Live.Awake

Favorite WordPress Plugins

// June 12th, 2008 // General, Site News

I use WordPress to power this blog. WordPress is an open-source blogging platform, and in my opinion, is the best at what it does. One of the things that makes it great is the community that helps develop and support it. Between the abundance of free themes and creative plugins, there really isn’t much it can’t do.

Every year the WordPress community takes a month to honor the creativity and brilliance of WP plugin authors. In support of the community, I thought I would list for you the plugins I use (and could not/would not live without).

1. Akismet – spam filter extraordinaire. It uses a database of spam definitions that is fed by every akismet user. It’s a brilliant idea. Every time I flag a comment as spam, that definition is added to the database so that every other akismet user will not get that spam. It’s works flawlessly for me.
2. Subscribe to Comments – Allows a commenter to subscribe to a comment string by checking a box when they comment. Then they get an email when other comments are made on that post. It’s a great way to encourage commenting.
3. Wordpress.com Stats – Gives you all the stats you care about without a bunch of information you don’t need. In addition, the stats are generated on a Wordpress server, not your own. So no wasted bandwidth.
4. Wordpress Mobile Edition – This is an awesome plugin. It detects if someone is viewing your site with a mobile browser and displays a mobile-friendly theme that is formatted to fit a small size screen.
5. Ajax Edit Comments – I love it and users love it. It allows me to edit comments without using the admin. I can do it all right from the post itself. It also allows a commenter to edit their own comment for a set period of time. I also love how it integrates so nicely into my theme.
6. WP PageNavi – Allows me to use the page navigation that you see at the bottom of the page instead of the default WP one (Prev Post – Next Post).
7. Share This – Puts all the social bookmarking functionality in one package under one button. It also allows a user to send the post by email to a friend or post about it directly to their blog. You can completely customize the look of the pop-up box to fit your theme too.
8. WP DB Manager – After Akismet, this is the first plugin I install on a new blog. It goes way beyond a simple backup manager. It does scheduled backups that you can choose to have emailed to you. it will schedule database optimizations and more. It’s insurance for your blog.
9. Lightbox 2 – Automatically converts all linked images in a post to use the lightbox effect. It’s pure eye-candy, but why not? Just install it and forget about it.
10. Maintenance Mode – This ought to be built into WP. Turn it on, and visitors will see a message saying that the site is undergoing maintenance and to try back after a set amount of time. It’s great to use when you are upgrading or tweaking your site.
11. Best Foot Forward – Allows you to display a list of best posts as a widget in the sidebar. Lots of configuration options for how you want it to display. This is a good way to introduce first-timers to your best content.
12. Full Text Feed – Allows you to deliver full text RSS feeds even when you use the “Read More” divider. This also should be a built in option in WP, but isn’t yet. This option is now available.
13. Scripturizer – Automatically converts scripture references to links. You can also opt to have a javascript drop-down appear that displays the scripture from your choice of translations. John 3:16
14. Similar Posts – This plugin displays a list of posts related to the current one.  It’s the most sophisticated one I’ve been able to find.  It generates the list based on keywords found in the post, category, title, tags, etc.  There are lots of config options too.  This will make it easier for visitors to get lost in your content.

Those are the main ones. There are a few others that do little things that are conveniences to me. If you use WordPress, feel free to add to the list in the comments.

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