A change of pace from all the doom-and-gloom…
As a newcomer to blogging, I’ve been learning a lot on the fly. I chose WordPress as my platform because it’s open-source software, with a reputation for having a large and enthusiastic user community and (thus) being very easy to modify via free third-party plugins.
It’s certainly lived up to that reputation, and I’ve found myself using quite a lot of those plugins to customize and streamline my blogging experience. In particular, I use the following (including the one that automatically generated this handy hotlinked list!), and cheerfully recommend them to others:
Active Plugins
Akismet 2.2.7
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
Enhanced Links 4.2.3
» Vincent Prat (url)
Allows to get better control over the links listing. Also provides a widget view of the links. Please make a donation if you are satisfied.
Google XML Sitemaps 3.2.2
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
In Series 3.0.12
» Travis Snoozy (url)
Gives authors an easy way to connect posts together as a series.
Insights 1.0.2
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Insights allows you to quickly search and insert information (links, images, videos, maps, news..) into your blog posts.
Live Blogroll 0.6.2
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Shows a number of ‘recent posts’ for each link in your Blogroll using Ajax.
Maintenance Mode 4.4
» Michael Wöhrer (url)
Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Settings → Maintenance Mode to get started.
My Category Order 2.8.7
» Andrew Charlton (url)
My Category Order allows you to set the order in which categories will appear in the sidebar. Uses a drag and drop interface for ordering. Adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.
NoFollow Free 1.6.2
» Michele Marcucci (url)
Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… Supports multilingual and a Top Commenters sidebar Widget.
Nofollow Reciprocity 2.3.1
» Lazar Kovacevic (url)
Searches for links to large sites using ‘nofollow’ tags for external links, and puts the same tag on links to those sites (Wikipedia.org, StumbleUpon.com, and similar) Added top 1000 sites from Quantcast.com. This plugin is based on Wikipedia nofollow and Identify External Links.
Obfuscate E-mail 2.0
» Scott Reilly (url)
Obfuscate e-mail addresses that appear as text in your blog in an effort to deter e-mail harvesting spammers while retaining the appearance and functionality of hyperlinks.
Platinum SEO Pack 1.3.2
» Rajesh - Techblissonline Dot Com (url)
Complete SEO solution for your Wordpress blog.
Post Updated R1
» Kaf Oseo (url)
Display notice/date/time of when a post was last updated.
Pre Date Future Post 1.3
» Brodie Thiesfield (url)
Allows you to set posts to appear automatically in the future, but have a post date in the past.
SEO Smart Links 2.4
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
ShareThis 3.2
» ShareThis (url)
Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. Configuration options are here. Questions on configuration, etc.? Make sure to read the README.
Show Me Options 0.2
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Allows you to quckly access plugin options upon activation.
SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam 2.2.9
» Mike Challis (url)
Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress on the comment form, registration form, login, or all. This prevents spam from automated bots. Also is WPMU and BuddyPress compatible. Settings | Donate
Simple Tags 1.7.4.4
» Amaury BALMER (url)
Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.8 and 2.9 ! Suggested Tags, Mass edit tags, Autocompletion, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Related Tags, etc!
Simple Trackback Validation 2.1
» Michael Woehrer (url)
Eliminates spam trackbacks by (1) checking if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to and (2) by retrieving the web page located at the URL used in the trackback and checking if the page contains a link to your blog.
Theme Test Drive 2.7.4
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. Includes instant theme preview via thumbnail.
Theme Toolkit 0.1
» Grzegorz Winiarski (url)
Rich Theme Editor. Allows to edit theme files in pretty much the same way as any other offline editor. Go to Design -> Theme Toolkit for setup.
TinyMCE Advanced 3.2.7
» Andrew Ozz (url)
Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE, the visual editor in WordPress.
WordPress.com Stats 1.6.2
» Andy Skelton (url)
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
WordPress Tweaks 1.8
» John Lamansky (url)
Adds a variety of useful options and settings, accessible at Settings > Tweaks.
WP-Footnotes 3.3
» Simon Elvery (url)
Allows a user to easily add footnotes to a post.
WP-PluginsUsed 1.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.
WP-Print 2.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
WP-UserOnline 2.61
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Enable you to display how many users are online on your Wordpress blog with detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots).
WP Easy Uploader 1.0.11
» Chris Jean (url)
Easily upload any type of content without the need for FTP. You can even upload plugin and theme archives and have the files automatically extract into the plugin or theme folder.
Entries (RSS)
Here’s another cool one you might want to try – Kaltura’s Interactive Video plugin. This is not just another video embed tool – the plugin enables you to enhance your blog with a full video experience. Upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix video content, enable video responses, manage and track your video content and much more…
Check it out and download it here: http://corp.kaltura.com/wordpress_video_plugin?general&campaign=wordpress-comments
Showcase your blog, see examples and pictures of the plugin and get support in our forum: http://community.kaltura.org/viewforum.php?f=4
I don\’t normally leave comments! But what you said here makes one think! Would you mind if I placed a link back from my blog?
Allows a user to easily add footnotes to a post
thank’s sarah palin
i’m arabian and i feel sad because that arabian sources and articles about seo is too poor .. so i hope that everybody talkes about seo in english will use an easy english .. like that post above
I’m just curious. You list the WP-Print Plugin as being one you use…but, I don’t see any indication of how to print, using it, on your posts. (I didn’t look at your “pages” so, for all I know, you only have it toggled only to work there. When I’m done posting this comment, I’ll go take a look to see if that’s the case.)
Like you, I use Mandigo–an elegant template–for my blog. I’ve been trying to get WP-Print to work with it…and have had no success. So, I’m mainly curious to see if you have also not been able to get it to work.
Here’s my blog: http://logicalhomebuyer.com
Jay in Madison
Jay, thanks for the comment about the WP_Print plugin. Dropping by your own site, I see you’ve figured out how to get it working. I’m embarrassed to admit that after reading your comment, I realized that although I’d configured the options for the plugin, I’d never actually set it up to work. After consulting the read-me and fiddling around a bit, I think I prefer the print link inserted individually at the bottom of messages rather than hovering at the top as you have it, so that’s what I’ll be doing in the future.