Total Followers 132,503
I’m sure you have seen lots of articles named something like “best 30 plugins for WordPress” or “The coolest 60 plugins for WordPress” etc. In my post today I’m not going to make another collection of links but rather list just a few plugins that I’m using in my own blog. Of course, I haven’t added all of them from the very beginning. Depending on the task set before me I had to make some studies followed by experiments and make tests, tests and tests. I will explain why I find these plugins extremely useful as well as speak about some widgets that are worth using.
Akismet is a perfect spam catcher. Not sure how they do this, but 99% of spam comments will get under I’ve had the problem with Akismet only once actually shortly after installation. For some reason it was recognizing uberVU – social comments (the post mentions on twitter) as spam but once I approved it, the Akismet learned the algorithm and now it’s saving me from hundreds of funky comments. There’s also a cool option to “Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month” which means that spam comments for the early posts won’t even be added to the Spam” section of blog comments, they will be deleted automatically.
A simple plugin allowing to add Google Analytics to your blog pages and enjoy a variety of tracking options available at Google Analytics account. Once you upload and activate the plugin go to the Settings section in the main menu and look for Google Analytics. Here’s the place where you can make a Google Analytics WordPress Configuration. All you have to do is enter your Analytics Account ID and click on save. Now you can go to your Google Analytics account and track visitors, traffic sources, search keywords and most popular articles.
As a blogger and project manager I know that it’s highly important to keep blog visitors on the website as long as possible, especially if you are selling ads and are going to earn something from them. This is where Yet Another Related Posts Plugin comes on arena. It allows to show links to related posts at the end of the article, and you can set this relatedness by a number of options, such as keywords in the text, titles, tags, categories etc. You can define the number of links to show and the period of time to check on related articles from your previous posts. You will find related posts section under the main Sections menu of the blog admin area.
Seeking blog promotion and popularity I had to look for a nice plugin that would allow submission of the article to social networks on the fly. I might have tested around 10 plugins before I found and fall in love with Sociofluid. This plugin adds keen social network icons below the post that get bigger on roll-over. SocioFluid settings can be found under the main Sections menu of the blog admin area. There are 20 bookmarking site you can choose from (including my favorite Twitter, Digg, Facebook and Stumble) and you can also choose from the several icons sizes. You can define whether to display SocioFluid Bar for posts in home page or browse pages, to show it on the top of the page or after the article, whether the icons should open in the new window or not.
Dean’s Permalinks Migration plugin helped me to stay on board once I decided to update the URLs structure of the links on my blog to more friendly ones. I’m sure all of us do this from time to time having read some cool articles about SEO friendliness or deciding to test this or that option and to test the results. When your articles have been indexed by search engines and there are other websites linking to you, it’s vital not to lose this audience. What Permalinks Migration plugin does is it changes your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website. The settings are quite simple and understandable. Once you have updated the permalinks structure in the General settings section just enter the old permalink structure and the plugin will be automatically sending visitors from the old urls to the new ones.
The reason why I needed the banner plugin is that I wanted to convert traffic from the blog into product purchases from the main website. I wanted to add the product pics, have them in rotation and link all of them to according product pages. If compared to the other multiple banner plugins I have tested, Banner Plugin doesn’t have many options like conversion and visitors tracking, multiple campaigns with multiple banners, deducting the cost per click from the deposit etc. But it’s extremely easy to work with, you don’t have to go to the blog code to update a single thing and it’s widgets supported. That means that having uploaded and activated the plugins you just add the pics and the links, save the settings and then simply drag and drop the banner widget into the sidebar. A perfect solution if the simple banner is enough for your needs.
All in one SEO Pack plugin is meant for advanced blog owners and allows to enhance your blog in terms of search engines friendliness. You may skip this one if you’re not into SEO yet as this one requires some basic SEO knowledge. One of the things that I like is that there’s a direct link to options configuration panel right from the plugins section and you don’t have to dive into the settings and check where they could have been added. All in One SEO Pack allows to set the titles structure of blog pages, use noindex attributes for the sections you’d like to close from the search engines and set meta title and meta description for the blog main page without going into the blog code.
Summing this up, I’d like to say that this is definitely not a full list of nice plugins and that I might need more in the future depending on the goals I set. But the factor that plays the most important role for me and makes me test tens of plugins is the simplicity. Since I’m not a programmer I always look for simple solutions that won’t require much of my time and where I wouldn’t have to go into the blog source code and perform significant changes. I hope this article will be useful even for those bloggers who have been working with WordPress for some time by now and will save you some time.
