We all have them. Favorite WordPress Plugins.
Our list of go-to plugins we install on most every single WordPress site we set up for clients. While many of them have stayed on our list from the beginning, some come and go. New shiny plugins make their appearance in the web-o-sphere and we just have to have them. You know what I’m talking about… don’t you. 🙂
A few of them don’t need any configuration at all. Some of them require thought, decisions to be made, and connections with accounts outside of WordPress. Overall, I’d have to say I spend on average several hours getting the plugins installed, configured, connected, and tested.
Sometimes certain plugins do not have to be installed because the theme selected already accomplishes the task. That’s cool.
Without further ado, here is my list of WordPress plugins I am currently using on not only my sites, but they are also part of my standard installation process when setting up my client’s WordPress sites:
- Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
- All-in-one-SEO Pack – Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
- Broken Link Checker – This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found.
- WordPress.com Stats – You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system.
- Widget Logic – Widget Logic lets you control on which pages widgets appear. It uses any of WP’s conditional tags.
- Contact Form 7 – Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.
- Really Simple Captcha – Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for my Contact Form 7 plugin.
- Google XML Sitemap – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.
- Search Everything – Increases WordPress’ default search functionality in three easy steps.
- SEO Friendly Images – SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search engines.
- Sexy Bookmarks – Adds an attractive social bookmarking menu to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three.
- Simple Tags – Simple Tags is THE perfect tool to manage perfectly your WP 3.0 tags (Tags suggestion, Mass Edit Terms (Tags and Category), Auto link tags
- Social Media Widget – MY NEWEST FAVORITE! Adds links to all of your social media and sharing site profiles. Icons come in 3 sizes, 4 icon styles, and 4 animations.
- TinyMCE Advanced – Enables the advanced features of TinyMCE, the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
- WP-DB Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.
- Comment Reply Notification – When a reply is made to a comment the user has left on the blog, an e-mail shall be sent to the user to notify him of the reply.
- Excerpt Editor – Quick edit or create excerpts for both Posts and Pages, auto-generate and append excerpts or replace the content with excerpts.
- Smart Slugs – Smartify your post, page, tag and category slugs by removing too short or insignificant stopwords automatically.
- Facebook Like Button – Allows you to configure and display the FaceBook Like Button before and/or after each post and/or page.
- Twitter Button – Twitter Button is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily integrate Tweet Button in your blog.
- Google Analytics – Track your WordPress site easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews.
- FD Feedburner – Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed seamlessly and transparently to Feedburner.com.
And if I’m setting up a simple e-commerce site for someone selling products, I also use these:
- NextGEN Gallery – NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with dozens of options and features.
- WP Simple Paypal Shopping Cart – The WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart is a very easy to use plugin that allows you to sell products or services online in one click from your WordPress blog.
(These two plugins integrate nicely together. I love how the shopping cart displays the purchases as the buyers select them with the Add To Cart buttons. A simple solution that is completely free. See an example of how this solution looks like on a products website: Colorado Nature Photography)
There are a few plugins I use on my sites that I don’t generally put on client sites. Not sure why. Maybe because I would feel guilty by adding more than 25 plugins, or perhaps it’s because I simply like to experiment on my own sites. Who knows.
- Bad Behavior – Welcome to a whole new way of keeping your blog, forum, guestbook, wiki or content management system free of link spam.
- Lucia’s Link Love – Lucia’s Linky Love does a service by making the first comments by a visitor “nofollow†BUT after commenting a specific number of times they become “dofollowâ€.
- Most Comments – Display posts with the most comments, as a widget or on a page using the template tag.
- Open Graph – Add Open Graph metadata to your pages
- Please Link To Me – A plugin that adds a text box containing all the code necessary for visitors to easily create links back to your article from their website.
- Pretty Link – Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. Create short links suitable for Twitter using your own domain name!
- Restore Post ID – This plugin restores the link, post, and page Id columns to their respective management interfaces.
- RSS Footer – This plugin makes it easy to add a line of content to the beginning or the end of all the articles in your feeds, for instance to display a link back.
- WordPress Copyscape plugin – The WordPress copyscape plugin allows you to check posts and pages for duplicate content issues via the Copyscape API.
- WordPress File Monitor – Monitor files under your WordPress installation for changes. When a change occurs, be notified via email.
- WP Super Cache – A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.
- WPtouch iPhone Theme – WPtouch: A simple, powerful and elegant mobile theme for your website. WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application.
- DewPlayer – Dewplayer WordPress plugin – Insert Dewplayer (Flash Mp3 Player) in posts/pages.
- List Subpages – This WordPress plugin generates a list of subpages for the page being viewed.
- Wibiya – Boost your blog / website with rich and interactive features.