There are hundreds and hundreds of WordPress Plugins to make your blog easier to maintain and more ‘search-friendly’.
So, what plugins do I use on this blog?
I’ve added a short description on each to explain where, why and how I have used it on this blog.
I hope this post helps you and let me know of the plugins, you use.
Add Sig
Add a custom signature and photo to the bottom of posts with the author’s information. (This is the “about the author” section you see at the end of every post on this blog.)
Akismet
Akismet checks the comments your blog receives against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments” and then delete or approve. (This plugin is a must-have if you get a lot of comment spam.)
All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. This can really improve your SEO and increase your rankings by re-formatting key meta-tags, header information, and title tags for specific (or all) pages and posts.
Bad Behavior
Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based website. This plugin alone kills hundreds of spambots and comment spam attempts on my websites. It’s a must have plug-in.
Batch Categories
Enables you to easily manage the mass categorization of posts that match various criteria. This plugin enables you to cull posts based on categories, sort them, arrange them, and mass-edit them in one fell swoop.
Do Follow
The Do-Follow plugin removes the nofollow attribute that WordPress adds in comments. This means that search engines crawling your posts will also crawl the links of you commentators, too. A great way to increase participation.
Google Analytics for WordPress
I don’t actually use this plug-in because the WordPress Theme I use simply allows you to include Google Analytics.
But if you are not using such a Theme, this plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics. Definitely a must-have if you’re tracking visitor activity.
Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog, which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo! This plugin auto-generates sitemaps every night and submits them to Google. It’s a must.
In Series
Gives you as the author of the blog, an easy way to connect posts together as a series.
Popular Posts
Displays the list of the most popular posts. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed — see the next plugin.
Post-Plugin Library
Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts and Popular Posts (above).
Posts by Author
At the bottom of every post, this plugin adds links for that author’s last “X” posts (mine is set to five). It’s a great way to increase internal traffic within your blog.
SEO Friendly Images
Automatically adds “alt” and ”title attributes” to all your images. Improves traffic from search results.
Share This
Allows visitors to your blog to share a post from your site with others via social bookmarks or by e-mail.
Similar Posts
Similar Posts displays a list of posts that are similar or related to the current posts. The list can be customised in many ways. Similarity is judged according to a post’s title, content, and tags and you can adjust the balance of factors to fit your own blog.
Simple CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA for your comment system to prevent unwanted spams. Prevent automated spams by bots and most important naughty peoples. It’s simple and yet secure.
Sociable
Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites!
Smart Update Pinger
The Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger replaces the standard WordPress build-in ping functionality and makes many improvements to it. For instance, services are only pinged when a new post is created (not when an existing post is edited) and for future posts, services are only pinged when the post is published on your blog.
Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. It adds a checkbox in the comment area asking commentators if they wish to be notified of new comments to the blog post they commented on.
Twitter Tools
A complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. If you are a Twitter, a must have. Click here and follow me at Twitter.
WordPress.com Stats
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. While Google Analytics offers better reporting features, this allows you to see you stats, at a glance, on the admin dashboard when you login.
WordPress Database Backup
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. You can also schedule backups on a regular basis, from daily to monthly. It’s a must-have if you don’t want to ever lose your content should something happen to your blog or database. (I use it to back-up my blog, every day)
WP-Cache
WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive.
WP-DBManager
Lets you optimize your WordPress database tables with one click. Simply, it helps to optimize your blog’s database from within the admin area and therefore makes it ‘load’ faster.
WP-Sticky
With this plug-in, you can flag your posts as an announcement or sticky post.
For those wondering what exactly it means to mark something as a sticky or announcement, flagging a post as an announcement will cause the post to permanently be featured as the very top post on your blog, while flagging your post as a sticky will only keep it as the top post for the duration of that day. Starting the next day, it will move back to its published order.
WP-Auto Tagger
This plugin suggests tags based on the blog post content. You have the option to automatically tags posts on save or get tag suggestions with a single click. Auto Tagger will not replace your existing tags.
As a member of Jeff Johnson’s Underground Training Lab, I also get to use his highly acclaimed and private customized version of his SEO blog software he gives away on his free content site…you can grab your own free version by clicking on the banner below. This isn’t a plugin but it can drive tremendous extra traffic to your site.
So I have only a few plugins loaded, which ones do you recommend?
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Hey Andrew, great list
This will be useful for us bloggers using wordpress!
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Celes,
I hope one or two are useful and make a difference…
Andrew
thanks your info
Thanks for your submission to the Thirty-Eighth edition of the Blog Carnival: Blogging. Your post has been accepted and its live:
http://thatsblog.com/blog-carnival-blogging/blog-carnival-blogging-thirty-eighth-edition
-ThatsBlog.com
This is great. I like the Simple CAPTCHA plugin, it’s very easy to use and most important is it looks great on almost every theme
Great article, thanks for the information.
