24 Wordpress Plugins I Use on Technology Nerd - Must Have!

Posted by Abbas ||

July 9, 2008 ||

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Best Wordpress Plugins This post is based on a long pending request of one of TNerds regular visitor and a good friend of mine Kumar. He wanted to know of all the WordPress Plugins I use on TNerd.

I use close to 24 Plugins on TNerd, I’ve tried to categorize these plugins so that its easier for the readers to understand what plugins do I give more importance to. I try to keep my plugin list as short as possible because plugins do have an effect on the sites performance, especially if they are user facing plugins.

Plugins have been categorized in the following categories:

Content Management
Content Promotion
Administration
Readers Feedback

Here you go! Lets start with the first Category……

Content Management Plugins for WordPress

Editor Monkey

Author Description: Turns the normal WordPress textarea into a WYSIWYG editor using TinyMCE or FCKeditor. Also integrates spell checking into the editor interface using the FCK Speller Pages plugin and ieSpell. Supports custom dictionaries. By Raj Prasad.

My Comments: I haven’t used many content editors that’s because I never felt the need to as Editor Monkey had all the features I needed and is really easy to use without any errors or bugs. Download Link: http://www.rajprasad.net/plugins/editormonkey/

Note: Author of the plugin has discontinued this plugin as he was not very happy with the changes in WordPress. So unfortunately this plugin is no longer available. Other options are “Dean’s FCKEditor”, “Monsters Editor for WP Super Edit”.

Note: Once installed, default formatting options on WordPress 2.5 Stop working.

Force Word Wrapping

Author Description: Prevents long sentancesconstructedlikethis from horizontally stretching the page. Ported from the phpBB MOD of the same name - Force Word Wrapping. For support / comments / whatever, visit the support forums. By Jim Wigginton.

My Comments: You will not notice this plugin much in action but it does the work quietly. Keep your articles and comments in shape.

Download Link: http://www.frostjedi.com/terra/scripts/wp/wrap.zip

Google XML Sitemaps

Author Description: This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.

My Comments: A must plugin for every blog. It makes it really easy for search engines to index pages from the blog. It also offers a lot of control over the XML sitemap in terms of the URL, Build Mode, number of posts in sitemap, memory assigned to Sitemap, Page Priority, etc..

Download Link: http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/

Head META Description

Author Description: Insert HTML META description tag: excerpt/content brief for post/Page, description for category, and blog tagline for everything else. By Kaf Oseo.

My Comments: It’s a good plugin for modifying your header information based on the article. It also address the issue of supplemental results (which no longer exist as per Google) to an extent.

Download Link: http://guff.szub.net/head-meta-description/

Links-NoFollow

Author Description: Add rel=”nofollow” to any link present in comment By Alex Concha.

My Comments: It’s a good plugin which does not encourage link spam as it adds nofollow tag to the links in comments automatically.

Download Link: http://www.buayacorp.com/archivos/plugin-rel-nofollow-para-wordpress/

WP-PostViews

Author Description: Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. It will not count registered member views, but that can be changed easily. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

My Comments: Plugin helps in keeping a track of how many times the article has been visited by the users. This plugin can prove to be a good morale booster for new bloggers who like to see how many users have read the article.

Download Link: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-postviews.1.20.zip

WP-PostViews Widget

Author Description: Adds a PostViews Widget to display most viewed posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-PostViews first. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

My Comments: Adds a nice little widget which will sit on the sidebar showing the top viewed posts.

Note: This is part of WP-PostViews Plugin

WP-Sticky

Author Description: Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

My Comments: Certainly helps brining good articles on top. It also underlines the importance of the article if its set to sticky and offers more control on your articles.

Download Link: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-sticky.1.10.zip

Content Promotion Plugins for WordPress

Comment Relish

Author Description: Increases your readership and RSS subscription rate by simply sending a short ‘thank you’ relishing type message to users when they first comment on your weblog. By Justin Shattuck.

My Comments: This is an excellent plugin which helps in increasing the RSS readers for you blog. Once a new reader comments on any of the articles it sends an automated e-mail to the users, thanking for the comment and requesting to subscribe to the feed.

Download Link: http://www.justinshattuck.com/comment-relish/

Digg This

Author Description: Adds Digg story link on detection on digg referer By Aviran Mordo.

My Comments: You must have seen this plugin on lot of blogs and sites. I uses the text version of this plugin which shows up only if the article is digged by a user there after users can dig the article from your site itself. The plugin offers the image version as well.

Download Page: http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/digg-this-wordpress-plugin/

Related Posts

Author Description: Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. By Alexander Malov, Mike Lu & Jon Bourne.

My Comments: One of the best plugins ever! Returns unbelievably related posts on the single post page. This plugin can drastically improve your page views if placed correctly on the page.

