(The “Best Wordpress Plugins List” contains plugins for free download and use)
Wordpress is an invaluable tool for the internet marketer. It has become much more than just a “blogging” platform, offering a huge assortment of plugins and templates to make sure your site forms into exactly what you want.
Having considerable experience setting up Wordpress on many different sites, I wanted to create a list of plugins that I use on a regular basis that I could update easily. I hope this list will help you in your online creations.
Wordpress Comment Plugins:
The default Wordpress comment system, although handy(and possibly being integrated with Intense Debate in upcoming releases!), leaves something to be desired. Listed here are the best comment enhancement plugins you can find.
Akismet - Used to protect your site from comment spam, this is the definitive solution. There’s really no need to look for an alternative. A very well-supported and effective plugin for spam protection.
Sezwho - Comment Enhancement and Tracking system. Sezwho allows users to keep track of their comments and use a rating system. There is a comment templating system allowing for nicer looking comments.
WP Ajax Edit Comments - Fantastic little comment enhancement that allows your viewers to edit their comments inline. Highly recommended!
Top Commentators Widget - Reward your commentators with a list of the top contributors. This plugin is the modified version of Nate Sanden’s commentator plugin. It provides an easier install and supports widgetized themes.
Subscribe to Comments - Make it easy for your readers/writers to find out what people are saying. With this plugin you give the ability to have updates sent through email on each posts commentary.
Wordpress SEO Plugins
Only the best Wordpress plugins for SEO. Make sure your blog is being found by the search engines!
All-in-One SEO Pack- A Must have plugin to tweak all your Search Engine Optimization settings. Using this plugin, a person may change the individual page keywords, titles, descriptions and more.
Dofollow Wordpress Plugin - A very important thing to implement in your blog, “dofollow” is a way of rewarding your commenters with “search engine followable” links. By default wordpress sets the follow tag to “nofollow”. This simple plugin makes all links on your blog followable by the search engine spiders.
Google XML Sitemaps - Amazingly easy to use plugin that creates and submits a “map” of your blog to google, msn and yahoo. Google rewards webmasters who use their sitemaps properly. Make sure you checkout your site ate google too using their free webmaster tools if you haven’t already.
Simple Tags - A MUST have plugin. This nice little tagging plugin extends the core tagging feature to include a wealth of features. Suggested tagging and the Cloud widgets are two of the real handy functions.
Wordpress Administrative Plugins
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin - This plugin makes it a snap to upgrade your blog to the latest version. It really works! Walking you through the various steps that you would do manually, including giving you backup downloads of your files and database.
Plugin Manager - Lets you download plugins from wordpress and activate them in just a few clicks. At least that’s the idea - I used this plugin for awhile with no problems but can’t seem to get it working in the past few updates. Great Idea in any case!
Wordpress Social Networking Plugins
The plugins listed in this section deal with social networks, social bookmarking, social profiles and any surrounding social web 2.0 Wordpress plugins that have arose in the recent past.
Follow Me - Neat little plugin for listing the social networks that you belong to in a convenient little widget. Customization is as simple as entering your username for each service in the backend. *sidenote - not much for display options, needs a few extras
Misc Plugins
Post Plugin Library - Does nothing by itself, but must be installed in order to use various useful plugins, trust me you’ll probably need this.
KB Advanced RSS Widget - Perfect for putting in your RSS feeds. This widget gives you as much or as little control over your RSS as you want.
Contact Form 7 - Add a “Contact” page to your blog. The perfect way to allow further interaction for the users of your blog.
WP Post Views Plugin - Allows you to keep track of how many times a post is viewed on your blog. Especially handy when coupled with the Post Views Widget that allows you to display the most popular posts on your site in the sidebar. Both can be found at the website linked.
Wordpress Poll Plugin - Easiest plugin I could find to setup a nicely formatted ajax poll. There is a poll widget available to easily add it to your theme as well as variables for adding polls directly to your posts.
This list is not complete. I’m exhausted from writing up the first 13. I have more plugins to add and a few categories to mix into the equation. Let me know if you have a plugin that you think should be added to the list.
**UPDATE** Added a few more to the list. I will keep adding plugins that I use as I get the motivation - yes, theres lots more!
Thanks for sharing. I am already using some of them, but i will try out others as i see a good potential for my site in them, like Smart Update Pinger is
[...] the query: simple knowledge base on Google and MSN. Thank you search engines; that's the idea. Best Wordpress Plugins - socialarrow.com 12/02/2008 [ Wordpress](The “Best Wordpress Plugins List” contains plugins [...]
SocialMind
(The “Best Wordpress Plugins List” contains plugins for free download and use)Akismet - Used to protect your site from comment spam, this is the definitive solution. There’s really no need to look for an alternative. A very well-supported and effective plugin for spam protection.
Sezwho - Comment Enhancement and Tracking system. Sezwho allows users to keep track of their comments and use a rating system. There is a comment templating system allowing for nicer looking comments.
WP Ajax Edit Comments - Fantastic little comment enhancement that allows your viewers to edit their comments inline. Highly recommended!
Top Commentators Widget - Reward your commentators with a list of the top contributors. This plugin is the modified version of Nate Sanden’s commentator plugin. It provides an easier install and supports widgetized themes.
Subscribe to Comments - Make it easy for your readers/writers to find out what people are saying. With this plugin you give the ability to have updates sent through email on each posts commentary.
All-in-One SEO Pack- A Must have plugin to tweak all your Search Engine Optimization settings. Using this plugin, a person may change the individual page keywords, titles, descriptions and more.
The Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger - Handy plugin for making sure your pings are considered the highest quality and NOT spam.
Dofollow Wordpress Plugin - A very important thing to implement in your blog, “dofollow” is a way of rewarding your commenters with “search engine followable” links. By default wordpress sets the follow tag to “nofollow”. This simple plugin makes all links on your blog followable by the search engine spiders.
Google XML Sitemaps - Amazingly easy to use plugin that creates and submits a “map” of your blog to google, msn and yahoo. Google rewards webmasters who use their sitemaps properly. Make sure you checkout your site ate google too using their free webmaster tools if you haven’t already.
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin - This plugin makes it a snap to upgrade your blog to the latest version. It really works! Walking you through the various steps that you would do manually, including giving you backup downloads of your files and database.
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.socialarrow.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.socialarrow.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Mixx]](http://www.socialarrow.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/mixx.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.socialarrow.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Twitter]](http://www.socialarrow.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
Rory Hansen (Who am I?)
1 month ago
Thanks for the heads up about the Subscribe to Comments plug-in. I’m in the process of upgrading my blog and it’ll be a useful plug-in to add.
Judit (Who am I?)
1 month ago
Thanks for sharing. I am already using some of them, but i will try out others as i see a good potential for my site in them, like Smart Update Pinger is
Andy @ Do Follow 001 (Who am I?)
1 month ago
There are a number of great dofollow Wordpress plugins out there.
Check out Comment Luv too as that automatically adds the feed of the submitted URL when somebody comments
SocialMind (Who am I?)
1 month ago
Agreed Andy, I just happen to use this one, its never given me a problem.