WordPress Plugins – 14 Favourites

Which Plugins Do you Favour?

There are now so many WordPress plugins available it is sometimes difficult and time consuming to find the right one for you. I have previously published a Top 5 and Top 10 list of my personal favourites, but this time I though I would simple list some of those that I use regularly and that offer, in my opinion, above average functionality. So here goes:

Core Functionality

These feature on every site I build and are indispensable:

1. All in one SEO pack –  Does a lot of hard work for you by generating some meta tags automatically, but provides a wide range of options to allow you to tune every page and post as you require
2. WordPress Backup – Backs up the upload directory (images), current theme directory, and plugins directory to a zip file. Zip files can optionally be sent to email
3. WP-DBManager – Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimise, repair, backup and restore the database. Supports automatic scheduling for backing up and optimising the database.
4. Google XML sitemaps – set a few parameters and create your first sitemap, thereafter all changes are automatically tracked and your sitemap is updated accordingly. Google, Bing and Yahoo can also be notified of each update.
5. Google Analytics for WordPress - supports asynchronous code, can access your GA account directly for set up, lots of options to enable download tracking, clicks etc.
6. WP-SpamFree - extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam.
7. Gravity Forms – ease to create web forms, quick and simple to get up and running with a contact form for example, but sufficiently comprehensive to design forms for any purpose you can imagine. Small fee to pay but absolutely worth it.

Social Plugins

These are essential aids for sharing and tracking comments on your posts:

1. Share This – Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
2. TweetMeme – Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts
3. Twitter Tools – A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.
4. Disqus Comments – powerful replacement for WP comments that tracks  and displays comments and reactions to each of your posts

Content / Presentation

These add interest to your content:

1. Apture – makes it easy to add contextual images, videos, reference guides, links, maps, music, news, documents and books to your blog
2. Dynamic Content Gallery – Creates a dynamic gallery of images for latest or featured content selected from one or more normal post categories, pages, Custom Post Type posts, or a mix of these.

Communications

1. Post Notification – Sends an email to all subscribers every time a new post is published. The email can be customised to complement your blog design.

I am sure that there are plenty more ‘essential’ plugins out there, if you have particular favourites please share!

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