Andy Beal has posted a great list of 21 WordPress plugins that he uses and recommends. Check it out at
21 Awesome WordPress Plugins That I Selfishly Kept to Myself Until Today.
There are a few others that I’ve included in my own recent list – 10 WordPress Plugins for New Blogs.
What others do you recommend?
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from this new and dynamic medium from blogs like Digital Photography School and TwiTip - Twitter Tips.
Back in 2002 I stumbled upon an article about ‘Blogging’. I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life. Since then I've become a full time blogger and have blogged on over 20 blogs and co-founded the b5media blog network.
You can connect with me via social media sites at Facebook (friend limit reached) - Facebook Fan Page - LinkedIn - ProBlogger on Twitter (also ProBlogger.com on Twitter) - SU - FriendFeed - Digg
39 Responses to “Plugins Plugins Plugins (of the WordPress Variety)” - Add Yours
Tom - StandOutBlogger.com
December 18th, 2008 6:34 am
I’m heading their now, because I’m always looking for new plugins that can make my blogs better!
Bash Bosh
December 18th, 2008 6:44 am
I will try these ones too! Thanks for sharing, I really love professional and related WP plugins!
infmom
December 18th, 2008 6:55 am
Something about that page crashes my Firefox every time I try to view it.
Internet Marketing Industry
December 18th, 2008 6:55 am
I recommend the “Thank me later” plugin as its very effective in interacting with your readers after they have already left your blog – I recently added a post on my blog on the tricks to getting more comments where I talked about this pllugin..
heres the link: http://frusketing.com/blog/?p=66
-Ruben Ricart
How to Live in Canada
December 18th, 2008 6:56 am
Good list, thanks Darren. And BTW, Happy B-day “V”. ;)
Cleanse Body
December 18th, 2008 7:01 am
Thanks for sharing. I am just about to install my first wordpress blog.
Kathy - Virtual Impax
December 18th, 2008 7:25 am
Andy’s list is truly worth the link. He’s listed a couple of plug ins that really are “best kept secrets” – until now!
Bash Bosh
December 18th, 2008 8:13 am
@ infmom
Site works just fine for me!
Mike Nichols
December 18th, 2008 8:39 am
Thanks for the two lists, Darren.
I am always on the lookout for plugins to make my blog better. That said, I’m also looking out for plugins that are faster than my current ones, too.
LGR
December 18th, 2008 8:56 am
A relatively new plugin that I have been using and recommending to people is the WP-GreetBox plugin. It works well with caching and is easy to add new refers. It easily replaces several other plugins like WWSGD.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-greet-box/
Blog Expert
December 18th, 2008 9:07 am
Thanks for the plugin lists.
Cupid Blogger
December 18th, 2008 10:35 am
Good list of Wordpress plugin recommendation
B. Durant
December 18th, 2008 11:36 am
I’ve been looking for something for my feed footer. Have to try that one out. But to be honest I feel like I’ve seen that list before. About 100 times before. Not exactly that one, worded exactly that way, but the whole “X wordpress plugins you’ll die without!!!” thing has kinda been done to death.
Mike
December 18th, 2008 1:43 pm
Thanks for the link. I knew about a few of those, but there were definitely some that I’d never heard of.
And thanks LGR, I’m going to check that one out.
BloggerTests
December 18th, 2008 2:30 pm
wp-email is one of my personal favorites and, just like Andy said – you’ll be surprised how often people use it
Dilip Shaw
December 18th, 2008 2:55 pm
Darren,
This is getting great. Thank you so much. You saved me a lot of time looking for good plugins.
Dilip
eric
December 18th, 2008 5:09 pm
Darren,
speaking of plugins, what plugin do you use on the problogger homepage for the ‘best of problogger’ widget? The one that lists the best posts by ‘all time, ‘this month’ etc?
On the marketingpilgrim blog, there’s a similar plugin being used in the right sidebar – with the ‘fresh’, ‘popular’, ‘pilgrim’s picks’ tabs – anyone know what plugin that is?
Zulit
December 18th, 2008 5:16 pm
Yeah, and like Andy’s blog too.
All these plugs are compatible with 2.7 as well.
Man I love 2.7!
J.D. Meier
December 18th, 2008 7:10 pm
I like the No Pings idea.
