Tired of looking for the top WordPress plugins? Here’s a fresh list of actively maintained plugins I’m using on this blog.
I’ve been running this blog for about two years now. During that time, I have gone through countless plugins. I feel like I now have a good grasp on what the essential plugins are for my site, and thought I’d share my collection of plugins with other Worpress bloggers out there.
When I choose a plugin, I try to find one that has a decent user base so that it’s easier to find answers when I’m struggling with the plugin. I also look for the following traits:
- Frequent updates – Generally, I prefer a plugin that’s being actively maintained. I generally won’t use a plugin that hasn’t been updated in a while. However, some developers hastily release new versions without thoroughly checking for bugs. From my experience, Sexy Bookmark was like that. So I stopped using it.
- Reputable authors – It’s always nice to know a little bit about the creator. I visit the author’s website, read about what they do and more importantly what other plugins they created. If I like one of the plugins they made, I tend to go for their other plugins as well. Using plugins from the same author should ensure compatibility.
- Simple and small – I try to avoid any plugins that are over the top, too big, or convoluted. Those tend to slow down your site and/or are buggy. Even if it’s less user-friendly, I prefer simple over bloated.
In alphabetical order:
I installed this mainly for the purpose of allowing links in the excerpt and controlling the excerpt length. You can choose which HTML markups to allow, add “read more…” link at the end of excerpts and more.
It does a wonderful job of filtering comment and trackback spam. I’m sure most of you already know about Akismet.
After trying out a half dozen recent comments plugins, I picked this one. It was easy to style; it supports thumbnails; and it came with a couple of nice small icons. You can see it in action in the sidebar. Click the ‘Talk’ tab. It doesn’t come with a tab. I implemented BW Recent Comments plugin inside another plugin that handles tabs (listed below).
Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
I installed this one among many related posts plugins mainly because the name reads, “efficient”. It doesn’t have too many options (i.e. thumbnails, exclude individual posts/pages), but it does what I need it to do and does it efficiently.
A powerful contact form plugin with lots of options. You can even have more than one contact form. It includes CAPTCHA and Akismet support. I’ve been using this for a while now with 0 problems.
Simply redirects RSS feeds to Feedburner feeds.
It allows you to display your Google Analytics graph and key stats on your dashboard. It also integrates mini graphs into the post list so you can see the trends of individual posts.
This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding lots of features, eg. custom variables and automatic clickout and download tracking. I used to use Google Analyticator, which included a dashboard widget (like Google Analytics Dashboard widget above). So I went from one plugin to two, which I try to avoid, but the two plugins combined provide more options.
By default, WordPress pings itself when you link from one post to another. I hated this behaviour from the beginning as it clutters the comments / trackbacks area needlessly. It’s an old plugin, last updated in 2007, but it still does the job.
I needed to execute some PHP codes in the sidebar, mainly the contents of the tabbed widget. I accomplish this by inputting the desired PHP code in the plugin’s options page, save the chosen shortcode into a text sidebar widget, and then drop the text widget into the tab widget.
Sends emails to subscribers who want to be updated on new comments. The previous plugin would make the page hang after posting a comment. For pages with lots of comments, it would hang for nearly 10 seconds before posting the comment. This plugin does a better job of sending out email to comment subscribers. Readers can also subscribe to comments without leaving a comment.
If you want to create a tabbed section in your sidebar, this is the plugin you want. It’s simple to use, and you can style it to your liking. It creates a virtual sidebar widget section where you can drop in the widgets you want to be displayed under a tab. The styling took me a while but I think it is all set now.
Automatically removes spam user registrations and other old, never-used user accounts. Blocks annoying e-mail to administrator after every new registration. Full logging and backup of deleted data. Requires PHP5. I had a ton of spammers creating an account on my blog. This plugin definitely takes care of that problem.
The highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress. It is the best Worpress caching plugin, period.
After changing the theme, I didn’t bother to install an SEO plugin. But I wanted to customize the title and description tags for certain pages, at the least. I tried out a bunch of SEO plugins, including SEO Ultimate, Greg’s High Performance SEO, and All-in-One SEO (this one, a long time ago). Apparently, the method used by most SEO plugins is not efficient and prone to errors. I learned this by reading Greg’s High Performance SEO plugin description. Greg’s and Yoast’s SEO plugins both use the “good” method, but Yoast’s plugin was more user-friendly and easier to implement. Greg’s SEO does have more options, so if you’re looking for lots of options, go with Greg’s HP SEO. I’m also using Yoast’s Google Analytics for WordPress, which was a factor in my decision-making. Also, this plugin eliminated the need for other plugins such as Google XML sitemap and 301 redirect plugins. It is technically still in beta, so don’t trust all its features 100%.
Embedding a flash video into a WordPress post is a hassle. WordPress likes to automatically alter your codes and that doesn’t bode well for flash videos. This plugin makes it easy to embed videos from just about all the video sites out there.
Adds paged navigation to WordPress. You can see it at the bottom of the home page and other paged sections of my site. You can easily style it as well.
That’s in total 18 plugins. There are few more installed on my blog, but didn’t think they were worth mentioning. I try to have as few plugins installed as possible, but the list keeps growing. ^^; I hope the article helped you find the plugin(s) you were looking for.
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