My Top 10 Essential WordPress Plugins

Posted In Blogging | 5 comments


Nearly every week I have people emailing me about the best WordPress plugins to use for their blogs.

While there are tons of plugins I “could” use, there are 10 plugins that I think ought to be considered when building a WordPress blog (and I’m talking about WordPress on your own domain here, not WordPress.com).

Here’s my list of 10 essential “free” plugins for WordPress (in no particular order):

1. An Advertising Plugin

There are several to choose from, and in the past used to use Max Banner Ads or Advertising Manger quite heavily. I still use Max Banner Ads on quite a few sites, however I use the paid version to get rid of the ‘attribution link’. I’m not sure what’s going on with the “Advertising Manager’ plugin, but their site is down…

So, I’ve started to use another plugin called AdRotate to display CPA and Adsense ads on my site(s).

On some sites I prefer to display a call to action message to visitors, in which case I use the What would Seth Godin do plugin (this plugin is very useful).

 

2. Google Sitemap Generator

I think everybody should have the Google XML Sitemaps or some kind of XML Sitemap plugin. It will help search engine spiders / robots index your site more efficiently (not only Google, but Bing / Yahoo, Ask.com and other search engines as well).

 

3. SEO Plug-in

I use the Platinum SEO Pack plugin for many of my sites. Not because it’s necessarily the best, but because it’s what I’m familiar with. There’s also All-in-One SEO plugin, which I hear is great as well.

Having said that, I generally use Premium Themes with built-in SEO functionality these days, which negates the need for an SEO plugin.

 

4. Exclude Pages

I use Exclude Pages plugin to remove pages I don’t want in my navigation bar (or in the sidebar widget), such as the “Privacy Policy”, “Disclaimer” and “Terms of Service” types of pages (which I generally put in the footer of the blog). This plugin isn’t necessary with many of the newer themes since they have the custom menu feature available, but for those that don’t this is very handy.

 

5. Secure WordPress

WordPress security is important! The Secure WordPress plugin helps improves security of your blog in many areas, which will make it a little more challenging for hackers to mess with your sites. I use this on nearly all of my blogs.

 

6. TinyMCE Advanced

TinyMCE Advanced improves upon your WYSIWYG editor (WYSIWYG = what you see is what you get). It also allows you to customize the menu layout of your post editor.

 

7. Yet Another Related Posts

The Yet Another Related Posts plugin allows you to bring up related posts after your blog entries (and in your RSS feeds). This is great for larger blogs and can reduce the bounce rates of your blogs as well.

 

8. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a super simple way to add a contact form to your blog. Simply enable the plugin, add a little token to your page and voila you have a contact form for your site. (I recommend you ALWAYS add a contact form on all of your blogs).

 

9. Google Analytics for WordPress

I recommend you always have some type of a statistics / analytics plugin for your site. This is especially important in the event you plan on flipping your sites since people will want to see traffic stats when buying a site. I personally use Google Analytics for WordPress on most of my sites, but if you’re “anti-Google”, you can also use other services such as StatPress, StatCounter or GetClicky (they all have WordPress plugins that integrate easily).

Note: you need to setup a Google analytics account to use this plugin (the account is free).

 

10. Akismet

You need comment spam protection on your site. I use Akismet on all of my sites. I also use WP-Captcha Free on many of my blogs which helps prevent automated comment spam. Akismet is automatically installed when you install WordPress.

Note: you’ll need to get a wordpress.com account (which is free) to get your Akismet API key.

 

There you have it! My list of 10 “essential” plugins.

I also have a list of “must have” paid plugins and ancillary plugins I use on various blogs as well. But I’ll leave that for another post.

Do you have any plugins that you feel are essential?
Please share in the comment section!

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Leave A Reply (5 comments So Far)

  • http://comingsoon... Rachel Webb

    Steven,

    Which advertising plugin are you using on this site?

    Thanks!

  • http://www.davidalanramsdale.com David

    Steven,

    great list and Akismet does what you say, but i dont think its free anymore, has a free 30 day trial, but then after that… not cheap, annual billing, peace, david

  • http://www.wpsqueezepage.com/ Ron

    Good list although exclude pages is no longer needed. Any theme worth it’s salt has been updated to be compatible with WP 3.0 menus.

    I would add WP Optimize to the list, it cleans out old post revisions and optimizes your database making your site faster.

    • Steven

      You’re right, Exclude Pages is no longer needed. :)
      I do know some premium themes that are missing the “WP Menus”… which is why I decided to include it.

      Thanks for the heads up on WP Optimize. I haven’t used it personally. Will have to include it (on some of my larger blogs).

      Thanks!
      Steven

Steven
WP Socializer Aakash Web