10 Essential Wordpress Plugins

Thursday, 31st January 2008  

wordpressPlugin Power!

For Wordpress bloggers, Plugins are essential in that they extend the functionality of a blog, whether it’s adding more user interactivity, or helping to fight SPAM, or to display related posts, etc… plugins have become a way of life for Wordpress bloggers, and they are easy to install.

I’m No Expert, But…

Here are some essential Wordpress plugins that I really like and find very useful. Some I’ve used now for at least a couple of years, while others I’ve just recently started using. I am by no means an expert with plugins, but being the coder that I am I have modified some of them to suite my needs. And I just want to share some really good ones I use, so that you can try them if you’ve never used them before.

My List of Essential Plugins

  • Wordpress Database Backup

    This is a very essential tool for backing up your Wordpress blog to your computer. It backs up your tables and data (the core ones) into an archived file, and you have the option to backup the core data only or add more or all of the remaining tables. Backing up your data is important just in case your blog gets corrupted. This plugin makes backups so easy.

  • SRG Clean Archives

    This plugin creates an archives listing that is super clean and very user-friendly. You can expand a certain month to view all the entries in that month. You can also expand all. This can be used on a dedicated archives page, or have it displayed on your sidebar. You’ll need the Exec-PHP plugin if you wish to create a page to display your archives.

  • Tiger Style Administration

    If you are somewhat tired of the old familiar Admin area of your Wordpress blog, then you should add this plugin to your collection. It creates a very stylish, improved layout of your Admin area. I really like this one!

  • CapCC

    I just recently added this one. And because of all the SPAMMERS out there this really helps. And you have the option to use it with Comments, or with Registration, or both. You get a lot of options to configure the Captcha image, letters and numbers, etc. Highly recommended!

  • Dan’s New Avatar Thingy

    This plugin allows your registered users/commenters to upload an avatar to their accounts, which can then be displayed next to their comments. You can (if you know what you’re doing) edit the actual plugin code to adjust the avatar size.

  • Exec-PHP

    Simply put, this plugin allows you to insert your own PHP code into Wordpress Pages. This is useful when inserting code like that from the SRG Clean Archives plugin into static Wordpress Pages.

  • Related Posts

    Hmm… this plugin is no longer supported. But you may still find this one by doing a search. What’s good about this plugin is that it will find similar or related posts to the current post the visitor is reading.

  • Simple Recent Comments

    Another useful plugin that displays the most recent Comments posted in your blog. Simple but effective.

  • Top Posts By Category

    Here’s a nice plugin that will display either the top posts by number of visits, or the top posts by number of comments. And you have the option not to display the posts by category.

  • WP iTunes

    I really love this plugin, as it will display the current tune you are listening to on iTunes, posting it to your blog so that people will see what you are listening to at that moment. But here’s the deal with this one. It’s a bit complicated to set up, and you need an additional program called iTunesBlogger that grabs the song information from iTunes along with the cover art (via Amazon.com) and works with the plugin to post the info to your blog.

    Also, you will need to get an Amazon Developer’s Token ID (key) to utilize the Amazon Web Services API in order to grab the cover art. But once you get it going it’s a joy to have on your blog. If the cover art can’t be found or retrieved, then the essential textual information will be displayed instead.

    This is a great plugin if you have the time and patience to get it going.

And there you have it.

10 essential Wordpress plugins that I use on this blog. If you have a Wordpress plugin you’d like to share please let me know. I’m always on the lookout for more WP Plugins.



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Join The Discussion

  • pat
    Great stuff Carlos. I love the Tiger style admin, but the Avatar thingy isn't showing in my comments, I am missing something...
  • Did you insert this bit of code?

    <?php if(function_exists('cmd_show_avatar')){ cmd_show_avatar(); } ?>
  • pat
    Nope! I shall......
  • pat
    By the way your link to the Avatar thingy points to his other thingy! ;-)
  • Hmm... I thought I had fixed that link. Thanks, man. I'll check it out......
  • Max
    Hi

    Nice list of imported plug-ins. I was trying to download "Dan’s New Avatar Thingy", but site is "gone fishing". Is there any other place I can get the plug-in?

    Thanx
    Max
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