There are quite a few reasons for choosing Wordpress as my personal favorite Content Managment System (CMS) – simple back end interface, Search Engine friendly (SEO Friendly), open source (so it’s free!) and my personal favorite, the massive amount of plugins that are available that add extra functionality to your website or blog.
Below I explore and discuss the benefits of 13 Wordpress plugins that I have personally used on The Design Cubicle that will give your site an extra boost and provide a better experience for your visitors (plus some other great additions you can add).
Akismet
Saves you time and frustration with spam comments. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service and filters them so you can easily scan them or delete them later.
BENEFIT: Stops all that nasty spam from getting to your reader comments.
All in One SEO Pack
An “out-of-the-box” SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
BENEFIT: Makes your blog “friendlier” and better seen by search engines (ie. Google, Yahoo, etc). Allows you to add a home title, home description, keywords (meta tags) and more.
Tip: try limiting your site to 10 keywords or less; this allows search engines to place importance on a few, dominate words providing better results when someone searches for your site.
cformsII
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.
BENEFIT: Easily customize contact forms for your website for your readers and contacts to get in touch with you. Fields can be added and customized to fit you and your visitors particular needs.
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.
BENEFIT: Improves your sites visibility providing search engines with information about your site, in particular a list of the pages on your site, making it more discoverable and SEO friendly.
Highlight Author Comments
Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.
BENEFIT: Helps your readers visually distinguish your comments from your readers.
Social Bookmarks
Adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.
BENEFIT: Get your articles easily submitted to various social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and a whole lot more. Assists in increasing your sites traffic!
Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
BENEFIT: Provides a way for your readers to stay engaged and connected to a conversation. Sets the ground work for a community and discussion on your blog.
Woopra
This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation.
Live track over 40 different statistical events and analytics through Woopra’s rich and efficient desktop application or from the Wordpress Dashboard. Check out more information about the features and download the desktop application on Woopra’s site.
BENEFIT: Provides you with the information you need to strenthen your site, thus improving your results and visitor interactions.
Wordpress Gravatars
Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section.
BENEFIT: Puts a face to your commentors. A nice touch to add more of a community feel to your site.
wp-cache
Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system.
BENEFIT: Speed up the load time of your site. Works like a charm for those high traffic days and social media spikes.
Also try WP Super Cache for even more responsive load times.
WP-PageNavi
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.
BENEFIT: Adds a more advanced page navagation, instead of the standard ‘previous’ and ‘next’ links – helps your readers get around more effectively.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.
BENEFIT: Help readers discover similar content and related posts – adds to a more enjoyable and resourceful visit.
ADDITIONAL FEATURES TO ADD:
Feedburner Counter
Display your RSS/Email subscriber count on your blog.
Google Custom Search
Harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your sites needs.
Tweetmeme
The retweet button is for website and blog publishers that want to encourage their audience to retweet their content on twitter.
NOTE FOR ALL ABOVE PLUGINS: I have personally tested and approve all the above plugins using Wordpress version 2.7.1. You can also search and download the plugins using WP 2.7’s built-in ‘Add New’ dashboard option.
What are some Wordpress plugins you’ve found to be beneficial?
Sponsors:
Great post! Thanks for this. Not as much my area as Angie’s, so I’ll make sure she doesn’t miss…oh, she’s reading it now!
Thanks bro! Great list here. I am gonna be revamping both brightasblack.com and arronlock.com so I will make use of a lot of these.
Thanks dude just started my blog on wordpress and these are some great tools to have Hoff you rock my internet world. davidjunephoto.wordpress.com
Quinn
Good job Brian! Woopra plugin looks great I must to try it. Thanks for this great list.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don’t use all of those plugins, but do use several of them. I’ll probably take your advice and add a couple more of them to my site. Keep up the good work!
Agree on most of these, but have been having issues with cform and some premium themes, so witched to Dragon Mailer. Helpful post - Thanks.
Thanks for the list.
You don’t actually need YARP. See http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/15/10-exceptional-wordpress-hacks/ (point 5) for more details. The more plugins you have installed, the more bloated your database is going to be.
Really useful for those of us who have only just started blogging (let the trend fade again before joining in…!) Although I am using WordPress 2.7.1, two of the plugins mentioned: cforms and google custom search; do not work. Cforms had a fatal syntax error in the PHP and I really couldn’t be bothered to find and correct it.
Still the other stuff looks great. Thanks.
really useful plugins thanks for the nice selections..
That’s amazing. Our WP admin plugin section looks exactly the same I bet.
Great list and thanks for sharing. I’ll be sure to RT this for you.
Great list Brian,
I am totally gonna use the “author highlight” plug in.
thanks!
Thanks for posting this, I’m going to check out woopra right now.
This doesn’t seem limited to “design” blogs. Although it is really 12 (because Akismet is used by ~ everyone, anyway), thanks for this.
While I am here, why not give my plugin a try: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thank-me-later/.
Thanks ;),
Brendon
T-Law & Josh Highland,
Woopra is amazing. It’s like military style website tracking!
redcentaur,
I am currently using cformsII and have no problem installing and running it on WP 2.7.1. I’m not sure what is going on… You might want to check out the plugin creators website to see if they have any documentation about problems that might occur.
Silver,
Great link… I will definitely be looking into that soon. Thanks.
Kyle,
Great minds think alike I guess
Brendon,
Thanks!
You are right about not be limited to design blogs. Since many of my readers and visitors stop by for design-related content, I thought this would appeal more directly to my audience. Also, great looking plugin you got there. Might have to give it a go
Brian thanks for sharing these plugins. Great list!
