At the time this article was published, WordPress.org states that there are over 3,000 plugins on the site that have been downloaded nearly 13,000,000 (yep, 13 million) times. This does not include the hundreds or thousands of plugins that are not listed at the official site. Wading through so many plugins can be difficult, inefficient and annoying so we’ve selected 10 of our favorites for you and will itemize why you’ll probably want to use them.
All in One SEO Pack
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 3/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 5/5
More Info | Download
This plugin is a difference maker. Installing this plugin can drastically improve your search engine rankings and can bring in more targetted traffic. Here’s a look at some of what this plugin offers:
- Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
- Generates META tags automatically
- Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
- It works out-of-the-box. Just install.
- You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
- You can fine-tune everything
WP Super Cache
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 5/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 5/5
More Info | Download
Technically, this plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress files. After a HTML file is generated, your server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more resource-intensive WordPress PHP scripts. In real-world terms, this plugin can be a life-saver if your blog is getting close to outgrowing it’s server because it is a ‘greener’ solution and is able to conserver precious server resources. Donncha Caoimh, the plugin’s author also claims that most sites will become “digg-proof†with Super-caching enabled. Though it will probably help, the only way to “digg-proof†most sites is to have a kickin’ server that can handle that kind of load.
Google XML Sitemaps
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 3/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 5/5
More Info | Download
Google XML Sitemaps creates a Google-Sitemaps-compliant XML sitemap of your blog. The plugin is intelligent enough to grab all of your posts and pages even if they’re not linked to from other pages (unless you don’t want that). Every time you modify or create a post (or page), the XML sitemap is automatically updated and sends an update to the major search engines. ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO are all notified about the update and will re-crawl your site to grab the new content.
Post Templates
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 5/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 5/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 3/5
More Info | Download
This plugin seems to be a relative newcomer to the WordPress plugin scene. Averaging less than 300 downloads a week, most of you probably haven’t discovered what an insanely valuable plugin this can be. Author Vincent Prat outlines it’s use well: (paraphrased)
It happens quite often that a blogger publishes posts or pages on a regular basis that have similar structures. Think about, for example, a “picture of the day†post. With WordPress’s unaltered setup, we need to spend a lot of time doing copy/paste between posts instead of actually writing content… I have developed a plugin to maintain post templates and allow simple writing of templated posts.
The only downfall is that it is not as easy to create a new post from a template as one would expect. However. after having used the plugin for a few days, you’ll realize the benefits far outweigh the negatives.
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 5/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 5/5
More Info | Download
Updating WordPress can be a hassle. Frankly, it’s annoying to deactivate all the plugins, download and upload the new files, etc. This gem does all the tough work for you. As the name implies, WordPress Automatic Upgrade automatically upgrades WP by completing the following steps:
- Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
- Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
- Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
- Puts the site in maintenance mode.
- De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
- Upgrades WordPress files.
- Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
- Re-activates the plugins.
You’d be hard-pressed to find an easier solution for upgrading… Unless you opt for the built-in automated mode that doesn’t even require you to click a link to complete the upgrade. It is important to note though that WAU could potentially overwrite files you didn’t want to have overwritten. If you’ve customized any of the core WP files, you should proceed with caution or continue to upgrade to new releases manually.
Maintenance Mode
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 3/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 5/5
More Info | Download
Are you sick of embarrassing errors popping up while you perform maintenance on your blog? You should check out Maintenance Mode. This one temporarily replaces your content with a customizable splash page. This lets visitors know that your blog is down for maintenance. The real beauty is that logged-in administrators still get full access to the blog and can view the site as if it were live to the public.
By default, visitors will see the following message: “Maintenance Mode - [SITE-TITLE] is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Please try back in [X] minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience.â€
[SITE-TITLE] will automatically be replaced with your site’s name and [X] number of minutes can be quickly set in the plugin’s settings panel.
WP-DB-Backup
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 4/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 4/5
More Info | Download
There’s not a whole lot to discuss regarding this plugin. It simply creates an easier way for users to backup the database that contains the WordPress installation. This can save a few minutes for experts and novices alike.
WP Easy Uploader
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 3/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 4/5
More Info | Download
Here’s an interesting extension of a capability that is already built-in to WordPress 2.6 and higher. If you’re using 2.6 or better, you’ve likely noticed that you can now upload media (pictures, audio, video, etc) right into your new post. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), there are plenty of bloggers who want to upload and use other forms of media in posts or need to upload files to the server for other reasons.
WP Easy Uploader allows admins to add plugins, themes, and any type of file to WordPress directly from inside WordPress. You can completely bypass loading up an FTP client just to upload simple plugins or to upload a text document for people to download. Additionally, you can select to have archives automatically extracted to their destination. This means that plugin and theme extractions can be taken care of for you, and WPEU also allows you to zip up a large set of files and upload them quickly into a folder on your site. Currently supported formats include: zip, tar, gz, tar.gz, tgz, and tar.bz2 archives.
Sociable
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 4/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 5/5
More Info | Download
Like plenty of WP plugins out there, this one adds links to social networking sites to your posts and pages. Unlike plenty of others, Sociable actually seems to have some grasp of how simple a plugin of this nature should be. The plugin is nearly ready to go out-of-the-box but still offers plenty of customization.
Search Everything
Ranking (Wordpress.org): 4/5
Ease of Initial Setup: 5/5
Ease of Use After Setup: 5/5
More Info | Download
Rounding out our list is another simple plugin. Search Everything increases the ability of the default Wordpress Search. At your discretion, you can have users’ searches rifle through the usual posts and such AND the following options:
- Search Every Page
- Search Every Tag
- Search Every Category
- Search non-password protected pages only
- Search Every Comment
- Search only approved comments
- Search Every Draft
- Search Every Excerpt
- Search Every Attachment
- Search Every Custom Field (metadata)
- Exclude Posts from search
- Exclude Categories from search