One of the big questions after you install your first WordPress blog is, “What are the best WordPress plugins to use on my blog?”
There are plugins to accommodate just about any need you might have. WordPress plugins help you automate tasks, get more subscribers, insert video and audio into your posts, hide content from non-paying members, get better search engine rankings and the list goes on-and-on. With the right plugins you can turn your blog into a podcasting machine, or a shopping cart, or a photo album. With WordPress at the core of your site as your content management system and with the right kind of plugins the sky is the limit and the world is your oyster.
Ahem.
You can find free plugins at WordPress.org which is where you can download most of the suggestions I give below.
So what are the basic plugins everyone should have, no matter what? Here are a few suggestions to get you started based on my experience with WordPress so far on my own sites and on the many client sites I’ve helped set up.
Akismet – This plugin comes with your WordPress installation and it’s the first one I recommend that you enable and configure. It helps prevent comment spamming on your blog automatically and you gotta love that. It requires a WordPress.com API key that you can sign up for and get for free. It’s great to check into your WordPress Dashboard and see “Akismet has protected your site from 42 spam comments already, but there’s nothing in your spam queue at the moment.”
If you want to add another layer of comment spam protection you can also install WP-SpamFree. It seems to stop some SPAM that Akismet misses.
All-In-One SEO Pack – Since you’re spending so much time, money and effort on your blog you want people to read it right? Well that means getting it ranked well in search engines. The All-In-One SEO pack provides you with easy ways to fine-tune the way your posts appear to the search engines. It lets you specify the exact keywords and phrases you want the search engines to rank your posts for. I think this plugin could be one of the main reasons that WordPress blogs get ranked so quickly and so highly.
WordPress Duplicate Content Cure – Another plugin to help you with SEO. Duplicate content cure is a very simple, yet effective SEO plugin that prevents search engines from indexing wordpress pages that contain duplicate content, like archives and category pages.
Google XML Site Maps – This is another plugin to help your blog get indexed and ranked well, this time specifically for Google. The best way to tell Google about your site is by putting an XML sitemap on your site formatted to their specifications. This plugin automates the process for you so you don’t have to know XML or the Google specs. Each time you update your blog this plugin updates your site maps and that tells Google precisely what they can find on your site. It gives you an edge over your competition in the search engines if they are skipping this important step of site building.
Ultimate Google Analytics – Another great plugin to help you if you are using Google Analytics on your site. (You ARE using Google Analytics, right?) Besides being a quick way to put the Google Analytics tracker code on every post/page of your blog without updating any templates, this plugin can also help you track the use of your admin pages and keep track of your downloads and how many people use your external links which is what I like best about it.
Register Plus – This plugin lets you customize the WordPress login page. If anyone besides you uses your blog to login and make their comments or if you allow other people to post on your blog this can allow you to make the login page look like it is a real part of your site. You can add a custom logo, let people pick their own password, use a captcha to keep out those pesky robots, add additional profile fields for your users and more.
cForms – You don’t want to expose your email address to spam harvesters but you do want your visitors to be able to contact you, am I right? cForms allows you to easily put a contact form on your web site. It can handle much more than that though. You can set up any number of forms for any purpose you have. The only downside to this plugin is that they are constantly updating it with new features, which is great, but usually you can’t just click the automatic upgrade button to install the new version. They usually make you disable, install and re-enable it after you download it, unzip it and FTP the updates to your site. But I find that it is worth it for what it can do.
FeedSmith FeedBurner – Google has acquired FeedBurner so if you have a Google account you can get a free FeedBurner account. FeedBurner and the FeedSmith plugin allow you to redirect your WordPress feed into FeedBurner and that allows you to know how many people have subscribed to your blog via RSS. You’ve probably seen these little graphics on blogs that say how many readers they have. This is how you get that.
Action Comments – This is not a free plugin but it is worth every penny if you are building a list with your blog by using an autoresponder service like AWeber. This plugin adds a checkbox to your comments form so that when visitors comment on your blog posts they can choose to be subscribed to your list automatically at the same time. If you have a popular blog that generates lots of comments then you could potentially build a big list very quickly. They say the money is in the list! You can purchase this plugin by itself or it is also sold as a bundle with two other plugins: Action Popup – pops up your list subscription form when they try to leave your site, and Action Optin which allows you to change your regular on-page form with a version that submits the form in the background so the visitor does not leave your page when they subscribe to your list. All three are very powerful.
My Affiliate Link for Action Comments: http://kengary.actioncomments.com.
The Regular Link for Action Comments: http://www.actioncomments.com.
MemberShip Academy aMember Widget and Incremental Content Plugins – If you are using WordPress as a part of a membership site that is being protected with aMember then I highly recommend getting these two WordPress plugins for aMember from the Membership Academy. The aMember widget allows you to put a member signin on your blog pages. Once the member is signed in they are greeted with their name and they have links to their profile page plus you can configure it for them to see the products they’ve purchased from you so far with links to them which makes it easier for them to consume your products which makes them happier customers. The Incremental Content widget can show your members their next months lessons as you release the content incrementally to them. Get it? They are both available once you join the Membership Academy, which I highly recommend for anyone with a membership site (if you want it to be successful that is).
