Plugins You Really Must Have On Your Wordpress Site
This is the minimum set of plugins that you should have installed for many different reasons, but all essential for a well protected and optimized Wordpress blog or website.
Plugins not listed in any particular order!
[1] AKISMET Spam Control
Akismet checks comments made on your site by visitors against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. If Aksimet thinks a comment is spam it puts it in a spam comment area.
You can review the spam it catches under the Manage tab in the Wordpress Admin area. Aksimet will automatically delete any old spam after 15 days by default.
You will need a Wordpress account for Akismet to work as you will need to get a WordPress.com API Key to fully activate this plugin. You must then enter the API key in the Settings area.
NOTE: This plugin is so important that it is included with the WordPress core software distribution.
[2] ALL-IN-ONE SEO
This is an essential plugin for performing automated SEO on your posts to ensure that they rank well in the search engines and can be found more easily by your potential visitors. Can be user configured for additional search engine optimization purposes. A powerful tool. This plugin is great for SEO!
[3] SITE MAP GENERATOR
Dagon Design Site Map Generator
Create a new page and insert a small label and a whole sitemap of your site will be generated on that page, including all the post and pages in your site. This is essential for helping you know what is on your site and is also good for visitors who want to find something and for getting you sire well indexed by the search engines. Can be user configured for different appearances. This plugin is great for SEO!
[4] GOOGLE XML SITEMAPS
Whenever any new content is added to your Wordpress site this plugin will generate a new Google XML Sitemap for the search engines. This creates a sitemap in XML code for reading b y search engine robots when they visit your site to spider it for search engine indexing. The existence on this file means that it is easy for the search engines like Google to index all the content on your site as this file is specifically design for their use.
You cannot normally see this file from your site, although there is a facility in the Dagon Design Site Map Generator that allows you to set up a link to it. This plugin is great for SEO!
[5] WORDPRESS RELATED POSTS
This plugin will generate 1-10 related posts for each post on your site by matching WordPress tags and then it will add links to these related posts to be displayed at the end of each post in your website or blog. It can generate random post links if no related posts exist. This is great for cross-linking your content. Can be use configured. This plugin is great for SEO!
[6] SMART UPDATE PINGER
This plugin replaces the built-in update ping functionality within Wordpress. Instead of Wordpress always pinging when saving a post (which can happen a lot during editing) the plugin only pings the first time a post is published and not when the post is subsequently edited. This therefore stops the normally “spammy” pinging nature of the default behaviour of Wordpress. You can also see a log file of all the latest pings and those ignore as well as any error messages (see the options page). This plugin is great for SEO!
[7] WHAT SETH GODIN WOULD DO
Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another one to returning visitors at the start or end of your posts. Useful for special offers or asking users to subscribe to your rss feed by feeed reader or email. Great for building your subscriber list and selling stuff too!
[8] WP CONTACT FORM
This plugin allows you to create a spam-protected drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post very easily with a small label. Every site needs a contact form!
[9] UNIT PNG FIX
This plugin includes the ‘unitpngfix.js’ javascript file if the browser is IE6 or lower. In other words, it allows versions of Internet Explorer Version 6 or lower to correctly display PNG format image files, which are being used more and more in website today. Helps users with old browser to see your site correctly, otherwise there could be problems!
[10] WP DB BACKUP
Last but definitely not least, in fact totally the opposite. This plugin is more than essential as it allows you to backup your Wordpress database, so that you can recover your site from the unthinkable…
It enables you to easily backup your core WordPress MySQL database tables and content. In addition you can also backup any other tables in the same database. Essential for total site security. Look under Manage to do your backups. Backup often!
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This is an excellent list of resources. Thanks for sharing I have download almost all of your suggestions and am trying them out right now. The WP-DB Backup Plugin is a must and I can’t beleive I have been working all of this time without it. BTW awesome design on this blog.
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This is really helpful, thanks. Wordpress is just a fantastic tool and a bridge between those with genuine technical knowledge and those of us who are keen amateurs.
What plug in do you recommend for a membership site with different tiers where we can control which content people see based on their membership level? Maybe one that includes a shopping cart or a way to incorporate payments for those membership levels?
You should take a look at WISHLIST MEMBER as it will do what you want and has a great reputation for building excellent membership sites. Good luck!