Nice list of plugins….
I see you are using the Sociable plug-in – but you also have Share This listed.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
@Yut. You are welcome – I hope some of the plugins are useful
@ThatsBloc.com. Great to be included in your Blog Carnival!
@visitor …and it’s great for stopping spam
@Builder. You are welcome – did you decide to use any of the plugins
@Ellie Thanks. I do use both – just some visitors prefer one to the other, so I am covering both options!
Thanks everyone for your comments.
Andrew
Great list, one correction which will save your readers valuable time. You need to retype “Do Follow” as “DoFollow” as that’s the actual name of the plugin. One of the main reasons being is that the newest version of WP allows you to search for install plugin right inside your WP control panel so people won’t always be clicking through your link to the actual plugin. Thanks again for a useful list. Also, you need to be consistent and use “DoFollow” within your description too, not just the title.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Shane
Thanks for the correction and extra tip. Good stuff!
Andrew
Hi Andrew, great post!
i have most of these plugin installed, and ill add some of those that i missed,
i want to recommend “Contact Form 7″ plugin as well,
its creates a simple contact me form page, which i found to be very useful.
Yonit
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Yonit,
Thanks for the recommendation.
Here’s the link for other readers:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
Andrew
great post. thank for share.
Every thing are ok except the smart update pinger.
Check out this article for more information about this:
http://www.maxblogpress.com/blog/211/important-message-smart-update-pinger/
You can use the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer as a replacement for the Smart Update Pinger
.-= Max´s last blog ..Quickly install optin forms on your blog without knowing code =-.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Max,
Thanks for that advice. I have replaced the smart update pinger with the maxblogpress version.
I shouldn’t have highlighted this…glad YOU did!
Thanks.
Andrew
.-= BuildYourBlog´s last blog ..WS: Trip to FeilongShan =-.
Good list, I use some of these plugins and I will try other that I think will be usefull for me.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Vitor
Hope some of them are worthwhile – come back and tell us how they have improved your blog.
Andrew
Hi friend… It is a complete set of plugins useful for bloggers. Everyone can try this.
I like the Platinum SEO vs the All in One, but thats just preference, as that is what I have always used.
I find Typepad Antispam (i know it says typepad, but it works for wordpress too) to be much better than akismet at auto detecting junk comments as well.
For similar posts, I use YARPP and it seems to do well.
For 404′s, I use Smart 404, which I find to be better than the others, as it will try to automatically redirect to a high-matching post, rather than just querying google to find the info.
Thanks for the list too!
.-= James´s last blog ..RIP Gordon Lightfoot – 1938 – 2010 =-.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
James
Some good find there. I’ve often thought about changing to the Platinum SEO plugin but I thought it can’t be much better/different.
I’m using WP-Spamfree as well as Akismet and it seems to work like magic.
Smart404 is a good tip as well.
Thanks for sharing your plugins.
Andrew
Hello Andrew,
Yes, These plugins are really helpful for me, Because I am new to Blogging and I will check these which is best to my Blog.
Thanks for this information. Appreciate you.
Regards,
Vincent
.-= Benjamin Vincent´s last blog ..Yoga teacher training =-.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Vincent,
I hope one or two help you!
Andrew
Hey Andrew, I use about 10 plugins in total including commentluv, keywordluv and top commenters. For SEO purposes I use All in One SEO/
Plugins are one of the main reasons I love WP – I had to do some coding on an old website of mine this morning which doesnt use Wp and it was just so much more time consuming…
.-= CHris @ Woody Costume´s last blog ..Woody Halloween Costume =-.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Chris,
You are right – plugins make WP so easy to use.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Blogging Guide: The Pages Google Expect To See =-.
I appreciate you for this specific exciting write-up! Furthermore have got a site and i am wondering, how can i get a hold of these kinds of fantastic theme similar to your own?
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Scenografia
I use the Flexx theme:
http://www.webuildyourblog.com/flexx.html
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Blogging Guide: Improving Your WordPress SEO =-.
My new favorite is HTML-minify. I like tiny improvements like this that make the experience just a little bit better. It simply removes the extra whitespace from the html code to make each page a little bit lighter. Add that to gzipping the final cached output, and you have a blog that is quite zippy! Considering how slow wordpress is out of the box.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
JP,
I’ve tried HTML-minify and it messed up my blog.
Just guess it doesn’t work on every theme or host.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Win The Latest 8G iPod Nano: Enter The Simple IncomeBloggingGuide.com Contest =-.
