Plug photo by Adam Mulligan on Flickr
One of the neat aspects about WordPress is nobody owns it. The blog platform, as an open source community, is collectively shared by anyone and everyone who contribute code and provide feedback about what works and what needs improvement. With more than 1,300 themes and over 13,000 plugins, the appearance and functionality of any WordPress blog is up to the blog owner's imagination.
When you read an article on my blog and see related links underneath it, those links are generated by a plugin. When you add a comment and John replies to you, a plugin emails you that comment. When a search engine robot visits this blog and wants to know how different posts and pages are interconnected, a plugin creates that sitemap.
Some popular plugins that other people swear by, such as for search engine optimization on a blog, are not used here because the Thesis theme (which is used here) includes that functionality. Other plugins which are activated one day may be deactivated the next day for the simple reason that a different plugin may provide a different feature.
Looking back over the past 2+ years, plugins have come and gone on this blog, ebbing and flowing from 15 plugins in December 2008 to 23 plugins in March 2009 to 22 plugins in September 2009 to 35 plugins in February 2010 to 23 plugins in October 2010.
It is time for an updated list.
17 Plugins Used Everyday
1. CommentLuv is the reason why if you write a comment and include your blog in the website field, your most-recent blog post will appear under your text after you hit the "submit" button.
2. Comment Redirect, upon submission of your first comment on this blog, points you to a thank you page while that comment lies in moderation. Only your first will be moderated, per the comment policy, to ensure you are not spamming.
3. Feed Pauser halts the syndication of a new blog post for up to 20 minutes to let me ensure there are no typos and that the published appearance is how it was intended.
4. Google XML Sitemaps helps search engine robots know what the site looks like, enabling you to see the best post when searching for a keyword. Want to see the map?
5. Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin is responsible for the checkbox at the bottom of the comment form. By clicking it, you further prove (if the moderation failed) that you are not a spammer.
6. KeywordLuv works like CommentLuv; but while the latter provides a link to your last blog post, the former enables you to separate your name from keywords describing your website. If used properly, this will reward you with improved anchor text.
For example, writing Stephen @ Custom WordPress Plugins in the name field results in Stephen from Custom WordPress Plugins. Don't merely write your blog name as the keyword, but use contextual words. When I write my name on blogs like Kikolani, I write Ari Herzog @ Social Web Tips. If you want to use this plugin on your own blog, you must enable the DoFollow plugin (or scroll below to learn how I get around the plugin).
7. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer prevents search engines from being alerted every time a page or post is updated. Without this plugin, you run the risk of search engines thinking you're a spammer.
8. Page Links To is used to redirect older posts or pages to newer posts or pages. I use this for a few pages, though you'd never see it as everything happens behind the scenes. (While the newest version of Thesis includes this functionality, I keep the plugin intact or else I'd have a lot of broken links.)
9. PostRank also runs invisibly and shows me metrics about the popularity of blog posts to help me know what you like to read and what you hate.
10. ReplyMe emails any comment author when someone replies. This single plugin is responsible for a tremendous increase in threaded comments - and insightful conversations.
11. RSS Footer inserts a customized line of code at the bottom of every blog post whether you receive it by RSS or other means. The script also prevents would-be scammers from ripping me off and portraying my work as theirs.
12. Simple Trackback Validation is gobbledygook that reduces spam trackbacks by confirming the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the address of the web server the URL is referring, and then checking the remote web page and ensuring that page has a link to this blog.
13. Subscribe to Comments emails any comment author whenever there is a new comment. (Note this gives you all comments, whereas ReplyMe only gives you comments in reply to your comment.) It's incredible how many WordPress blogs lack this simple and effective code to improve communications.
14. Twitterlink Comments lets you input your Twitter username which converts that into a link for people to follow you.
15. WordPress Database Backup runs every 24 hours and emails me a file to restore this blog in case something happens.
16. WPTouch provides a mobile-friendly view of this blog for smartphones and other mobile devices. Let me know if it doesn't work for you.
17. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin generates up to three links at the end of every blog post that share common categories or tags.
6 Inactive Plugins Used Occasionally
These are plugins that are installed but activated infrequently to conduct time-specific actions.
1. Categories to Tags Converter converts categories to tags, and tags to categories. This is used a few times to change the taxonomy.
2. Contact Commenters, the subject of an earlier article illustrating how to turn a lurker into a user, enables me to target email messages to people who comment on specific posts or haven't commented in a given period of time. It's sometimes viewed as controversial but is generally accepted.
3. Maintenance Mode is an "under construction" splash page that temporarily appears when I make programming changes and don't want you to see anything. When I upgrade WordPress versions, for instance, I activate this plugin. The rest of the time, it remains inactive.
4. Simple Tags lets me bulk edit categories and tags associated with posts.
5. Top Commentators ascertains who are the top people who wrote comments over a given period, with links to whatever URL they wrote when commenting. This plugin was responsible for the list of the top 70 commenters of January.
6. WP Options Manager is a plugin not to be taken lightly. It lets you delete tables from your blog database. I've used it occasionally to delete stored information from deleted plugins.
A note about DoFollow
The KeywordLuv plugin specifies that in order for it to work, the DoFollow plugin must run simultaneously.
DoFollow runs on this blog, but not as a plugin. As I shared with Christy Correll about plugins affecting load time, someone pointed me to a PHP script that runs as a custom function on this blog.
function do_follow_commenters($output) { return str_replace(" rel='external nofollow'", "", $output); } add_filter('get_comment_author_link', 'do_follow_commenters');Do you use any of these plugins?
Or, are you a fan of a plugin not included above?
Got a question about plugins?
-- Thanks for reading 17 Plugins to Improve Your WordPress Blog by Ari Herzog.
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