Everyone has their favorite plugins, and these are our favorites for general use. We install them with each of our blog packages and use them on our own blogs.
Plugins listed in gray are installed but not activated. This is because they’re not useful to all bloggers, and there’s no sense in using your blog’s resources to run them if you don’t use them. However, they’re useful to so many bloggers that we want you to have them easily accessible if you want them.
| Plugin | Description |
|---|---|
| Akismet |
Akismet checks your comments 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.” To show off your Akismet stats just put |
| Amazon Reloaded for WordPress |
This plugin allows WordPress bloggers to quickly and easily place Amazon affiliate links into their posts and pages. It provides a meta box on both the page and post screens that makes it easy to insert Amazon text links into the post editor. |
| Bad Behavior |
Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site. |
| cforms |
cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. |
| Dagon Design Sitemap Generator |
Generates a fully customizable sitemap |
| Democracy |
This poll plugin is easy to use, install, and manage. It uses AJAX to load data, making it quick and fun to use. Add |
| Democracy Widget |
Adds a sidebar widget for use with Andrew Sutherland’s Democracy Poll widget. |
| Digg This |
Adds Digg story link on detection on digg referer |
| Edit Comments XT |
Allows users to edit their comments for a limited number of minutes after posting. |
| Executable PHP widget |
Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Heavily derived from the Text widget code in WordPress. |
| FeedBurner FeedSmith |
Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. |
| Flickr Widget |
A widget which will display your latest Flickr photos. |
| Future Calendar |
A simple plugin that utalizes a modified get_calendar function that shows what dates have a future post scheduled in a calendar format, and makes it easy to change the current timestamp. Temperature Functionality and some tweaks by Flavio Jarabeck (www.InternetDrops.com.br) |
| GeneralStats |
Counts the number of users, categories, posts, comments, pages, links, tags, link-categories, words in posts, words in comments and words in pages. |
| 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. |
| HeadSpace2 |
Meta-data manager on steroids, allowing complete control over all SEO needs such as keywords/tags, titles, description, stylesheets, and many other goodies. |
| In Series |
Gives authors an easy way to connect posts together as a series. |
| Landing sites |
When visitors is referred to your site from a search engine, they are definitely looking for something specific - often they just roughly check the page they land on and then closes the window if what they are looking for isn’t there. Why not help them by showing them related posts to their search on your blog? This plugin/guide lets you do that, works with a long list of search engines! Plugin is made with help from these scripts: http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2006/02/02/wordpress-related-entries-20/ - http://textsnippets.com/posts/show/231 - http://www.lazaryn.com/entry-28.html |
| Obfuscate E-mail |
Obfuscate e-mail addresses that appear as text in your blog in an effort to deter e-mail harvesting spammers while retaining the appearance and functionality of hyperlinks. |
| Photo Dropper |
Lets you add Creative commons licensed Photos to Your Posts from Flickr. By activating this plugin you agree to be fully responsbile for adhering to Creative Commons licenses for all photos you post to your blog. |
| Post-Plugin Library |
Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin. |
| Redirection |
A redirection manager |
| Search Excerpt |
Modify |
| Search Meter |
Keeps track of what your visitors are searching for. After you have activated this plugin, you can check the Search Meter Statistics page to see what your visitors are searching for on your blog. |
| ShareThis Classic |
Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. |
| Show Top Commentators |
Encourage more feedback and discussion from readers, by rewarding them every time they post a comment! Readers with the most comments are displayed on your Wordpress blog, with their names (linked to their website if they provided one). |
| Similar Posts |
Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags. Don’t be disturbed if it takes a few moments to complete the installation — the plugin is indexing your posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed. |
| Simple Trackback Validation |
Eliminates spam trackbacks by (1) checking if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to and (2) by retrieving the web page located at the URL used in the trackback and checking if the page contains a link to your blog. |
| Smart Archives |
A simple, clean, and future-proof way to present your archives. |
| Subscribe To Comments |
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess |
| the_excerpt Reloaded |
This mod of WordPress’ template function the_excerpt() knows there is no spoon. |
| What Would Seth Godin Do |
Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors. |
| WordPress Database Backup |
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. |
| Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure |
Duplicate content cure is a very simple, yet effective SEO plugin that prevents search engines from indexing wordpress pages that contain duplicate content, like archives and category pages. |