Good luck!
Get The Only Freelancer crash course you will ever need to read!
Project manager and usability specialist. Interested in SEO and marketing, friendly and always ready to discuss new opportunities. Now working in amazing SEO Company named WebPromoExpert.net and you are welcome to follow me and WebPromoExpert on Twitter
Monday, November 21st, 2011 17:07
Now that Jetpack is available, it might be a good one to add to the list as well! Thanks for the good list.
Saturday, November 5th, 2011 17:51
Thanks a lot for those information, i was looking for a good related post plug in as Ive tried many of them but none really gave me satisfaction, this one seems to do the job :D
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 20:13
Deans permalink migration plugin is the best one to change the permalink structure without loosing our seo rankings awesome plugins thanks for u guys if i don’t see your post i loose my seo ranks.
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 01:10
Great post. I am using the Banner plugin. Its nice, but one customer can only provide 1 banner. if any customer have more then 1 banner then i have to create separate client name.
The SocioFluid plugin does not work with WordPress 3.2.1…
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 11:27
Thanks it will will help me in starting my new website http://www.mediafirestuff.com and i will must install these plugins to my website :)
Sunday, September 4th, 2011 00:07
Thanks for the great advice. I’ll be adding a few of these to my website.
Saturday, August 27th, 2011 14:10
Most of these are really awesome !
Thanks for this list.
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 13:30
Nice List am using up to 4 plugins till now after viewing this post i understand the need of wonder full plugin Socio Fluid thanks for this post keep up.
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 22:03
Thanks for the list! Very good picks. I think I’ll have to re-install Akismet for my blog too.
Again, thanks for the info!
Monday, May 16th, 2011 08:23
This was a great post and very helpful as well. Thanks.
Monday, May 16th, 2011 03:59
This was a great post and very helpful as well. Thanks…
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 04:11
Great stuff you have in here! Keep up the good work.
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 17:33
great post. really helpful for a newbie like me.. :) thanks
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 21:13
love yet another related post plugin. but have you tryed sexy bookmarks i use it and its awesome for allowing users to bookmark your site anywhere they like.
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 14:36
I must say it is an excellet list, and I am using 4 of these on my blogs, though I am skeptical about GoogleAnalytics, as you reveal most of the stuff to Google by using this plugin. A good alternate is to use wp-stats plugin.
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 18:48
Nice and simple list with pictures and excellent explanations instead of just listing or having links. Thanks-
Monday, August 2nd, 2010 15:02
Some Useful Plugins there – thank you!
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 01:15
Platinum SEO (instead of All in one) has extra features from all in one including migration which means you dont have to install a seperate plugin like Deans. Also I looked up SocioFluid and it looks cool but hasnt been updated in almost 2 years and I need to make sure what I get now is compatible with WP 3!
Saturday, May 8th, 2010 00:38
With which plugin can i get such a “about the author” box beneath my posts?
Thanks!!
Thursday, April 29th, 2010 21:04
I liked the banner plugin idea. This could really save a lot of time when setting up a site. I particularly like that one and the Sociofluid that you mentioned in this post. Thanks for sharing!
Monday, April 26th, 2010 09:26
Thanks, just starting to figure out the widgets. Got a couple and will look how I can incorporate the others!
Mark
Direct Selling Advice, Leveraging Relationships for Long-term Profit
Saturday, April 24th, 2010 00:28
Hey,
Great list you’ve produced. I’m brand new to blogging and was searching for a solid social networking plug-in and am in the midst of installing SocioFluid based on your recommendation. I thank you for saving me the time of having to install, test, and uninstall a slew of them. :)
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 17:00
I have never tried Permalinks Migration plugin. I’ll try it on my next blog. Thanks for sharing.
Saturday, March 20th, 2010 01:27
Thank you so much for this information – it gives me a clue about where to start! LOL
Get The Only Freelancer crash course you will ever need!
If not, then it's time to learn how to:
You can trust 1stWebDesigner to help you become a better web designer!
- Jacob Cass | Just Creative
Just enter your name and email below and click Get Updates!
Ian Devlin
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 12:43
Some interesting plugins there, SocioFluid and the related posts plugin are ones I’ll definitely be adding to my blog.
Ted Rex
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 17:44
Great collection and thanks for not overwhelming us!
