who, what, when, where, how, why and pretty much everything else you want to know about your visitors and site.
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Austin Matzko.
Why? Just incase your computer or the server blows up.
- wp-cache
Very fast cache module. It‘s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options“ and select “WP-Cache“. By Ricardo Galli Granada.
Why? Have a faster blog.
- Comment Relish
Why? This is very useful in making sure they subscribe your blog and extends a warm welcome to your website.
Any more that I have missed? What do you think of my wordpress plug-ins?
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