10 must-have WordPress plugins
Written by Nico on November 27, 2008 – 3:54 pm -WordPress is a great software package. One of its greatest features is the plugin engine that enables programmers to easily add new functionalities or change existing ones. Many people have created great plugins, so you don’t have to. Currently there are over 3400 plugins listed in the WordPress plugin directory and many more plugins are available on the authors websites.
Here are some of my favorite plugins:
Akismet
The ultimate comment-spam buster! If I could only use a single plugin, this would be the one. Akismet protects your blog from comment spammers that put links to all sorts of nasty websites in your post comments. Without Akismet you will be spending a lot of time digging thru the spam comments. All you need to do to activate the Akismet plugin is get a free API key from the WordPress site. The plugin itself doesn’t need installing as it comes bundled with the WordPress installation.
All in one SEO pack
WordPress is not fully optimized for the search engines, but that changes after installing the all in one SEO pack. This plugin gives you full control over page titles, meta tags and keywords.
Broken link checker
Whenever you put links into your posts, there is a chance that you will have broken links on your site in the future. This plugin checks all your outgoing links and lets you know if any of them are not working any more.
do-follow
Get rid of the no-follow attribute, because it doesn’t help.
feedburner feedsmith
If you want to be able to track your rss subscriber numbers, I suggest you sign up for a free account at feedburner. Once you have your feedburner account, you’ll need to change your rss feed links to point to the feedburner feed. “Where are the rss feed links located that need changing?” you might ask. That’s where this plugin comes in: install, activate and put your feedburner feed URL in the config screen.
no self pings
This plugin prevents pingbacks from showing when linking back to your own posts.
share this
A nice little button to enable visitors to submit your blog post to various social bookmarking sites or send an e-mail to friends.
top commentators
Say “thank you” to your top commentators by giving them a side wide link.
wordpress automatic upgrade
Upgrade your WordPress installation to the latest release from within the admin panel. Upgrading this way saves a lot of worries and time.
wp-cumulus
A beautiful flash tag-cloud to spice up your blog. This is probably not helping with SEO, but it looks awesome!
There are many more great WordPress plugins available, but these are some that I really like. Oh hold on, I almost forgot to mention the best plugin of them all: my very own ad buttons plugin! Actually, it’s not that great yet, as it is still a work in progress, but feel free to download it and give it a try.
I don’t think I, or anybody else, has the time to give the thousands of plugins available on the WordPress site all a try. Do you know of some particularly good plugins, please let me know!
Other Posts you might like:
Tags: akismet, feedburner, ping, plugins, SEO, tags, WordPress
Posted in Start Blogging, plugins | 38 Comments »
November 27th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
STUMBLED!
I swear by the “All In One SEO Pack”. Good post.
November 28th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Thanks for the stumble! Do you have any other good WordPress plugin recommendations?
November 30th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
This is a great post. I’m putting up my first wordpress site…This list will come in handy, especially in removing the dofollow attribute, and also controlling the meta tags and titles.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:00 am
Thanks for such a fab list. People often forget about the plugins and they make such a difference.
Kelly
December 1st, 2008 at 3:38 am
The do-follow plugin actually removes the no-follow attribute
December 1st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
do-follow plugin actually removes the no-follow attribute
yes it does ..
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I use Platinum SEO but I figure they’re about the same.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
There are many plugins that do about the same job. I’ve been using the all-in-one-seo-pack because it has been the most popular plugin for a while and came highly recommended by friends. Still, I think I’m going to give platinum SEO a try, the 301 redirects sound very useful.
Oh, and congrats on the expected fatherhood, enjoy your sleep while you still can
December 4th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Thought I’d let you know about Kaltura’s All in One Video Pack for WordPress blogs. This is not just another video embed tool – it includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses, manage and track your video content, create playlists, sidebar showing all recent videos posted and video comments and much more. Check it out and download it here: http://corp.kaltura.com/wordpress_video_plugin. Showcase your blog, see examples and pictures of the plugin and get support in our forum: http://community.kaltura.org/viewforum.php?f=4
December 4th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Roni, thanks for stopping by! This player looks very promising! I was actually thinking about using video on one of my blogs, so I’m definitely going to give Kaltura a try.
December 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I was looking for some video plugin and after searching it, I landed here on the page. There are many of them which always confuse us which to have and which not. I am wondering what majority of us have?
