Which are your favorite WordPress plugins?
I’m speaking next weekend (August 22nd) on the second-ever WordCamp Fraser Valley. Last year I spoke about moving from Blogger to WordPress.com (both of whom are non-self-hosted sites). I admit that the evolution of my WordPress experience was very slow as I was hesitant to (a) move platforms and (b) switch to a self-hosted install. My life has been SO MUCH BETTER since I switched to being self-hosted.
One of the elements that enhances the versatility and functionality of a website on WordPress is the broad variety of plugins. This site (Hummingbird604.com) has a number of plugins installed to enhance the readability and user experience. I have chosen which plugins I’ve added to ensure that my readers get the best experience. I have also made those conscious decisions based on which plugins would make it easier for me to blog.
Those of you who use WordPress plugins – which ones are your favorite? I’m trying to see which ones are more popular and maybe I’ll include those too in my talk.
Related posts:
- 6 Simple Plugins to Make Your Basic WordPress Blogging Easy
- Rebecca Bollwitt (@miss604) on WordPress plugins bloggers should use #wcyyj10
- Upgrading and adding WordPress plugins to my blog
- Thank a WordPress Plugin Developer Day (Jan 28th)
- WordCamp Whistler – Tris Hussey on How to Use WordPress as a Basic CMS for Your Website
If I look at all of the blogs that I publish to, the plug-ins that I’ve installed on each and every single one include:
WordTwit (http://www.bravenewcode.com/wordtwit) – have WordPress automatically tweet for you when you publish a new post.
wpCommentTwit (http://www.tyleringram.com/) – get a DM tweet whenever someone posts a comment to one of your posts.
Firestats (http://firestats.cc/) – Live updated stats available in the WordPress dashboard.
I really like Comment Image Uploader, by Trevor Fitzgerald. http://www.trevorfitzgerald.com/
Although it has limited uses, I really love having it on my blog because people often want to post photos of what they are talking about in a comment. This is a great plugin for that. However… people often confuse it with an avatar so I guess that is a downside!
I consider these three plugins essential .. and there the three I install as soon as I start managing a blog for a client. I’m surprised that they aren’t often installed ..
Akismet – anti spam plugin – if you don’t have this plugin installed, some really nasty folks will find you very quickly – I once found 1250 spam comments in a corporate blog – with links to porn sites – ewwww
WordPress Database Backup – set it to send backup to your GMail account once a week. Sooner or later you’re going to need to restore.
Google Analyticator – good information – search YouTube for tutorials and investigate stats past how many readers you have. Where are they coming from? What posts are they reading?
There’s a couple I like:
Sermon Browser: Great for publishing sermons (and organizing them).
Audio Player: Works hand in hand with Sermon Browser to play mp3 right away.
Featured Content Gallery
Sociable
Wordpress Google Calendar
WP-DBManager
In my case:
Cystats
Permalinks Migration (because I had a longstanding, very bad, link situation and this plugin helped to keep old links working even though I’d changed the permalink path)
HeadSpace (SEO)
Maintenance Mode
Pagebar
Permalink Redirect
ShareThis
Technocratic Incoming Links
Twitter Tools
Related Posts (YARPP)
XML Sitemap
And yes, I do use a lot of plugins, and these are only the one’s that are my favorite/most important *grin*
I prefer Aizatto to YARPP because YARPP is too much of a drain on resources. Some of the others I use on most blogs are Akismet, Clean Archives Reloaded, RSS Footer, either Sociable or Add to Any (jury’s still out), Subscribe to Comments, and WP Database Backup.
Favorite Plugins?
WordTwit – BraveNewCode – Send out an auto tweet when you publish a new post
All-In-One-SEO
XML Sitemap Generator (for google webmasters site)
wpCommentTwit – Because I wrote it myself and it sends you a DM via Twitter when someone comments on a post
wpviewposts – See how many ppl have viewed a particular post
WPRP – WordPress Related Posts – based on tags for posts similar to others on your blog
My list goes on and on actually. Each of my blogs typically run the same plugins too.
WordPress FTW!