I’ve been using most of these plugins but there’s a few on your list I haven’t heard of. I’ll have to check them out.
Sometimes it’s hard to know which plugins are needed and which ones aren’t.
Thanks again Andrew!
Twitter: andrewrondeau
True – there are thousand to chose from!
I tend to stick with the popular ones.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Working From Home: The Pros and Cons =-.
Yes, I use most of these plugins. This is a nice list.
Here are some additional pugins I use and recommend:
Add-to-facebook-plugin
feedburner_feedsmith plugin
maxblogpress ping optimizer
quick contact
sitemap generator
wp-polls
.-= brian@strata panels´s last blog ..The proper way to connect a Wireless Printer =-.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Brian,
Some excellent ones there – I have used them all!
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Need Some Blogging Help? =-.
i used a lot of these ones when i had a blog and it’s really great!
Twitter: andrewrondeau
leonardo
You no longer have a blog?
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..A Thank You Goes A Long Way =-.
Thanks for yet another first-class article. I am always on the look-out for awesome WordPress tricks to suggest to my readers. Thanks for making this article. It’s just what I was looking for. Truly fantastic post.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Thanks, Carol.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..A Thank You Goes A Long Way =-.
Thanks for the great collection. Every successful blogger use all or atleast most of the mentioned plugins. But one plugin I owuld like to share here is META SEO. Although All in One SEO and Platinum SEO are well known for SEO stuff but I found META SEO most organized one. Must check it.
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Twitter: andrewrondeau
Alex,
Thanks for the share.
Andrew
Andrew recently posted..Tips For Outsourcing Properly And Successfully
I have yet to use word press, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to be using it for my next blog.
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Twitter: andrewrondeau
Jara,
What are you using?
Andrew
Andrew recently posted..Tips For Outsourcing Properly And Successfully
Thanks for a very comprehensive list. I already use CommentLuv and KeywordLuv with DoFollow and am surprised more people don’t. I honestly haven’t heard of some of the others you mention here and am looking forward to checking them out.
Clint recently posted..DoFollow Blog- CommentLuv- KeywordLuv- Top Commentators
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Clink
Once you have checked them out – come back and let us know which ones you use.
Thanks.
Andrew
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One of my favorite plugins is ‘maxblogpress favicon.’ It lets you easily add a favicon to a website, which gives it a more professional look.
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From your list here I currently use Akismet, All in One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, Share This and as I said before, DoFollow with the CommentLuv and KeywordLuv. I don’t use Google Analytics for WordPress either because I use HostGator’s AWStats instead. I’ll probably add the Simple CAPTCHA to help Akismet cut down on Spam that I get from having a DoFollow blog.
Clint recently posted..DoFollow Blog- CommentLuv- KeywordLuv- Top Commentators
The first plug-in you mention, Add Sig, is exactly what I’ve been looking to use in a online short story magazine I’m starting. My search fu is weak on WordPress plug-ins so that’s why I hadn’t found it yet.
The others I use, although I don’t like the WP Auto Tagger that much, so I deactivated it very quickly.
For caching, I’ve had good results from W3 Total Cache, with a Squid reverse proxy sitting in front of Apache. But I tend to put Squid in front of everything nowadays
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Twitter: andrewrondeau
Steve,
I’m glad the Add Sig plugin will help.
I changed over to W3 Total Cache recently and my blog speed improved by over 25%.
Andrew
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I like WP-Shortstat… I know not many use it but I use it on every blog of mine.
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Twitter: andrewrondeau
Jessica
That’s an old plugin.
Have you seen the stats plugin we are developing?
See the link below.
Andrew
Andrew recently posted..Blog Statistics- Pro Blog Stats WordPress Plugin
Lately, I just realize how important is the signature at the bottom of your every posts. It’s vital in building trust and confidence between us, bloggers and our readers. For me, the top plugins are those I use in SEO, SMO, security and plugins that assures friendliness with my visitors.
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Twitter: andrewrondeau
Vic,
Which SMO plugin do you use?
Andrew
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Hey, very nice list. I noticed a lot of big blogs use those plugins, I am still picking up which to use in my blog. Anyway, what other plugins you might suggest considering on the security of the blog? I know Akismet is to prevent comment spam, but what else are there?
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Twitter: andrewrondeau
Kate
You may want to check out this post of mine:
http://www.webuildyourblog.com/1982/wordpress-plugins-improve-security-blog/
Andrew
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One of the things that make me love WordPress so much is the thousands of plugins available. I particularly like W3 Total Cache. Not only that it makes my pages load way faster, it also uses much less CPU processing than using WordPress all by itself.