It’s been a long time since I last published a list of my favorite WordPress plugins. Half a year later have my tastes changed? Yes, as have my needs. I check for new plugins daily, always on the lookout for something better. These days I use 20 plugins, not all of them activated. Here are my current favorites.
| AddToThis | This puts those giant social media buttons under each post. I checked the stats for a few months and found stumble to be the most popular choice, so figured I might as well make the button big and visible. |
| Adsense-Deluxe | No longer a favorite, I keep it around because I used it on older posts. Let’s you insert javascript code into your posts and templates. |
| Akismet | Does the job for me of keeping out spam. |
| All in One SEO Pack | Still a good method of keeping Google from indexing your content multiple times. |
| Bad Behavior | Stopped 618 bots in the last 7 days. Bots don’t click ads, go away bots. |
| Clean Options | Not activated, but useful when I uninstall a plugin and it leaves crap behind. |
| CSS Compress | CSS has to load before the rest of the site, this speeds things up a second. |
| Daiko’s Text Widget | Best plugin for putting code into widgets. I love this plugin! |
| FeedBurner FeedSmith | The standard plugin for running all your feeds through one place and counting them. |
| Google XML Sitemaps | Probably not needed, but makes submitting an xml file a breeze |
| Homepage Excerpts | Makes the first article full, and all the rest on the homepage an excerpt. Exactly how I like it. |
| MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer | I proofread my articles after I hit publish, then proofread them again. This stops WordPress from pinging after each change. |
| MightyAdsense | A really nice plugin for putting 468×60 banners under each post. |
| MightySearch | Replace your blog search with Google search and show the results on your site like this. |
| NoFollow Free | Does a number of nice things besides making comments nofollow, like providing a list of top commenters and showing how many posts each person has made. |
| TinyMCE Advanced | This plugin helped to make the table you’re reading. Also adds nice features like smilies  |
| WordPress.com Stats | Forget about bounce rates finally. See a daily graph of visitors right on your dashboard. |
| WordPress Automatic Upgrade | Useful when you need to upgrade WordPress, otherwise not activated. |
| WP Security Scan | Useful to check it’s recommendations for server permissions. Not normally needed. |
| WP Super Cache | The plugin everyone should use. Really speeds up loading pages for your readers. |
oh wow, just what I needed. I just went through a wrangle with WPSpamfree and re-Captcha and realized that Akismet still does what it’s supposed to do. I have an Adsense plugin that can insert my adsense stuff into chosen posts, but I’ll check out yours to see which one’s better.
Muchas gracias, Turnip!
Bambit: Askimet has always worked well for me, never an issue. I make sure nobody can comment until I have approved one first.
While plugins are fine for inserting ads, I recently created my own adserver using openX. I am 100x happier now. The adserver rotates ads, provides stats on clicks, and lets me customize the whole process while only having to edit my blog and insert the code once. I’ll have to write an article on this program soon.
Great list Turnip. I’m using some of the plugins you mentioned. I’d like to try the Clean Options, Mighty Search and CSS Compress. Thanks for the tips.
Louie: Clean options can be dangerous, but if it breaks something, just deactivate the plugin and then reactivate it.
Mighty Search used to take a few template tricks to do the same thing. This plugin makes the old method obsolete.
CSS Compress may only save a second off load time, but it can’t hurt either.
My list is very similar to yours. Big difference is the social media buttons.
On the one site, I’m using big ones (different plug in, but same sized buttons only uglier than these, so I’ll probably change to this one) and on the other, it’s a link thingy that says bookmark or something like that and when you click it, it opens up choices.
I don’t know that anyone is submitting any of my photos or articles to any social media sites — guess I should check that out.
Thanks for the list, Turnip!
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I saw lots of my favorites on the list, plus a few I’ll need to try out.
I am surprised you didn’t have my very favorite, and most used plug in
One Click Installer
http://anirudhsanjeev.org/oneclick-plugin/
It makes installing all those plug-ins so much easier!
Kat: I never tried that plugin but it looks interesting.
Thanks for this turnip, I sometimes wonder what plug ins do what, great list.
Anything for us blogspot users???
Kontera released a blogger plugin today, but I don’t really use blogspot. For them I offer 2000 Entrecredits and a free t-shirt for signing up with Bluehost.
Hey maybe I need that Feedburner one. I think since I moved from Blogger my feeds are split. Actually, I have no idea.
I want to put a second vote in for One Click Installer. It saves so much time and trouble!
Makes installing plug ins or themes so easy!
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Gary: I’m having having mixed impressions over Kontera. Not a great money maker, and I feel it detracts from the appearance of the website. Do you have any experience with it?
This is what I’m looking for.
How to increase traffic day by day?
Translate your blog into English and try Entrecard, best way to get instant traffic. 2nd best would be to get people to stumble your latest posts.
Great list! We just released a new plugin that allows you to add interactive video capabilities to your blog! Enhance your blog with both basic and advanced video capabilities. Upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix video content, enable video responses, manage and track your video content and much more…
Check it out and download it here: http://corp.kaltura.com/wordpress_video_plugin?campaign=wp-comments
Examples and pictures are on the plugin forum: http://community.kaltura.org/viewforum.php?f=4
I have 30 plugins on my blog, all active.
I also use Jeff Johnsons “Traffic getting plugin” which optimises your blog for SEO and links to the search engines and Social sites automatically. A must have for the traffic serious amongst us.You cannot buy it and its not free, you have to Optin to get it but trust me its worth your details.
I also use Feedwordpress as my RSS agrigator. and Ultimate plugins smart update pinger to ping my posts to other agrigators.
Plugins are a personal choice and depends on your niche, theme and intent.
Thanks for sharing your list.
Kevin