Total Followers 132,503
I feel like now everybody knows and uses all those popular plugins, which everybody mention on their blogs and repeat many times without big sense. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to feature not so well known, totally new or just useful plugins you’ve probably never seen before. All plugins are very carefully picked, this is absolutely not some random list.
I also added WordPress site monthly download statistics to let you know how popular these plugins are, but don’t underestimate new plugins. Just scroll through the list and maybe you’ll get several new features on your blog to make life easier. Hope you like this!
This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url.
For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Having these targeted suggestions will help your blog increase exposure, loyal readership, and reader interaction
Downloads 39,232
Gives you manual control over the order of your WordPress pages by letting you easily set an explicit order. Works with subpages too. Now with built-in Widget support.
Downloads 93,157
Stray Random Quotes helps you collect and display random quotes everywhere on your blog with many features. The plugin is so flexible that it can be used to display random words of all sorts: taglines, “leave a response” messages, footer or header sections etc.
Downloads 21,667
Prevents WordPress from sending pings to your own site, for example there are times when you want to link directly related articles like Part 1, Part 2, by default site will get pinged by itself.
Really self explaining so this time I didn’t add any screenshot to this one.
Downloads 12,539
GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and also add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. Plugin includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. Plugin also supports multi ratings.
Downloads 87,474
SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.
Further SEO Smart links allows you to set up your own keywords and set of matching URLs. Finally SEO Smart links allows you to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window.
Downloads 59,285
This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found. Pretty useful in long run especially if you have lots of content on your blog.
Downloads 63,951
Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging.
Downloads 347,793
Manage and keep track of your blog article or post ideas. I usueally save my links on notepad, but this is a great way how to start writing article or just collect your ideas doing a little research. Set priority, sort ideas, everything is up to you.
Downloads 1,769
HeadSpace2 is an all-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site, click through the link to see many features. Pretty popular plugin already, but I think in most cases underestimated, since there are All in One SEO Pack.
Downloads 190,535
Use this plugin if you want to use your blog an an event management tool. This will let people signup for the event – it can also show a list of all the attendees. Once the event is done, you can just deactivate the event – and no more signup will be allowed.
Downloads 2,776
Many blogs out there can only produce a couple articles a week while their visitors ask for loads more. It’s sometimes a good idea to add related articles from other blogs to your sidebar. Adding them manually takes lots of time we don’t have. With this new Community News plugin you allow your visitors to add articles to the sidebar. Complete with moderation panel and a settings page, you can sit back while you have full control about the look and articles that being posted.
Downloads 4,679
The Sphere Related Content plug-in displays an icon link at the end of your blog posts. When a reader clicks on the icon link, Sphere finds blog posts and media articles related to your content. See it in action on over 1 billion article pages on popular media sites and blogs like the WSJ, New York Times, TechCrunch and Real Clear Politics. See it live on intowit website.
Downloads 29,274
Welcome-visitor is a wordpress plugin, which will welcome visitors ( who come from others sites, e.g. google search, yahoo! serach or your friends’ links), and ask them to bookmark your site or to subscribe your rss feed. It will help you to get more readers and more attention!
Downloads 2,565
Role Scoper is a comprehensive enrichment for access control in WordPress, giving you CMS-like control of permissions. Assign reading, editing or administration roles to users or groups on a page-specific, category-specific or other content-specific basis.
Downloads 7,184
Widget that will enable you to show a beautifull live countdown timer for an event, where y ou can choose from different designs. Requires JavaScript Enabled (for the countdown to work) or it will not work.
Downloads 882
The Sliding Panel plugin adds a panel that opens and closes to the top of your WordPress-powered blog. If you’re in need of an area to house more content yet not get in the way, this is the ideal plugin.
The plugin is built off the wonderful jQuery library and is fully widgetized, so you can add any content you want. If you want a login form. Add it. If you want welcome text. No problem. Category list? You’re covered.
This plugin is for WordPress 2.8+ only.
Downloads 723
Adsense Stats is a widget for WordPress to display detailed statistics about your Google Adsense earnings without requiring login into your Google account.
Downloads 280
WP Wall is a “Wall” widget that appears in your blog’s side bar. Readers can add a quick comment about the blog as a whole, and the comment will appear in the sidebar immediately, without reloading the page.
All comments are internally handled by WordPress so that means you have normal comment moderation, SPAM protection and new comment notification.
WP Wall is fully customizable with a CSS file and included graphics.
Downloads 58,722
“Different Posts Per Page” plugin will allow you to modify the number of posts shown in home, category, archive or search page. You can even set the order of posts by ascending or descending order.
There’s more settings if you prefer more control over your blog. You can set custom number of posts for other pages as well like: Author, Paged, Feed, Date, Month etc.
Downloads 24,408
*updated!
Page Link Manager is a WordPress plugin that adds an administration panel that allows you to pick which page links are included in your site’s navigation. Adding it to your WordPress installation is as easy as ever
Downloads 26,609
Maybe you have some more new, but promising plugins in mind? Share them with us!
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Dainis Graveris is 23 years old blogger and designer, founder of 1stWebDesigner, now more silently managing everything behind the scenes. He usually hangs out in Twitter tweeting design related links and chatting with people. If you have any questions or feedback that's the best place to start! Cheers!
