Mar 01 2008
The Best Wordpress Plugins
If you’re running a self-hosted wordpress blog or website built in wordpress, these are the plugins you should seriously look at.
Essential Wordpress Plugins
Akismet: Blog Spam Eater
It’s already installed, but you’ll need an API key to activate it. Go to Wordpress.com and click to “sign up.” At the bottom, select “just a username, please.” You’ll get an API key to use with your self hosted blog. If you have comments turned on, don’t skip this one or you’ll get bombed with blog spam.
Google Sitemaps
This plugin creates an XML sitemap of all your wordpress pages and feeds it to Google for you. Much better than the “hope and pray” method.
All in One SEO Pack
This plugin makes your blog more search engine friendly by allowing you to create custom descriptions, titles, etc for your blog posts.
Contact Form
This plugin adds a contact form to your blog so people can contact you by email through your blog. Uses captcha to keep spam bots away.
Plugins That Encourage Posting
Subscribe to comments
Puts a little checkbox under your comment box so that visitors can check to be notified by email when someone posts a reply.
Top Commentators
Just a nice way of thanking the people who post most with a little link love.
Related Posts
This plugin will display links to related posts to keep your visitors reading longer.
Social Networking Plugins
You’ve probably seen blogs with digg, technorati, etc icons. No, you don’t have to set those all up manually. Here’s some plugins that do it for you. Look them over and pick the one that you like best.
Photo/Video Plugins
WP Video
This plugin makes it easier to insert video clips (youtube, etc) into your posts without messing around with the html.
Flickr Plugin
Integrate the photos from a flickr feed show your flickr photos on your blog.
Adsense Plugins
Yes, you can just paste your adsense code into a text widget. These plugins just give you a few extra features that you might enjoy;
Adsense Manager
This one gives a little more flexibility in positioning your ads.
Adsense-Deluxe
Makes it simpler to put adsense ads right in your posts.
MAILING LIST
Wordpress Mailing List – NOT FREE
This one costs $29.99, but completely automates the process of setting up a newsletter or mailing list on your wordpress blog. If you want to go a step beyond subscribing to RSS, this one makes the process pretty painless.
MORE PLUGINS
- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
- http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/02/02/lists-of-your-favorite-wordpress-plugins/
Popularity: 12% [?]
I pegged this one in my sidebar for me to go through fully, as well as my readers. Good info, Linda.
Thanks John! Link love is always appreciated.
I did the “click to read more” thing because it’s a freaking LONG post - and might grow longer.