Brian, is there a specific reason for using wp-cache over WP Super Cache or is it just the one you found first? We’re always looking for the best things to recommend to people, so if there is a reason I’d love to know.
I’ll definitely be checking out Woopra, that looks insane.
Wordpress Hosting,
This article might help distinguish the difference for you though. Hope that helps.
No particular reason on my end… I’ve heard Super works better, but I’ve had no problems on my end with the wp-cache, so like the old saying, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”
Makes sense, just curious. Thanks for the link, PHP Speedy there looks even more interesting.
Hi Brian
Thank You so much for the stuff. I have just begin to create my design blog. This area is pretty new to me. & Your information seems to make things simpler for me. I shall definitely be using all of these over a period.
Thanks
Found this blog and have been using some of the ideas but also got a few more… thanks!
This list is fantastic! I had only a couple of those, so I immediately snapped up and installed Google XML Sitemaps, Highlight Author Comments , Woopra, WP-PageNavi and Feedburner Counter. I also recommend Add-To-Any, Polldaddy, Striptease, WP Post Ratings and WordPress Related Posts.
Thanks a bunch!
Thank you so much I have just started a blog not too long ago and finally have the time to actually add some content and I am debating switching from blogger to wordpress so if anyone has anything to say good or bad about these two I would love to hear from you.
Thanks
http://holdtheonionplease.blogspot.com
Wordpress is really fantastic. I’ve been using it for over 5 years, and it just gets better with every new release.
Great post. I use a lot of these plugins and think they are great. It’s definitely important when you design a wordpress blog to incorporate these into your work flow and you will definitely thank yourself later.
TJ
Boston Web Design
Great post. Look forward to applying some of these tips.
Fantastic. Thanks for explaining some of them.
Sweet blog. I never know what I am going to come across next. I think you should do more posting as you have some pretty intelligent stuff to say.
I’ll be watching you .
Surprized you didn’t mention any of the plugins that make wordpress faster like WP Super Cache.
Found a good post listing these types of plugins here:
http://storecrowd.com/blog/wordpress-optimisation/
This looks like a very though out list, it covers every basic aspect of blogging. A friend of mine has been thinking about blogging for a while, I hope this post will be what finally convinces him to get to it! Thanks for the update of your journey.would love to use your recommended plugins but I would guess including SEO plugins would be great as well
Thanks so much for the plugins I have been looking far and wide for tools like these, as I am changing my current CSS HTML site to a Wordpress theme. Awesome!
Nice list. I am also using the one-way link building SEO plugin from IBL Builder, its doing wonders for my google rankings. Download link is at the top of the page:
http://www.iblbuilder.com
Very nice list of plugin wordpress. For Woopra plugin, thanks for letting me know about the plugin.
Brian.
What about the dofollow plugin to disable the automatic rel=”nofollow” attributes added to external links
It increases blog comment dude
its great…thanks
Great post Brian,
I am totally gonna use the “author highlight” plugin.
thanks!
Great stuff thanks for posting that. I find Im reading your posts more and more.
bose headphones in ear
Good blog, very good article. I have book mark the site.I will come again.
WordPress is pivotal in establishing a blog and we should be wary over plugins . anyway thanks a ton for the post.
The plugins above is very useful and I alway use some of them. But I prefer using Platinum SEO Pack than All in One SEO Pack
nice info…thanks verymuch…keep update
Thanks for posting this,
I came across this blog very fortunately when I was searching for some other things.I am starting my blog designing recently and needed some tips. this has solved 80% of my problems. thanks for sharing this post.
Great post. Thanks for share ya
There are several thousands of WordPress plugins in the WordPress community and new plugins are coming out everyday. However, not all plugins are useful, in fact some are very bad written that will mess up your site or harm your WordPress installation. So how do you know which plugins are right for you? Well, here is a list of plugins that I have used or played around before.
good list!! we use a few of these but haven’t tried a few..we will them give a go.. thanks!!
Thank you so much, you’re a gr8 man.
It’s always such a gr8 thrill to find such list, designers spend so much time thinking about how they wish certain plugins existed that could do certain things.
Then we find such a list, and pray to god that whoever wrote is successful in life, just for writing such a list.
Lol.
Anyway, i’m need a plugin to style my review pages to make them more colourful elegant, simple but stylish. Mostly what i want to chang is the subheadings, somehow style differently,
And also special numbering, like a number to be nested in an ‘o’, filed with different color, and somehow stand out.
I don’t want anything glaring or too much color, just simple elegant and relaxing.
For my review pages to sort of list various aspects of a product, divided by several subheadings.
Pleas help me out, drop me a short mail.
All the best with the blog.
Sincerely.
Luka
Very usefull articles, this article help me for choose where important plugin must install for my wordpress blog…
Thanks, keep good work.
I could never get the difference between a blog and a website… but in some respects these suggestions apply to both… like the XML site map.
awesome plugins,.. I use some of them on my blog,.. really effective plugins,..
nice list of plugin wordpress. For Woopra plugin, thanks for letting me know about the plugin.
I’m using WP for my blog but am not aware about some of these plug ins.I think WP-Cache is a good one for WP users.Thanks to yo for informing about some new plug ins & I must try them in my blog.
this blog very fortunately when I was searching for some other things.I am starting my blog designing recently and needed some tips. this has solved
I use most of the plugins too, new to me was woopra which I really should check out.
Great article Brian and great resources for those trying to start a new design blog and we personally use most or if not all the resources you have mentioned in this article and I can personally say it these plugins are really beneficial down at The Inside Design. Once again thank you for this amazing article.
- Angel
I am also using the one-way link building SEO plugin from IBL Builder, its doing wonders for my google rankings.