Wordpress Plugins I love
I was recently asked if I could recommend some Wordpress plugins for a new site. Well, yes, I guess I have dozens installed across many sites for various reasons, but there are a few I would recommend for all sites. I had a look through some of the Wordpress powered websites I manage to see which ones I rate as worth looking at:
If you allow comments on your blog, you should have Akismet. I have it running on a couple of blogs that generate hundreds of comments a month and rarely does any comment spam get through Akismet. On occassion there can be some genuine comments caught in the Pending queue, but this plugin saves me so much time, I cannot recommend it enough.
For those who are serious about getting some debate going in your blog comments, this is a must have. I only just noticed as I was looking at the plugins for this site that I didn’t have it installed yet! Allowing users to be notified when someone posts a new comment on a particular blog post is just so handy.
This is another one that I have installed in pretty much all my blog sites. I generally just use it for fixing up page titles, but as this is the first thing seen in search results, this alone makes it worth while.
Feedburner is a fantastic service and this plugin makes integrating your Feedburner feed with Wordpress very simple.
Really handy plugin that automatically creates and updates a Google sitemaps compliant xml sitemap. Of course the sitemap can be used by other search engines too. Particularly useful with google webmaster tools.
The registration form on a Wordpress site is one area that still lacks any customisation. This plugin goes some of the way, allowing you to add a logo and some css changes to the form. More importantly, it allows you provide additional fields and prevents automated signups with captcha and email confirmation options. I use the email confirmation option on a couple of sites and it works a treat.
Displays a list of related posts. The thing I like about this one is how configurable the options are. It always seems to display similar posts quite accurately.
Search meter provides some insight into what visitors are typing into the search box on your blog and whether or not your current content is matching it. The report of searches resulting in 0 results is especially handy.
In fact I only have sociable running on one blog. What I have found is that, unless your blog audience is fairly tech-literate, the use of these social bookmarking widgets can be hit and miss. I have had more success by custom coding various links and icons into templates based on the demographics of the site etc. In many of these I have used Addthis and Sharethis to track usage. I recommend Sociable as a good starting point though.
This is really useful thanks!
Tired of trawling through the wordpress plugins directory where everyone says their plugin is the best!
Don’t suppose you know a tag cloud widget where you can eliminate any tag that is only used once. Can’t seem to find one.
Thanks!
Your welcome Sue!
Hmm, I can’t think of a plugin that does that.
I think really it is an editorial issue – I try to make sure I don’t constantly keep adding new tags – I try to maintain a set of about 20 or so.
But I bet there is a plugin out there somewhere!