Any idea if it’s better SEO-wize to self-ping or not to self-ping? (I would imagine it doesn’t matter — since it’s probably norel and the link juice would flow from the post that links)
BlogPiG
December 18th, 2008 7:30 pm
I’ve been using SimpleTags for ages as well and really love it for the semi-automation of post tagging.
On blogs where I post via email, RPC or pre-load scheduled posts I had my own TagPiG Autotagger plugin built. It’s a fully automated tagger so is very handy but should be setup well to get the best out of it.
Hendry Lee
December 18th, 2008 11:16 pm
I’ve written my version of recommended plugins for WordPress in November 2008.
http://blogbuildingu.com/wordpress/wordpress-plugins
Kim @ What's That Smell?
December 19th, 2008 12:02 am
Thanks for linking over there, I’m always looking for new plugins to improve my site!
Stephen D
December 19th, 2008 12:43 am
I saw this list yesterday and tried to install CommentLuv but I couldn’t get it to work, but I did like the CommentLuv (and connected) websites. I will try this plugin again when I have more time because I like the idea of it.
No Self Pings sounds good and Related Posts is an absolute must.
Stuart
December 19th, 2008 1:38 am
How many plug-ins do people typically have on a WP Blog? We use about 9. I always come across new plug-ins that seem exciting, but always reluctant to add more. Any reason for concern? We have a list of the 9 we typically use and about 8 more we want to try on our newest blog at http://www.favecraftsblog.com but I am concerned. Thanks for feedback.
mike dibenedetto
December 19th, 2008 2:13 am
Are there any interesting “pay” plugins or at least freemium type plugins that have extended service for a fee?
Stephen D
December 19th, 2008 2:41 am
I have noticed a lot of these lists of late so I have compiled a list of 10 great WordPress plugin lists!
http://www.digitalizes.net/2008/12/18/10-great-lists-featuring-hundreds-of-wordpress-plugins/
funny t shirts
December 19th, 2008 2:43 am
Andy Beal is always popping up on the first page when I am searching Google for wordpress plugins. This list is a must read for anyone that has not added many plug ins to their blog yet. I even found a couple that I had not found before.
Matt | Small Biz Bee
December 19th, 2008 9:07 am
What a list…I think I’m running out of room for more plugins though!
Matt
ATLANTA WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER
December 19th, 2008 9:08 am
Darren, you are the master. All you have to do is put up a link and people will comment about where the link goes to. impressive kind sir, impressive.
adsense alternative
December 20th, 2008 1:53 am
Thanks for sharing with us. :)
Paul Nicholls
December 20th, 2008 9:22 am
I found a great plug in recently which is called post teaser
Those of you that use it will agree its pretty neat as it gives that i want to find out more feeling and therefor gets your visitors interacting more on your blog posts.
Paul
Joshua Collins
December 20th, 2008 4:05 pm
These are some very nice plugins!
I will have to add a few of em… For instance, the SEO Title Tag and the Redirection plugins are really useful!
Thanks for sharing ;)
Joshua C.
Team Nirvana
December 21st, 2008 5:33 am
Thanks for sharing this list.
Without this I would not have come to know about some of the greatest plugins which make our lives easier.
Cynthia
December 23rd, 2008 6:08 am
The website has given me a few suggestions. I’m definitely going to download a few tonight!
Jack Carol
December 24th, 2008 2:00 am
Thanks, iused some of them.
Cher
December 24th, 2008 3:45 am
I didn’t know about the existence of this plugin – Ad Rotator. Actually I used UBD ads plugin. Which would be better?
Paula
December 24th, 2008 5:00 pm
Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Merry Christmas.
Craigslist Phone Verified Accounts
December 25th, 2008 9:20 am
Thankyou for sharing the list. I am always looking for new plugins.
Max
December 28th, 2008 3:17 pm
I saw this post via twitter originally, and now I released my own WordPress plugin which I think should be quite helpful to WordPress newbies and not only.
The plugin’s name is Simple Sidebar Navigation. Since there is no easy way for PHP illiterate people to create custom navigation block/widgets in the sidebars, this plugin allows to create custom sidebar navigation basically with a few clicks of your mouse. I think it can be especially useful for small business blogs and Wordpress based web sites.
Comments will be closed off on this post 90 days after it is published. Apologies to those this impacts but it's a regrettable and temporary measure to combat a growing comment spam problem. See our most recent posts where you can comment here.