A few years ago when the name WordPress was mentioned, most people would not know what it was. But thanks to the popularity of blogging and “the new media” WordPress has become a well known name in the internet community. Other then the small blogs which use it, WordPress is also used on major sites as Yahoo.com, Sony PlayStation Network, WSJ, All Things Digital and Tech Crunch among others.
One of the main strengths of WordPress is its huge developer community, something that is unmatched by most of its competitors. With this great third party support comes thousands of plugins and themes. So without further ado, I’ll name out a couple WordPress plugins that every user of the blogging platform should use.
WordPress has the reputation of being the best SEO optimized blogging/CMS platform out of the box. But even with that it still could use a little work. That’s where “All in one SEO” comes in. Basically it allows you to control the SEO aspect of every post, page or tag on your blog as well as override the default WordPress features.
Customizing the plugin is easy and the readme file helps with any problems you might have. There is a reason why it has well over 2 million downloads. So if you haven’t checked it out, I suggest you do so. If you are looking for something a little more advanced you can check out the Headspace2 plugin which is also popular (at the time of this writing it had over 200,000 downloads).
I didn’t know how much I needed this plugin until I got it and since there I have installed it on all my blogs. As the name suggests, this plugin checks your blog at intervals (user defined) for links that might be broken. I cannot stress how important this plugin is for those who run political, tech or news blogs as it is extremely vital at notifying you if your links are active or leading to 404 error pages.
If it were not for hackers and hard drive failures, this plugin would be obsolete. But thanks to these and many other problems, database failures are prevalent. At least there are options to help keep your database safe.
WP-DB-Backup is one of those plugins which offers users the ability to backup their WordPress databases instantly or have monthly, weekly, daily or hourly backups. The backups can either be sent to a specified email address or can be downloaded instantly. While this plugin is mainly built for those who carry large amounts of traffic on their websites, I would recommend it for everyone including personal bloggers.
Beware that this only backs up the database and not information stored on the server such as download files, pictures and such. That will require another program.
When I first started using WordPress I decided to go with the default permalink structure as I was not versed in customizing .htaccess files. That changed a few months later and by that time my blog had boasted well over 150 posts. I needed to do some major on site SEO but was stuck with the fact that if I changed the permalink structure to something more search engine (SE) friendly, visitors who came to my site from backlines would be left with a 404 page error.
Well after a little Google expedition I came across the Redirection plugin which did exactly what it sounds like, redirects old links to the new location. I was extremely happy and I didn’t lose SERPS because of my updated permalink structure.
Even if you are not in the same position I suggest you get this plugin because it is well worth it and it requires very little configuration.
It’s not everyday that a plugin crosses the 1 million download mark. But Alex Rabe has struck gold with his plugin. For those who are familiar with the WordPress, it is clear that while 2.7 did fix a lot of issues, the built in media library fails to say the least. It’s OK for basic media but managing gallery’s, albums and such is impossible.
That’s where NextGEN Gallery comes in by providing the best photo gallery plugin for the platform. While it still lacks in certain areas, it is light years ahead of the built-in functions of WordPress. Plus with the numerous plugins that expand its features it is quite a beast. If you would like an excellent example of the plugin in action, check out TechCrunch.com.
It used to be the top downloaded plugin on wordpress.org until someone brought to the attention of the WordPress community that its license agreement did not match the requirements of wordpress.org. Since then it has been removed, but even with that it still continues to be an excellent plugin.
Basically cformsII allows you to create contact forms, contest forms and anything else your heart desires. Although it is not the easiest plugin to use, it’s powerful and extremely customizable as the CSS file can be edited to meet any requirement.
The only drawback to this plugin is since it’s no longer available on wordpress.org, those wishing to use it have to install and update it manually. That said I still would recommend using it but if you cannot be bothered with the hassle for the extra features, you can always check out Contact Form 7 which carries many of the features but still lacks in the customizability department.
I’m sure there are many others out there but these are the ones that I have found out to be the most useful and would recommend for every WordPress blog. But if you think I left one out, hit me up in the comments below.
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[...] Best Wordpress Plugins [...]
Ghacks uses some of the plugins mentioned, here is the complete list:
Akismet
All In One SEO
Antivirus
Backtype Connect
Contact Form ][
CSS Compress
Google XML Sitemaps
Internal Link Building
Ping Optimizer
Simple Tags
Subscribe to Comments
Tweetable
WP-Pagenavi
WP-Polls
WP-Ajax Edit Comments
WP Hide Post
WP Super Cache
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
I use most of those plugins myself. But for contact forms, I use the wordpress plugin provided by bestcontactform.com. Their wysisyg is very robust making form creating quick and easy, plus they track tons of great marketing data (like keywords and stuff) as part of their service.
Ghacks,
Have you tried Apture for Wordpress? Really slick tool to increase the time users spend on your site. Here is a great example of it on my blog its pretty awesome http://www.andrewmachado.com/blog/increase-time-on-site-by-installing-apture/
Andrew I have installed it on my gadgets blog today to see how it works. The content additions can be really useful. Only prob that I noticed so far is that it will slow down page loading time which.