Essential WordPress Plugins you should have

Ever since I started using wordpress, I’ve been pretty amazed on the number of plugins it currently has and the numerous features that you can gain if you use those. I would like to share with you my personal list of Essential WordPress Plugins that you should have.

I’ve broken them down into five (5) different parts:

1. For your blog’s visitors – This is to enhance the experience of the visitors in your blog. Make them happy and surely they will return to your blog.
2. For your blog’s protection – With numerous people getting hacked lately, you need all the protection that you need.
3. For search engines – In order to gain organic traffic (search engine traffic), you should make your blog look good in search engines.
4. For your blog’s functionality – Although wordpress already offers a lot of features, there are still some that we crave to have.
5. For your blog’s feeds -Not all your visitors read your blog by visiting the website itself. Sometimes, they just subscribe through your feeds and read them there. So you should also make your feeds presentable. Why don’t you subscribe to my feeds too?

Just a quick note: Most of the plugins mentioned in this post are just upload and activate. I will be telling you if you need to do something to make it work. I have personally tested and used each of these plugins. They work with the latest version of wordpress.

Update: (January 2009)

• Replaced Brian’s Threaded Comments, Comment Email Responder and Subscribe to comments with WordPress Thread Comment (Republished for 2009)

WordPress Plugins for your blog’s visitors

1. WordPress Thread Comment – I love this plug-in! It has enough features to replace three of the plug-ins I’m currently using. WordPress thread comment plug-in is able to thread your comments, allows subcribing to comments and send email notifications when their comment has a reply. Very nice. Very nice. ^_^
2. In Series – Sometimes you would want to write a series of post so you can give your readers something to look forward too and avoid boring them to death with a 10, 000 word article. This plugin will do the trick. Installation and usage is easy. Just activate the plugin and when writing a post, you can specify what series name that post will go into. Do take note that when updating this plugin, you have to deactivate it first, update then reactivate. If you don’t you will get database errors.
   
3. Live Comment Preview – From the name itself you would already know what this plugin does. Basically, it gives your commentators a preview of what they are writing. You can see it in action in this blog.
4. Lucia’s Link Love – There had been talks on blogs that are do-follow and those who are no-do-follow. This blog is a do-follow blog but you have to make three comments first before getting followed. Just don’t spam me. Btw, how do I know that you have made 3 comments? Well, by installing this plugin I get to know that you have made 3 comments and it will automatically make your links do follow.
5. Popularity Contest – A plugin that calculates which post is popular based on views. It’s something that you can easily show to your visitors which posts are must-reads because they are popular. It will also give you an idea which posts are bringing in traffic to your blog. To display the “most popular” posts, you need to add something in your sidebar template or sidebar widgets. The read me of the plugin provide examples and guides on how to do it.
   
6. Show Top Commentators – This simple plugin will make your commentators happy. This will to recognize those who comment a lot in your blog by featuring them in your sidebar. Btw, make sure to add this to your sidebar template either manually or through a widget or this plugin is useless. Also, to edit its options requires you to edit the php file manually.
   
7. Subscribe to Comments – This plugin allows you to subscribe to comments. Whenever a new comment is posted on a post, you will get an email notification.
8. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – There are many wordpress plugins that offers the related posts feature. One of the most famous plugin is called, wasabi related posts. This plugin is a descendant of that since it has been based their. I’ve been testing this for a while and it really does well. You have to add this in your template to make this work, <?php if (function_exists('related_posts')) {related_posts();}?>
   

WordPress Plugins for your blog’s protection

1. Akismet – It has been said that 90% of the comments you receive are spam. So would you like to wade through these comments to find the legitimate ones or would you like it if someone will do it for you? Akismet is a plugin made to detect and quarantine spam so they won’t show up in your blog. The mere fact that it’s included in every wordpress installation makes it a worthy spam blocking plugin.
2. Login Lockdown – This plugin is the answer to the brute-force attack on your log-in screen. What it does is to ban or deny access to someone who has made numerous failed log-in attempts on your blog. You can set the limits in its option pages.
3. Spam Karma 2 – I was already satisfied with akismet but I also added Spam Karma 2 because of its interface. What makes Spam Karma 2 different is that I don’t have to wade through numerous spam comments just to see if something got marked as spam by mistake. Let us see it in this way, in Akismet, there’s heaven (accepted comment) and hell (spam comment), Spam Karma just added a purgatory (you judge their fate).
4. WP-DB-Backup – What would you do if suddenly your blog gets erased from the World Wide Web or internet? Would your cry or would you search for a backup? This handy dandy plugin will backup your wordpress database. For more details about the usage of this plugin, please read this guide.
   