Friday, April 20th, 2012 07:37
I really love the Broken Link Checker. In my opinion, one of the most usefull WP-plugins ever … It saved me hours of work.
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 14:05
THANK YOU FOR PLUGINS LIST OF WONDERFUL, I’M USING SOME THANK YOU.
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 19:14
Hello Dear,
Reallt nice and usefull post about wordpress plugins, i’m using Related post plugin, WordPress Cache, Welcome Msg plugin, now i need a Auhtor byline plugin will you please give me a link ?
Thank you.
Monday, November 21st, 2011 23:23
Thank you so much! I have been looking for a plugin like RoleScoper for so long! I just used it on a client’s page to give certain viewing permissions to specific users so that they can view their own reports online. It worked beautifully.
Friday, October 14th, 2011 10:03
Nice post, includes almost all the plugins and customization necessary to improve your blog.
Saturday, July 16th, 2011 07:17
HeadSpace2 SEO and the AD sense stats are 2 items I will definitely use. Nice list. Thanks a lot. The Live counter sounds cool. I wish I had a use for it.
Monday, August 30th, 2010 02:37
Thank you for the great list! Post Ideas is my favorite.Will there be an update with new Plugins?
Monday, August 9th, 2010 09:53
You made my day … Thank you for this article. At least, i was really looking for such a greet box :)
Friday, February 26th, 2010 19:14
very helpful article
Thursday, August 6th, 2009 01:28
The finest plugin I have found was just released from RoohIt. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/instant-web-highlighter/
They call it an instant web highlighter that allows user selected portiions to be highlighted, but it allows visitors to microShare (share embedded highlights), microBookmark (go directly to highlights on my page), and microBlog (automatically post highlights to their own blog).
A fantastic tool for cutting through information overload. It has elements of tinyurl, delicious, twitter, diigo, digg, tumblr and a few more – all rolled into one.
In any case, I love it!!!
Monday, July 20th, 2009 12:18
Thanks dude! great job you’ve done! I guess it’s time to check this new SEO pack.
Saturday, July 4th, 2009 18:17
ALready download some of those plugins, I’ll use it in my personal blog since now.
Thanks for this great article.
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Dainis Graveris
Monday, June 29th, 2009 22:00
@Bariski I hoped to get that effect :) Thanks a lot :)
Edwin James Lynch
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 03:25
Wow. Some of these are very cool. I’m particularly interested in the WP community ratings plug-in. Nobody does a good one of those and believe me I’ve looked. I’m also looking for an internal ratings plug-in where the Blogger can rate and review films, books etc. If anyone knows of one of these, please let me know. I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to work out how to modify WP.
Mahallo Media
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 10:03
Thanks for sharing this great list of wp plugins.
Stephen Cronin
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 05:10
I normally stay away from the WordPress plugin posts as they’re normally just the same plugins again and again. You had several new ones that I hadn’t heard of before – Thanks!
Dainis Graveris
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 19:20
@Area1 thanks for kind words !
@Derek Kimball actually I got it from my friend on Spyrestudios, was excited to see it implemented on his blog :)
@reboltutorial Sorry, I tested it locally on my old wordpress version, so I don’t know yet about newer versions..
@ Edwin James Lynch I don’t know really about blogger, but i think on WordPress plugin page, you should be able to find something.. WordPress plugins
@ Stephen Cronin agreed I understand you, now many blogs actually sometimes also mine too repeats the same stuff, it’s hard to create really unique posts. But this was interesting research for me, and glad to hear You enjoy it too!
@ Zorlone ah, thanks – I’ll try to justify your trust and work even harder, hope you’ll find more good stuff here :)
@ David I must say it was really interesting research and Greetbox plugin gave me idea to this post, if you do some videos, just link here, I could add your links to article for better cause.
@ BeyondRandom great, thanks man! :)
@ Raymond Selda those two plugins are very good yes :) Everybody has random needs, search on maybe you’ll find something more useful too! :)
Raymond Selda
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 18:01
This is an amazing list! I thought this is going to be just another plugin list. I’m using Broken Link Checker and HeadSpace2 SEO. Thanks so much for this.
David
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 12:16
Thanks Dainis – you’ve found some fantastic WordPress Plugins there!
For example -
WP-Greetbox great idea – if it works as it says it’s a smart way of making your visitors feel a bit more special when they arrive (I think!)
Post Ideas – Very simple idea but it does kind of make sense to keep your ideas in the right place – where you write about them!
There are too many good ones to comment on – but I’ll be checking at least 10 of them out to see what they are like.
I might even make a few screen capture videos to explain them to my readers.
Many thanks again for a top quality blog post.
Dave
reboltutorial
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 02:44
Good list though I knew many of them already, it was a good refresher for me.
But for postideas, it says compatible with 2.5, so does it work for 2.7.1+ ?
Gennice
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 02:35
Finally a list that features plugins that aren’t so popular but are good!
Excellent finds and I’ve never heard about many of these… Will use some!
Thanks!
Dainis Graveris
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 01:00
@Aaron great, that’s a whole lot, just remember many plugins also can slow down your blog, it’s always hard to decide how to do better.
Aaron
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 00:44
Woaaahh! Awesome list, man! Thanks! I think I downloaded 1/2 of these as useful for me. Great work!