Crazy.Beautiful.Life

25 Best WordPress Plugins

This is how I imagine wordpress in my head.

When I first started this blog, one of the people who I talked to more than anyone else was Teresa, mostly because she called me the plugin queen.  I helped her with setting up some of the plugins on her site that she liked on mine, and from there we basically became internet and blogging BFF’s.   I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, but I finally compiled a list of all the plugins which I use on this site.  If you decided to install any of these, and have problems with the settings, feel free to tweet @doitalone and I can help you out with them.

These plugins are invaluable to me and are listed in no particular order so without further ado, I present you with the 25 best wordpress plugins:

Name Description

Akismet

Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep.


Auto Excerpt everywhere

The plugin shows excerpts instead of contents in your blog, single posts and pages excluded. It tries to display your custom excerpt text and if it doesn’t find it it will show an automatically generated excerpt. You can also define an excerpt length (default is 500) and a custom read more link.


CommentLuv

Reward your readers by automatically placing a link to their last blog post at the end of their comment. Encourage a community and discover new posts.


FeedBurner FeedSmith Extend

This is a plugin originally authored by Steve Smith. It detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed. This one is enhanced and now it can redirects feeds for category and tag also.


Google Analytics for WordPress

This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding lots of features, eg. custom variables and automatic clickout and download tracking.


Google Picasa Viewer

Add Google Picasa albums to your blog posts, pages and sidebar.


Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.


Jetpack by WordPress.com

Bring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users.


LiveJournal Crossposter

Automatically copies all posts to a LiveJournal or other LiveJournal-based blog. Editing or deleting a post will be replicated as well.   You can direct where the comments go as well.


MobilePress

Turn your WordPress blog into a mobile website/blog.  (I LOVE THIS PLUGIN!)


ReplyMe

Send a email to author automatically while someone reply his comment.


SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2

Multiply blog traffic by strengthening on page SEO, increasing the number of indexed pages, auto convert search terms into post tags, and more.


Share and Follow

A simple plugin to manage sharing and following. You can obviously see it in use on the site on the sidebar, as well as the bottom of the post.


Strictly Auto Tags

This plugin automatically detects tags to place against posts using existing tags as well as a simple formula that detects common tag formats such as Acronyms, names and countries. Whereas other smart tag plugins only detect a single occurance of a tag within a post this plugin will search for the most used tags within the content so that only the most relevant tags get added.


Thank Me Later

Automatically send a ‘thank you’ e-mail to those who comment on your blog. This plugin engages the visitor by reminding them to check back for responses or new blog posts. The plugin is highly configurable with multiple messages, variable delay and restrictions.


TinyMCE Advanced

Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE, the visual editor in WordPress.


Wibiya Toolbar

Wibiya toolbar settings plugin

By Wibiya | Visit plugin site

WP-Stats-Dashboard

Displays the WordPress.com stats graph, your traffic and social metrics monitoring on your dashboard.

WP Social Blogroll

This plugin allows you to add a social blogroll to your blog. The blogroll will display your bookmarks, their freshness and their latest post-title.


WP to Twitter

Posts a Twitter status update when you update your WordPress blog or post to your blogroll, using your chosen URL shortening service. Rich in features for customizing and promoting your Tweets.

What wordpress plugins do you use that I missed?

  • Pingback: Stephanie Dorman

  • Pingback: Cheryl Calhoun

  • http://www.therebelchick.com Rebel Chick Jenn

    You have some really fantastic plugins listed! Thanks for putting this list together. I feel like I am always learning something new when it comes to blogging!

  • Pingback: Jenn Quillen

  • Pingback: Brian Hack

  • Eastbend

     thanks Stephanie. your list and the explanations are very helpful for a new WP user like myself. A lot of it was over my head, but great to have a list I can start with