I made this page one of the three featured links on today’s Design Thought blog:
http://designthoughtfortheday.blogspot.com/2010/03/03-04-awesome-shirts-wordpress-plugins.html
All the best, Ted
zohaib
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 21:38
small list with huge advantage. Thanks for share Anastasia :)
Anastasia
Friday, March 5th, 2010 12:51
My pleasure :)
Tømme
Sunday, March 7th, 2010 21:21
I had already 3 out of 7 installed. Gonna try the ‘Permalinks Migration’ one cuz i recently changed my permalinks to more friendly ones.
Nice post!
John Hoff - WP Blog Host
Saturday, March 6th, 2010 02:55
Nice list. The only one that I’ve never understood why people use is the Google Analytics plugin. All you need to do (without the plugin) is paste in the code Google gives you into your footer.php file.
That should be just about as easy as it is to find, install, and activate a plugin and then go back and paste in the Google code into the plugin’s settings area.
Just copy and paste into the footer.php file and you’re done.
Anastasia
Sunday, March 7th, 2010 18:18
yep, that’s easy but if you have at least a small idea about php or html, I know many people who don’t and I try to make website management for them as easy as possible
Warren
Friday, March 5th, 2010 10:03
Thanks for the list. I now have the all in one seo pack. Can’t wait to start posting and using it! :)
Thanks
Playstead
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 01:39
Great list, I used most of these, but will give a couple of the others a try. I also think the Google XML Sitemap is a must.
wpin.me
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 22:53
Great collection of plugins, thanks for taking the timeout to tell others!
Bookmarked and tweeted!
Anastasia
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 18:52
hehe :) well I didn’t mean custom reporting for Google analytics :) Guess you’re right, I consider it an easy thing to do since I check it every day.
I haven’t used comment prompt plugin, I think it’s somewhat pushy but I never got it a try
Amberly | Web Designer
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 18:26
Great article :) Thanks for shearing. Very useful stuff..
sriganesh
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 14:06
5. Dean’s Permalinks Migration
6. Banner Plugin –
Thanks for sharing this plugin, i never heard about this.
what about the Twitter-ID link from comLUV – it helps to add the twitter username in the comment form(easier than thesis customization). even i wrote a tutorial for this on my blog. every one loves twitter :
Link : http://www.animhut.com/tuts/add-twitter-id-field-to-comment-form-in-5-easy-steps/
Vikas Ghodke
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 14:14
Nice list of wp plugin for new bloggers. Thank You
Dawid
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 15:27
Nice list of wp plugin for new bloggers at this same time I recommended free ebook about Search Engine Optimization Here is direct link http://bit.ly/bNDvE9 the original link is big this is url shortener Thank You
Hian Battiston
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 05:57
Really useful plugins!
Yari
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 22:05
This is a great list, thanks for sharing. Google Analytics is definitely a must, I love it. I’ll have to give Askimet a go, I usually use WP-SpamFree, but I found it conflicted with an eCommerce plugin.
I would also suggest Contact Form 7, for those who would like to add one to their blog. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
There are so many great plugins for WordPress, I’ve been bookmarking my favorites, but I’m always happy to learn about new ones http://www.xerpi.com/389146
michelle
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 21:40
nice plugins, thanks for the post. I always ignore Akismet but now i am going to activate it.
Thanx
Ed
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 21:17
Thanks for posting. SocioFluid is a new one to me, so well worth peeking in on this post.
Wallace
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 16:22
i prefer AdRotate,
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adrotate/
Anastasia
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 17:02
The AdRotate features look really cool and easy to set up but it won’t work for wp users who have just started as you still have to go into the code and add some lines there. An easy thing to do for me and you, but a real disaster for a mom who decided to just share some tips with the other ladies :) I will try it on my blog though, thanks for sharing!
Leslie
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 01:43
Thanks anything I can learn about better blogging is much appreciated
Billy
Saturday, March 20th, 2010 01:27
Thank you so much for this information – it gives me a clue about where to start! LOL
Prince Vasquez
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 17:00
I have never tried Permalinks Migration plugin. I’ll try it on my next blog. Thanks for sharing.
Sam
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 01:10
Great post. I am using the Banner plugin. Its nice, but one customer can only provide 1 banner. if any customer have more then 1 banner then i have to create separate client name.
The SocioFluid plugin does not work with WordPress 3.2.1…
Ans Awais
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 11:27
Thanks it will will help me in starting my new website http://www.mediafirestuff.com and i will must install these plugins to my website :)
Meg
Sunday, September 4th, 2011 00:07
Thanks for the great advice. I’ll be adding a few of these to my website.