December 9th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Leonardo, your best choice depends on what exactly you want to do with the plugin. Kaltura, mentioned by Roni looks like a very complete video tool. If, however, you only want to show some Youtube videos on your blog I could suggest the SmartYoutube plugin by Vladimir Prelovac
January 14th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I’m just starting to set up my own blog about dating and I’m thinking of using a Do follow plug in. Reality shows that sometimes people do visit your site to drop a link but at least let’s reward them for taking time to read on and give a relevant comment.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Tag-cloud feature was the most wanted feature for me in these days and I have been reading a lot on this. Actually I couldn’t find a suitable plugin for it(Ofcourse there are many out there but they are not suitable). Thanks for sharing that Flash Plugin. I am quite excited about it and am just going to implement it.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
wp-cumulus is one of my favorite plugins, I normally don’t really like flash plugins, but I can make an exception for this one!
January 29th, 2009 at 5:21 am
Thought I’d let you know about Kaltura’s All in One Video Pack for WordPress blogs
January 29th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Thanks for letting us know that the copy/paste function is working!
Do you have something to say or did you just stop by to drop links?
January 31st, 2009 at 2:39 am
I am quite excited about it and am just going to implement it.
February 14th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Wonderful blog, I’m going to subscribe. Thanks alot
March 5th, 2009 at 10:23 am
All-in-one SEO pack is supposed to be the best plugin I have ever used so far and it is unique in its kind. There is a numerous number of plugins so it is difficult to decide which we should have. I have reading about plugins on another blog and that blog has more than 50 plug-ins. I think that is a crazy number of plugins. Anyways, I have just 7 and they are doing the stuff very well.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
You are right, there are over 4000 plugins you can download at wordpress.org, plus many more hosted on other sites. Many of them serve the same purpose, so it is often difficult to find the right one for your need. It’s pretty hard to make a list of ‘must-have’ plugins as everyone has different needs.
April 8th, 2009 at 6:19 am
The do-follow plugin didn’t work on my site. I heard about another plugin called commentluv that’s supposed to do the same thing but I haven’t checked it out yet. I definitely want to get rid of the no follow attribute in my wordpress.
May 4th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Nico, You are right. I have a plugin(“no follow free”) on my blog to make links do follow or on other words to remove “no follow” attribute. I picked it up because it was listed on the top of all related plugins. There are many more and I think no 2 different blogs are using the same plugin for the same purpose. Anyways, I always love to read “the must have plugin” posts because there are really very interesting to read.
June 7th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
@Allan, I think there is not a big difference between plugins if they are providing the same functionality. Some do follow plugins provide some extra functionality like placing an image or similar stuff.
June 28th, 2009 at 1:20 am
I can see thousands blog out there with no content and no plugins. I think they are going to die very soon. I always feel sad to see that behavior and I think people are just wasting domain names. Your 10 blogs are must having plugins and no blog can survive without them.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Great article:) some stuff I learn t myself there. Added those plugins to my site also.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I like the akismet plug in that keeps the spam out. Its amazing what all these free add ons can help you with.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:33 am
I would add three more plug-ins to the list (although that would obviously take it to more than 10). I would never run a blog without Smart Update Pinger – which allows you to ping when you upload a post the first time, but not when you edit it; SEO Ultimate which is similar to All in one SEO PAck, but does a lot more; and Similar Posts, which lists links to related posts below every post on your blog.
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:28 am
Nico,
Very nice blog! I came across it doing some searching for SEO related material.
Sorry if I’m digging up an old post, but I find the topic of Wordpress plugins quite interesting. There are SO MANY available that it’s hard for most users to keep them straight. Your post is quite informative, and should help a lot of people.
Have you every heard of/had experience with Firepow? (I won’t add a hyperlink or an affiliate link, but it’s just firepow dot com). It automates Wordpress setup, plugin installation/ configuration, etc. I know that some people have criticized it, saying that there’s no need to pay for it since everything that it does can be done manually, but I personally have had a good experience with it. I’d be curious to hear what your take is on it!
July 22nd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Alan, never heard of firepow, but I will have a look at it. As for wordpress setup, if you have a hosting account that uses cpanel, you can install wordpress right from in there. Works perfectly.
August 19th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
There are some great wordpress plugins too numerous to mention. I have a few on my blog that I like including the all in one seo plug-in which is great.
August 31st, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Great list of plugins for wordpress blog’s.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Thanks for the post. I’ve already been using most of the mentioned plugins, but the broken links checker seems to be something I missed. I’m going to get it now.
September 12th, 2009 at 3:11 am
Wordpress plugins like this are great.
My favorite is the all-in-one seo pack.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I see you recommend the all in one seo pack, do you have to have all your regular boxes empty (keywords,description etc) or will it just over write them?
September 14th, 2009 at 1:06 am
No, there’s no need to empty the regular boxes
October 15th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Plugins are bad, in general, because some don’t get along with newer versions of WP. i don’t like incomplete stuff, it looks not professional imo.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Nice post. Found it a little later than most, but I’m looking forward to adding these to my WordPress sites. And yeah, I’ve had good experiences with the “All-in-One SEO Pack” too. Thanks for the post!