Important Plugins for Wordpress

by Stefan on July 15, 2009

There a basically hundreds of great plugins for Wordpress depending on what you are looking for when it comes down to customizing your site. These plugins will change depending on if you are creating a niche site, personal blog, portfolio, photo blog, etc.

Here you find all plugins I recommend on a fresh install.

Akismet

With Akismet you’ll be almost entirely free from spam. I can’t recall any time when Akismet failed to delete an spam comment. Unfortunately it will sometimes block legitimate comments.

Broken Link Checker

After a few entries there will be sites closing down, entries removed and other things influencing your links. Since Google isn’t a fan of broken links I’m using Broken Link Checker to receive errors every time links are broken.

Cforms II

Cforms is a powerful and feature rich form plugin for Wordpress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.

Google XML Sitemaps

To be sure that Google will find and index all of your entries you should create a sitemap, which can easily be done with Google XML Sitemaps.

No Self Pings

Avoid getting trackbacks from yourself with No Self Pings. It doesn’t look very good to have a bunch of trackbacks for an post leading back to you.

Subscribe To Comments

Make it possible for your visitors to Subscribe To Comments and get new comments directly to their inbox.

WP Greet Box

Greet your visitors and convince them to subscribe for your posts with this plugin named WP Greet Box. Show different messages depending on if your visitors came from Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

WP Super Cache

Reduce loading time with WP Super Cache. This plugin is not only for big sites with several thousands of visitors each day, but also great to reduce loading time on small niche sites.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Show related posts with YARPP and allow your visitor to find more interesting content on your site.

This sums up to 9 different plugins I think everyone should use. How many and which plugins do you use?

Article by Stefan Nilsson

In the autumn of 2008 I took the final step of becoming a web entrepreneur by leaving my job and rely on making money online. Subscribe for my articles to learn some of my techniques.

Stefan has written 101 awesome articles.

{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Miguel Wickert July 16, 2009 at 01:43

thanks for visiting the site… As far as your comment, check out this-> http://mattflies.com/ he has plenty of tutorials, tips and suggestions to keep ya busy for a while. I’m sure this will help, feel free to ask throw more questions my way.

-Mig

2 Stefan July 17, 2009 at 18:34: Thanks Miguel. Great resource if you are new to Thesis.

Reply

3 The Gooroo @ Finance Advisory Stop July 16, 2009 at 02:09

Nice list of plugins Stefan. I never knew about WP Super Cache. Thanks for enlightening me! I just installed it

4 Stefan July 17, 2009 at 00:03: I’m glad to hear that. WP Super Cache is a great tool which can save a tremendous amount of loading time.

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5 George Serradinho July 16, 2009 at 07:11

Hi,

I have 18 plugins on my site and it will still be reduced. I do agree that there are hundreds, sometime it’s difficult to pick a plugin.

I use to use Cforms II and Greet Box, but removed them. Super Cache is a must for small or big sites. Subscribe to Comments is also nice as my commentators come back once someone has left a comment.

6 Stefan July 16, 2009 at 14:30: I went over to your site and it do look like most of your plugins actually is necessary for your site to fully function.

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7 Lee Ka Hoong July 17, 2009 at 16:37

Thanks for sharing Stefan. I’ve been using some of the wordpress plugin that you’re listed above. I personally like Akismet and Google XML Sitemaps very much, Akismet saved my works in filtering comments. Anyway, I’m going to take a look on “Broken Link Checker” as I always checked the broken link using broken link checker on the net, some of them required to pay too.

Regards,
Lee

8 Stefan July 17, 2009 at 18:44: I’m glad to hear Lee. I wouldn’t manage a day without Akismet and their spam protection. Unfortunately there are plenty of spam bots today. “Broken Link Checker” is truly amazing since it will publish links to all of your broken links in your control panel. Highly recommended.

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9 Curious Little Person July 18, 2009 at 08:17

Thanks for the good list.. need to try out WP Super Cache…. Heard it from a lot of bloggers now

Cheers
Sandeep

10 Extreme John July 19, 2009 at 07:15

Ah sweet Im going to check out YARRP I have been missing a good similar posts plugin, but I need one that doesn’t suck up the resources while grabbing similar articles.

11 Anna July 21, 2009 at 07:48

I use most of those, although in a couple of cases I use another plugin instead. Don’t know if it’s better or not though.

I use the Max Blog Press Ping Optimizer for no self-pinging, and I use Simple Tags for related posts.

I have used Cforms but ran into trouble a few times and started just hand-coding my contact forms with html.

I have also used What Would Seth Godin Do to greet new visitors and invite subscriptions. But – a bug. I found that the text from this box was in some cases becoming my meta-description in search engine results, if I did not manually create a meta-description.

12 kusza August 17, 2009 at 10:02

nice info Stefan, i didn’t know YARP and WP super chace before…many thanks..

13 mohdisa September 14, 2009 at 23:59

thanks for ur sharing, its useful for me.

14 tech money March 2, 2010 at 02:57

I got all the plugins except WP Greet Box.

Another one i suggest, Simple tags, also work well for me.