Wordpress Plugins I Use

August 6th, 2008 by John Herman, under Wordpress. 4 Comments

I get asked a lot what Wordpress Plugins I recommend a lot. Here is my first stab at coming up with a list.

SEO Plugins

Permalink Redirect

Ensures consistent formatting of page links in permalinks for good SEO

http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect/

Broken Link Checker

Will deactive links when they become broken

http://w-shadow.com/blog/2007/08/05/broken-link-checker-for-wordpress/

SEO Smart Links

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-links/

Google XML Sitemaps Generator (links to Google to keep your site up-to-date in the index)

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

Platinum SEO

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/

All in One SEO Pack (Well Known but recent change in developer … Platinum SEO has some more features)

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Comments

Absolute Comments

Allows for a quick way to respond to comments

http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/absolute-comments-manager-instant-reply/

Subscribe to Comments

Allows people to get email notifications when new comments appear on a post so they can go back and keep the discussion going

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/

Comment Relish

Sends email to someone after they comment so you can thank them, etc.

http://www.justinshattuck.com/comment-relish/

Akismet

Most popular Spam for Wordpress (also made by the company that manages the Wordpress project)

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

Akismet does have some false positive issues and blacklisting people os you may also want to look at Six Aparts spam filter … it is a nice product also

Typepad AntiSpam

http://antispam.typepad.com/info/get-started.html

RSS Feeds

Feedburner Feedsmith

Redirects your feed to feedburner so you can get stats. Feedburner is a Google product for managing RSS feeds. It is free and you should definitely sign up

http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/topic.py?topic=13252

Managing Content

Flexi Pages Widget

Great if you are going to have Pages links in your sidebar instead of static

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flexi-pages-widget/

Pagemash

Great Plugin for a WYSYWIG way to order and hide your pages from view

http://joelstarnes.co.uk/pagemash.php

Backend Admin Stuff

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

A must have .. it will let you automatically upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/

WP Super Cache

Great Caching plugin that will prevent your site crashing if you get a lot of traffic at once

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Search Everything

Extends the search to cover more parts. Wordpress used to not even search pages but that has been fixed. This is still a good plugin to have because it extends the search to cover more ground.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-everything/

Favicon Header

Adds a favicon without having to change template code

http://timjoh.com/wordpress-plugin-favicon-head/

Misc Great Tools

Share This

Allows people to bookmark the page on sites like digg as well as email someone about a link

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/

cformsII

Great form creator

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cforms/

Next-Gen Gallery

Great photo gallery plugin

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

Twitter Tools

Notifies Twitter of new blog posts

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

Slideshare Plugin

Slideshare.com presentations tend to mess up the code on Wordpress sites. This fixes that and allows you to give it a specific width.

http://yoast.com/wordpress/slideshare/

Viper Video Tags

Video Sharing Sites tend to mess up a Wordpress page also this helps fix that

http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/

Wordpress Video Plugin is also a good option

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-video-plugin/

WP Audio Player

Some people prefer Podpress for podcasts, but I have found it overkill for what I need. Audio Player covers all the things I need,but Podpress is great too if you want to check that out for Audio Podcasts.

http://wpaudioplayer.com/