30 Must Have Wordpress Plugins – Two Lists Compared and Merged
July 13, 2009 :: Steve FisherYou know, there are many posts out there with the heading “X Great Plugins for Wordpress” and many are pretty good. When I typed in to research the Top 20 Wordpress plugins I came across two high traffic posts:
20 Wordpress Plugins to Get You Started Effectively – OneXtraPixel
AND
21 Great Plugins That I Personally Recommend – Just Creative Design
Each of these sites make good cases, describe the plugins well and even have pretty screen shots. So in order to add value and create a great post, I thought I would actually review both and see about giving you a best practices list. The descriptions are quoted from their respective web sites. Here we go in alphabetical particular order:
#1 - Akismet
Akismet is a popular spam-fighting service that is different from other spam filter. It checks the content of the comment anonymously with an online server, to determine whether it is spam or not and it pretty good at separating spam and reliable comments.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#2 – All in One SEO
Out-of-the-box Search Engine Optimization for your Wordpress blog.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#3 – Better Comments Manager
Better Comments manager allows you to view your comments post wise, it also allows you to reply to your comments from within the admin panel without you having to visit the site to respond to comments..
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
cforms is a feature rich plugin for Wordpress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page. It’s versatile and can be customized to your preferred design and feel.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#5 – CommentLuv
cforms is a feature rich plugin for Wordpress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page. It’s versatile and can be customized to your preferred design and feel.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#6 – Feedburner Feedsmith
This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#7 – Google AJAX Search
Adds a Google AJAX Search box on your site. Options include searching your site through Google Blog Search and/or straight up Google, a second search option is available that is perfect for flickr.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#8 – Google Analytics
Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#9 – Google XML Site Map
This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#10 – Home Page Excepts
This plugin shows excerpts on the home page rather than full posts. You can customise how many you want to display as full posts.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#11 – My FTP
A WordPress FTP like plugin that can be used to manage folders and files via the WordPress admin pane
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#12 – NextGEN Gallery
This is a great plugin that allows you to have a customizable photo gallery with cool effects.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#13 – Robots Meta
This plugin allows you to add all the appropriate robots meta tags to your pages and feeds, disable unused archives and nofollow unnecessary links.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#14 – RSS Feed Signature
Add a customized signature or tag-line to your RSS feed(s).
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#15 – Search Unleashed
Search Unleashed will extend the standard search with a full text search across everything (posts, pages, comments, authors, meta-data), with the output from plugins included in the search. Search phrases are highlighted, as are incoming searches from Google, Yahoo, and most other search engines.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel
#16 – Statpress Reloaded
This plugin shows you real time statistics about your blog. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers, and their OS etc.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel
#17 – Simple Tags
Simple Tags is the perfect tool to manage perfectly your Wordpress tags.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#18 – Statpress Reloaded
This plugin shows you real time statistics about your blog. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers, and their OS etc.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel
Subscribe to Comments is a robust plugin that enables commenter to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenter can use to unsubscribe to certain posts, block all notifications, or even change their notification e-mail address.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#20 – Tweet This
This plugin adds a “Tweet This Post” link to every post and page. Shortens URLs in advance through Th8.us, eating up only 19 of 140 characters. It also includes other social media tools like: Plurk, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Ping.fm, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel
#21 – Twitter Updater
Updates Twitter when you create a new blog or publish one. You can also use TwitFeed.com for this as well if you don’t want the plugin.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#22 – Wordpress Database Backup
WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#23 – WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize is a database cleanup and optimization tool for Wordpress. It doesn’t require PhpMyAdmin to optimize your database tables. It allows you to remove post revisions, comments in the spam queue, un-approved comments within few clicks or rename any username.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel
#24 – WP Cumulus
WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting. Clicking the tags can be a little hard (depending on your speed setting) but does take you to the appropriate page.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel
WP Email allows people to recommend/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#26 – WP Polls
WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now also supports multiple selection of answers.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#27 – WP-Print
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
#28 – WP Security Scan
This plugin effectively scans your Wordpress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#29 – WP Super Cache
This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
Recommended by: OneXtraPixel, Just Creative Design
#30 – WP Widget Cache
Updates Twitter when you create a new blog or publish one. You can also use TwitFeed.com for this as well if you don’t want the plugin.
Recommended by: Just Creative Design
So there You Go….30 of the best Plugins for Wordpress as of this moment.
What are you waiting for? Give them a test and leave a comment.
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