{"id":5071,"date":"2010-02-10T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=5071"},"modified":"2012-04-17T07:04:51","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:04:51","slug":"must-have-wordpress-plugins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/must-have-wordpress-plugins\/","title":{"rendered":"11 must have WordPress plugins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’m building more and more websites and blogs on the WordPress engine<\/a>. <\/p>\n

(If you haven’t taken a look at it lately, it’s so much more than just a blogging platform.)<\/p>\n

I’ve realized more and more that I’ve got a number of “must-have” plugins that I install as soon as I setup any site I work on — no matter what it’s for (even my local demo sites). <\/p>\n

I’ve actually tried to cut down on many of the plugins I used to use (I no longer use Lightbox on most of my sites, rarely use social button type plugins — opting to hard code the links<\/a> instead) in order to speed up page load times.<\/p>\n

Yet, there are some that I’ve become so accustomed to using on various sites that I get lost without them.
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\nHere they are in no particular order:<\/p>\n

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  1. Akismet<\/a><\/strong> – while this one comes with each WordPress install it’s not activated by default. So you may not even realize it’s there — you’ll need to activate a WordPress.com account and get an API key — but it’s totally worth the extra step to activate it.<\/li>\n
  2. Flickr Photo Album for WordPress<\/a><\/strong> – this is such a great, useful tool to have in your arsenal. It links directly to your Flickr account<\/a>, making importing photos from Flickr a breeze. It also builds a custom photo gallery<\/a> with all your photos and lets you easily search and add creative commons<\/a> photos to each post from Flickr’s vast library as well.<\/li>\n
  3. DISQUS Comment System<\/a><\/strong> – I was a hold out on this one for a while, I like the way WordPress handles comments (and still do) but after seeing more and more sites moving to DISQUS or Intense Debate I took the jump and now use the plugin and service on just about all my sites. I can definitely say I’ve seen an increase in comments since installing it, likely because of the ease of use for folks — they don’t have to sign up for another<\/em> log in if they don’t want to. Let’s you use your Twitter, Facebook, Open ID and other logins on multiple sites.<\/li>\n
  4. Follow Me<\/a><\/strong> – I used to import my Tweets up in the header of this blog but with Twitter’s too often downtime or sluggish performance, it also killed my site’s load time. This is a great alternative. You can see the “Follow Me” button now on the side of the page and it’s a quick, easy reminder for folks to find me on Twitter as well.<\/li>\n
  5. Google XML Sitemaps<\/a><\/strong> – while I can’t guarantee this is the sole cause, I do believe that this plugin has been a big help in increasing my search engine (Google especially) visibility. And the nice thing about it is, once it’s setup it takes care fo the rest, running in the background. You never have to worry with it again.<\/li>\n
  6. Get Recent Comments<\/a><\/strong> – there are a number of plugins that do this same thing — show your most recent comments in the sidebar. This one’s worked for me from the beginning and it’s the one I use over and over again.<\/li>\n
  7. Recently Popular<\/a><\/strong> – another one that’s one out of many. The plugin let’s you easily customize a time frame and show your site’s most popular posts within that time frame. It’s great for helping add some “stickiness” to your site for those folks who come via Google or other search engines.<\/li>\n
  8. The Holy Scripturizer<\/a><\/strong> – this is greatness. I don’t actually use it on every site (as not all of them will use Scripture references) but for those that do, this one is a super time saver. Automatically links any Scripture reference to BibleGateway.com and your translation of choice.<\/li>\n
  9. Viper’s Video Quicktags<\/a><\/strong> – an absolute must in my toolbox. This one allows you to quickly embed videos from a huge number of sites and embeds them with code that actually validates — WOoT!<\/li>\n
  10. WordPress Database Backup<\/a><\/strong> – I’ve gotten so used to this simply “being there and doing it’s thing” that I was talking about it to someone a while back as if it was built into the WordPress engine itself. I love it! It automatically sends a database backup to either your server or an e-mail address (you can also download a copy manually as well). I have all of my sites set to back up to a GMail<\/a> account (which has virtually unlimited space) so I always have a daily backup of my database each and every day.\n
  11. Twitter Link Shortcut<\/a><\/strong> – I was just waiting for someone to write this plugin… and when they didn’t, I decided to write my own. Adds a simple button to the WordPress post toolbar that easily turns any selected text into a Twitter username link. So, jdblundell becomes @jdblundell<\/a><\/span> with the click of a button.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Honorable mentions:<\/p>\n