10 WordPress Plugins to Grow Great Sites

We run quite a few WordPress blogs, and these fantastic plugins manage to pop up on nearly all of them

1. Akismet- It is hard to grow a site when you keep getting comment spam. Hardly anything gets through, and it is very simple to use.
2. All in One SEO Pack- This optimizes like you wouldn’t believe. You can fix your titles, keywords, descriptions, block spiders, and more. I’ve been able to get great results with small sites.
3. FeedBurner FeedSmith- You can manage your feed subscribers much more easily and utilize the great functions of FeedBurner.
4. Google XML Sitemaps- A great boost to SEO. Google uses sitemaps to help them determine what information should be indexed. This plugin helps.
5. Lighter Menus- Let’s face it, drop down menus are much faster to navigate, and you don’t need to waste time or space when working on your site. (This is not needed for WordPress 2.7 and above)
6. Plugin Central- Easily install and update plugins from your dashboard. Since you don’t need to use ftp anymore, you can quickly manage plugins anywhere. I think it is still easier than WordPress 2.7’s autoupdate for plugins.
7. Subscribe To Comments- Let people receive notification that someone responded to their comment. It may be useful to them, and may also bring them back to the site. Always encourage discussion.
8. WassUp- Real time stats (OS, browser, host, referrer, location, top content, top searches) help you determine which content and marketing efforts are working, and give you immediate satisfaction when you have site visitors. Plus, there are great sort options.
9. Wordpress Thread Comment- The site may be hard to understand, but setup is simple, and you get an attractive, useful implementation of threaded comments upon activation. WordPress 2.7 added threaded comments, but this is easier and better, in my opinion.
10. WP-DBManager- You never know if something will go wrong with your database. Back it up and optimize it at least once a month.

Notable omissions:

• WP Super Cache- When your site becomes a hit, you will probably want to cache your pages so your server is not overrun. For sites with less traffic, a cache plugin can be annoying since you can not see updates to your site immediately.
• Post-Plugin Library- Great for a power user, it lets you use the connected Similar Posts, Recent Comments, and Random Comments. I was able to combine with the custom field to display an image with each similar post. However, it breaks many other plugins and can cause errors in WordPress. Update: These plugins are not buggy anymore, and are very powerful.

What other plugins do you use?

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10 Responses

1. Victor Franco says:

   July 28, 2008 at 5:52 pm

   Great content you’ve produced! This is a great place to find those plugins that every WP user must have. Congratulations.

   Reply
2. Mohsen says:

   July 29, 2008 at 7:54 am

   Great list, I really didn’t know some of them

   Reply
3. Tracey says:

   July 29, 2008 at 9:09 am

   Nice article — thanks; some great info!

   One additional plugin to use with caution: Adsense Managers — I have tried 2 and have had very mixed results in WP 2.5 and above, so approach with caution, and test on your test site (you DO have a test site, don’t you??!!) first if your blog is important to your business!

   Tracey

   Reply

   

   admin Reply:
   July 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

   Thanks for the warning. I use a test site, but only for major changes. I also backup my files and database regularly.

   Reply
4. Gary Taylor says:

   July 29, 2008 at 6:27 pm

   I’m starting to use WPlite on my sites. It allows me (as admin) to turn off various settings that might otherwise scare the people who need to simply write a few words, upload an image and hit a ‘Publish’ button.

   WP_Geo_Map is proving useful too, though it doesn’t have the two additional features I need (to be able to plan a route to a point and to have different sized maps on different pages) to make it perfect.

   Reply

   

   admin Reply:
   July 29th, 2008 at 8:45 pm

   WP_Geo_Map seems like a very useful plugin. I have used the Google Maps API in the past with some great results.

   I can see how WPlite would help out some users. I usually train users when I set up WordPress, so I show them what they need to know, and hope that they are interested in learning the more advanced features of WordPress.

   Reply
5. gmastasquirrel says:

   July 29, 2008 at 8:12 pm

   great article. Going to take your advice and use some of these. I agree that with a small site, super cache is VERY annoying. Maybe one day, I’ll be a hit and then super cache will be a good thing. Thanks.

   Reply
6. Leonaut.com says:

   August 10, 2008 at 7:57 pm

   10 WordPress Plugins to Grow Great Sites…

   A great list of wp-plugins, anyone who uses wordPress or makes sites should know about these plugins.…
7. Sajid Latif says:

   June 5, 2009 at 12:59 am

   great article. Going to take your advice and use some of these.

   Reply
8. Read This Link » 10 WordPress Plugins to Grow Great Sites says:

   January 9, 2010 at 8:03 pm

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