My Affiliate Link for Membership Academy: http://www.membershipacademy.com/
The Regular Link for Membership Academy: http://www.membershipacademy.com
amProtect – This is a plugin I myself wrote and I sell it here on this site. It works with aMember to completely hide and protect posts and pages from non-members or members who have not yet purchased a specific product. It is best for those situations where you do not want anyone to know about content that they have not purchased yet.
I use a lot of other plugins too for things like adding videos to my posts, keeping track of how many views each post gets, and other “application specific” tasks that I need for each of my blogs depending on how I use it so I won’t go into all of them here. Suffice it to say you can get a plugin for whatever you want and if you can’t find a plugin to do what you need then let me know…maybe I can write it for you. And remember, if you need any help installing or configuring plugins for your WordPress blog I provide a WordPress Plugin Installation Service right here at Kencinnus Web Site Development.
I’d love to hear what your favorite WordPress plugins are so please tell me in the comments below.
And, oh, until the technology catches up I have not yet found the plugin that would allow you to send a different designer scent of your choice for each post to the reader’s Smell-O-Matic enabled browser. But I’m sure it’s coming and will be available first in the media console of your flying car.
Hey Ken-
Thanks for this killer list… I was just about to email you and ask how to stop spam comments when I saw this post.
Also, you really did an awesome job on my blog, bro. I’ve been getting serious kudos on the upgrade, but I have to tell them it was all you.
I can’t recommend your service highly enough. You’re easy to work with (even for a technophobe like me)… your price was more than fair… and best of all, you got it done FAST!
Thanks for helping me take it to the next level, the payoff is immediate and ongoing.
Best,
Kevin
Thanks Kevin!
I think you have an excellent blog and I really enjoyed pimping it out for you with your new Thesis theme.
Ken
Excellent post Ken! Figuring out what plugins you need when there are so many can be a daunting task.
I do think you missed one on this list though..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl6RWyHylvs
-Lance
PS: I saw what you put together for Kevin… send me an email sometime!
Hey, I really appreciate this! Thanks!
I’m gonna go look into that Smart YouTube plugin for WordPress.
I am using one on another site called Comment Image Uploader that lets readers upload pictures to my site in the comments and I really like that one too.
thank you, ken, for this excellent list. i’m going to bookmark your site. what it think i want is something to connect my register plus plug in with a whatever system i end up using for email management. like aweber or response2.0.
background on my situation: to enable my visitors to post to the blog site i’m building, i installed register plus. i thought the reg info the user entered could be sent to the autoresponder system i would soon be getting. but i think i have to have users first optin to an autoresponder, and then, in order to get UN and PW to post, register again with my reg plus system.
unless there’s something i don’t know or don’t understand, seems to me there should be a way to combine these two steps into one.
thanks for your time, and for the useful information you provide here!
edgey
p.s. your captcha code text box is displaying about an eighth of an inch wide. the red on pink code is very hard to read too.
Hey Edgey! Usually you need some sort of real membership system, such as aMember or Wishlist Member (and there are others) for WordPress and those systems have ways to stitch together the user registration with the autoresponder signup automatically. My aMail for AWeber plugin works with aMember to do that for you. I haven’t seen it come together with the free WordPress plugins in one step. Ken
Hi Ken, I am here on your site throw membership academy. I am bying your amprotect plugin after I have had answer from David about best option. I like your site lot of good info and plugins. I am making a wordpress blog together with Amember protection. I want to show a lot of videos on this blog and maybe you can tell me what plugin you use to show them. I need one were I can embed code because I have uploaded my videos to AmazonS3. Hope you can help me.
Hey Anja!
Thank you for your purchase of amProtect. I really appreciate your business.
I love putting together sites in WordPress, especially ones that show videos. For the past two years I’ve been using the video hosting service at Blip.TV. It costs $8/month or you can pay ahead for a full year. You can upload your videos in any format that you have them in and they will convert them to FLV and even MP3 for you automatically then you can download those and have them to use however you want (and as a backup). Once your videos are hosted there they let you configure players for them and they give you the embed code that you can put in your WordPress posts. I haven’t used Vimeo.com but I hear it is very similar.
As long as you use Blip.TV for videos you don’t mind being public, such as sales videos or free tutorials then it works great. It is sort of like YouTube where anyone can go to Blip.TV and browse or search their site and see whatever has been uploaded. Of course you do have some privacy settings which you can take advantage of, but your videos are “out there”.
If your video is your product then I think going with Amazon S3 is a great choice. Recently I have signed up for that service, but I have also signed up for an account at EZS3.com to go along with it. They charge $20/month and they sort of give you the same service that Blip.TV does, but it works with your Amazon S3 account. They give you an easy file uploader so you can upload your files to your AS3 account. Once you’ve done that they also give you the ability to configure a lot of different style players and then give you the code to embed in your WordPress posts. It really is easy. You can put security on the players so they only work on your domain. Plus if someone reads the code on your page they can’t really tell where the actual video file is so it protects someone from directly accessing and downloading the file.
I think its the best way to go, especially when the video is your product.
Hope that helps!
Ken