WordPress Plugins for Search Engines

1. All in One SEO Pack – Need to optimize your blog for search engines? All in One SEO pack is the only plugin you need. It enables you to provide a Meta description and keywords for your blog. It will also rewrite your titles so that the title comes first before the blog name. For more details about this plugin, please read my posts about it. Guide to All in One SEO Plugin and the effects of this plugin in my blog.
2. Google XML Sitemaps – The sitemaps in a blog is similar to a table of contents in a book. The search engines looks at your sitemap to see if they have indexed all your pages. This plugin will automatically create a sitemap for you every time you publish a post or save a post. It creates two types of sitemaps, an xml sitemap and the compressed version of that xml sitemap.
   

WordPress Plugins for your blog’s functionality

1. Dagon Design SiteMap Generator – This plugin was suggested by Todd. It basically adds a user friendly sitemap to your blog. Don’t confuse this with the Google XML sitemaps mentioned above which was built for search engines. It You can see this in action in my archives page.
   
2. Exec-PHP – Allows you to add php codes in your blog. The php code starts with <?php and ends with ?>. Just a little bit of warning, if you want to add php codes in your post, do not use the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor but instead use the code editor.
   
3. Maintenance Mode – I don’t know if you have encountered this page before in my blog but the content of that page tells you that Silkenhut’s World is currently undergoing maintenance. This is the time where I am trying out or experimenting with new themes or plugins and I don’t my users to see any bloopers I might have made. This plugin will simply add a splash page to notify your visitors that the blog is currently under maintenance. It’s better to see this than see to errors right?
   
4. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer – Whenever you publish a new post or save an already published post, wordpress automatically pings websites such as technorati and ping-o-matic telling them that you have new content or updates. If you edit your post regularly, you might be sending unnecessary pings to these services and they can ban your blog for over pinging. What this plug-in does it to change the way pinging works. It will only ping the service once and that is when you publish your post.
5. Redirection – Thinking of changing your permalinks or your blog location and afraid of broken links? Then this plugin is for you. You can set temporary redirects or permanent redirects using this plugin. You will also get to see a list of 404 errors that happened in your blog so that can fix them ASAP.
6. Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form – Provide your blog with an easy to use Contact Form. You may see it in action in my contact me page.
   
7. Sociable – Allows your users to submit your post to different bookmarking websites. If you think that this post was ok for you, please submit it too. Thanks. ^_^
   
8. SRG Clean Archives – Provides your blog with a simple and clean archive. It divides the post by month and each month can be clicked to expand. You can see it in action in my archives page.
   
9. WP-Page Navi – One of the ways to navigate your blog is to click on the “previous entries” found on the bottom part of your blog. However, with this, you can only move one page at a time. What if you want to go to the 500th page? Would you want to click on “previous entries“, 499 times or would you rather install this plug-in? Instead of seeing, Previous entries and Next Entries, you can show them page numbers instead. To use, add this in your template, <?php if(function_exists('wp_pagenavi')) { wp_pagenavi(); } ?>.
   
10. WordPress Automatic Upgrade – You don’t have to go through the tedious process of upgrading your wordpress everytime a new version comes out. With this plug-in, you can upgrade your installation in just one click and it will be finished in just a few seconds. Super duper helpful! Read more about it my experience with the wordpress automatic upgrade here.

WordPress Plugins for your blog’s feeds

1. Feedburner Feed Smith – Redirects your feeds so that it is being handled by Feedburner. There’s a problem with this if you use it with the CommentLuv plug-in. Read more about it here, feedsmith and commentluv.
   
2. Feed Footer – Adds a customized message to your feeds. You can use this to add a copyright against scrapers, monetize your feeds or just write a secret message that only your feed readers will see.
3. Full Text Feed – Do you use the <!–more–> feature in wordpress? Did you know that if you use that, your feeds will be cut off when being read in a feed reader such as Google Reader? If you are just like me and you don’t want to provide half-baked feeds to your readers, you should use this plugin.

Plug-ins that have been replaced.

1. WP AJAX Edit Comments – Sometimes your readers make mistakes in their comments and there’s no way for them to edit it. Either they post another comment telling you that they made a mistake or they just leave it that way. Now with this plugin, you give them the power to edit their comments after they have written it. Very helpful!
2. Brian’s Threaded Comments – Think of this situation, what if there are 20 comments in a post and I want to reply to what comment # 3 said? Well, this plugin will make it possible for you to reply to that comment. This plugin will make it easier for you and your readers to have a flow of conversation. I used this in my previous blog theme but I did not install this in the new theme. The only drawback is that you have to replace your theme’s comments.php file with the one included in the plugin.
3. Comment Email Responder – I learned about this plugin from Jaypee. Basically, this plugin allows you to reply on a comment and it will automatically send an email to the commentator that you have replied to his/her comment. This is very useful to gain returning visitors as they will get informed that you have replied to them.

Conclusion

There are literally hundreds of wordpress plugins currently available today and more are being created each day. I hope that this list has helped you decided what plugins you may want to use in your blog.

If you want to suggest a plug-in that I can include in this list, just drop me a comment.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to subscribe to my feeds.