Download Link: http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries

Modified versions of the same plugin: http://peter.mapledesign.co.uk/weblog/archives/wordpress-related-posts -plugin http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/

Simple Tags

Author Description: Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3. Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags ! By Amaury BALMER.

My Comments: The best SEO plugin. Instantly increases the page count in any search engines index thus improving your sites chances of showing up on search results.

Download Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tags

Zazz Post Ticker

Author Description: Creates a fading ticker to display your recent blog posts By Stew Houston.

My Comments: It acts as a banner showing of your latest articles. This plugin is very similar to the banner offered by Feedburner, the only difference is that if users click on Zazz Post Ticker Link it takes them to the post page directly but Feedburner banner takes them to the RSS page.

Download Link: http://www.kingofwww.com/plugins/#zazz-post-ticker

E-mail Users

Author Description: Allows the administrator to send an e-mail to the blog users. Credits to Catalin Ionescu who gave me some ideas for the plugin and has made a similar plugin. This plugin is using PhpMailer. Bug reports and corrections by Cyril Crua and Pokey. By Vincent Prat (email : vpratfr@yahoo.fr).

My Comments: I have this plugin installed but never used it, I didn’t want my registered users to feel spammed.

Download Page: http://www.vincentprat.info/wordpress/email-users/

Administration Plugin for Wordpress

Akismet

Author Description: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

My Comments: Blog cannot live without this plugin! Install it NOW!

Downloads Page: http://akismet.com/

My Custom Widgets

Author Description: Define your own widgets and include them into your theme. By Janek Niefeldt.

My Comments: Excellent, Excellent, Excellent plugin helps you create your own widgets for sidebar without a problem. This can be used for any code.. HTML or PHP or JavaScript. Convert your Adsense Code to Widget or any other code.

Download Page: http://www.janek-niefeldt.de/blog/mycustomwidget/

Registration Blacklist

Author Description: Ban emails and domains from registering as users By Web Professor.

My Comments: It’s a must plugin for a blog where lot of spam registrations occur. You can mention domain extensions from which users will be blocked from registering, plus there are many more options.

Download Page: http://web-professor.net/

Theme Test Drive

Author Description: Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. By Vladimir Prelovac. My Comments: Without trying out a theme you cannot imagine how your blog looks like and if it’s a high traffic blog then you cannot afford to experiment on it in real time. Theme Test Drive is the best option as you can try a theme which is visible to the Admin only and make all the necessary changes to the theme before you actually change the theme on the site. Download Page: http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/theme-test-drive

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Author Description: WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. Go to Wordpress Automatic Upgrade to upgrade your installation Thanks to Ronald Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode. By Keith Dsouza.

My Comments: Keeping in mind the number of critical updates happen for new releases this plugin comes in real handy. You can either update the WordPress package on one click or just follow the wizard to update it. Now downloading and using ftp and replacing the source files is thing of the past. It’s a must for EVERY WordPress user.

Download Page: http://techie-buzz.com/

Lighter Menus

Author Description: Creates Drop Down Menus for WordPress Admin Panels. Fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, comes with silk icons, a option page, and a design that fits within the Wordpress 2.5 interface taking the less room possible. By corpodibacco.

My Comments: This plugin makes navigation within the admin panel really easy by saving a few clicks.

Download Page: http://www.italyisfalling.com/lighter-menus

WordPress Database Backup

Author Description: On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage → Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.

My Comments: Author Description says it all

Download Page: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

Maintenance Mode

Author Description: Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Options → Maintenance Mode to get started. By Michael Woehrer.

My Comments: In case you are making changes to your WordPress theme or package and you do not want your users to see some weird code on the blog, this plugin helps you by putting the blog into maintenance mode which means visitors will see a maintenance page instead of the blog.

Download Page: http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/maintenance-mode/

Readers Feedback Plugins for WordPress

WP-PostRating and WP-PostRating Widget

Author Description: Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. (WP-PostRating) Adds a PostRatings Widget to display most rated and/or highest rated posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-PostRatings first. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. (WP-PostRating Widget)

My Comments: It’s a very good plugin to know if the visitors like the content on the site. Rating are a very good indication of whether the blogger should bring changes to the content or revisit an older article to see what when wrong if the rating fall. The Widget helps you show the top rated articles on the site.

Downloads Page: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-postratings.1.20.zip

Comment Email Responder

Author Description: Emails commenter when an admin replies to the comment, if commenter is not subscribed to email updates via Subscribe-to-Comments. Original idea/coding by Andrew Flusche By Owen Cutajar.

My Comments: Creating a good rapport with the readers is the most important thing a blogger should focus on. Comment Email Responder is the best plugin which helps you do that. On a click of a button it sends an e-mail to the commenter along with the admins reply.

Downloads Page: http://www.u-g-h.com/index.php/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-plugin-comm ent-email-responder/

Tags: Best WordPress Plugins, wordpress, WordPress Plugins

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