Wordpress is a fantastic platform to blog and build websites. As you may or may not know, wordpress has the ability to ‘plugin’ programs into it that make your life as a website owner a whole lot easier. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of different plugins available to use with your WordPress site. Out of all of those choices, here are my top ten Wordpress Plugins:
1. All in One SEO: this is one amazing and powerful plugin. It provides automatic SEO just with one click! The plugin comes with default settings (recommended by the developer) that can be changed depending upon what you want to do/tweak on your site. I pretty much leave the settings on default as they cover everything that I need. With the All in One SEO plugin you can – eliminate duplicate content, add keywords, change permalinks to search engine friendly formats, and add descriptions which also helps with SEO.
2. Google XML Sitemaps: another plugin that I can’t operate without. This will generate a sitemap.org compatible site map of your WordPress site. This format is supported by Google, Yahoo, Ask, and MSN/Bing. It is called Google XML sitemap because it was Google who first developed this protocol for use in its search engine. This plugin will automatically generate a site map and notify the above mentioned search engines when you activate as well as every time you update your site. When I use this plugin, my sites get listed in these search engines usually within 24 hours. Amazing!
3. Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email – this plugin helps readers/visitors share information they found with others via email, bookmarks, or any of the social media outlets (Facebook, MySpace, etc.). This plugin is valuable because it makes for easy content distribution, doesn’t add a lot of clutter to your posts/pages, has Google Analytics integration. Try it out and see for yourself – it is located at the bottom of this post!
4. WP-Spam Free- nobody likes spam. When your blog/site increases in popularity, the amount of spam increases exponentially. This plugin eliminates virtually all spam from your comments. It works silently in the background so there is no need for CAPTCHA’s or anything like that. This spam blocker also is very light on the CPU/bandwidth front. Unlike some other spam blockers, this one won’t slow down the load times of your site.
5. Google Analyticator- this was the first Google Analytics tracking plugin for Wordpress. As such, it is the most popular as well. It supports all of the tracking mechanisms that Google Analytics supports such as external link tracking, download tracking, tracking without counting administrative users, and any other advanced tracking the user wishes to add. Google Analyticator works with a majority of themes as long as these themes provide the proper plugin hooks.
6. Date Exclusion- this is a handy plugin that eliminates the date/time stamp from your posts after a decided time period. Nothing like having an ‘out dated’ post on your site!
7. Easy AdSense – if you’re into using Google AdSense then this is the plugin to have. It makes setting up, placing ads, and inserting code a snap.
8. WPtouch iPhone Theme – this plugin rocks! It is much more than a plugin – it is a complete theme generator that transformers your WordPress site into a slick looking and operating site for not only iPhones but also works on all wireless devices like the BlackBerry. I’ve also found that sites (when viewed on a mobile device) load extremely fast. Awesome!
9. WP Follow Me – is a plugin that allows you to add a Twitter follow me tag to your site. You can change the colour of the badge as well as its position within your WordPress site. Great for those of you who love to tweet.
10. Shadow Box JS- this plugin allows users to display a large assortment of media in all major browsers without having the viewer navigate away from the linking page. It is written entirely in JavaScript and CSS and is very customizable. I like using this because it works and it adds to the visual appeal of my sites.
There you have it – my top ten Wordpress plugins that I cannot live without!
