My WordPress Plugins and What they do for me
I’ve been asked recently (and many times before) what WordPress plugins I use to run this site and make it better. I use quite a bit, at 11 plugins, but it seems like not much to some running 50+. Talk about slowing WP down… but here they are:
- Akismet - No blog is truly complete without the ultimate in spam protection, by the makers of WordPress themselves, Automattic.
- Diagnosis - Simply adds a ‘debugging’ page in the admin panel that tells you everything you need to know about the server, how its doing and what its running (and much more).
- DoFollow - Removes the rel=”nofollow” from all links in comments, so search bots follow the links to their site.
- FeedBurner Feed Replacement - I haven’t updated to FeedBurner’s version, as I’m content with Steve Smith’s v2.2, but this is totally necessary for anyone using WordPress and FeedBurner.
- Hello Dolly - I’ve been using this since the first time I ever installed WordPress.
- Show Top Commentators - I believe I have mine running to clear every month and it gives people an incentive (free PR5 back link) to comment. Bribing, sort of
- Subscribe to Comments - Another comments focused plugin, but this lets you check a box to receive email updates on future comments in that post.
- Underscore Permalinks - Something that is just a little thing to me, but I much prefer my URIs to have underscores instead of dashes. I’ve read too many dashes actually penalize you in search engines as well.
- WP-Cache - Keeps my blog runny quick by serving static pages and caching some information. Posts and updating anything still comes out in real time. Can’t live without this one.
- WP-Print - I’ve just recently activated this one as of a couple days ago, so it’s still on probation.
Nothing out of the ordinary here, but these plugins provide a great extension off a great base (WordPress) and make it be the best it can be. I’ve run numerous other plugins in the past, including contact forms, formatting plugins, lightbox JS, and many others, but these ones right now work great for me.
If you have any special plugins you think I’d benefit from or you use yourself, tell me about them in the comments!
Leave a comment
Goob
June 26th, 2007 at 1:50 PM
I use something called “SMART COMMENTS PLUGIN v. 2.0″ which lets you edit the way your posts display the message that your comments are turned off (the default way is just to say “no comments,” which doesn’t really tell people not to bother clicking the link.)
I don’t turn comments off often, but there are always times where you know the only comments that will be left are pointless and/or spammy ones.
“Search Pages” is pretty good too. It lets the default WP search option scan through any pages you’ve made in addition to looking in all your posts.
Marky
June 26th, 2007 at 3:06 PM
I will have to try out some of these plugins. I have used Hello Dolly, Akismet and Do Follow before but the rest are new to me and look rather interesting.
The Personal Development Blog
June 27th, 2007 at 7:25 PM
Have you considered trying Brian’s threaded comments? The word is that people tend to comment more because they are able to reply directly to another comment.
Connor Wilson
June 27th, 2007 at 7:28 PM
Yeah, actually, I have. I like the idea, but the default look doesn’t really blend too nice. In the next major realign of this site, you’ll definitely see threaded comments using that plugin, but they’ll look totally hot.
Mike
June 27th, 2007 at 9:20 PM
Thanks for posting this!
The new layout will be the same colors as the acp skin?
Connor Wilson
June 27th, 2007 at 10:09 PM
No, definitely not, but a new project uses them, which is what inspired the scheme here.
The new layout will essentially be a perfected, three column version of this.
Nathan
March 17th, 2008 at 4:27 PM
I’d be interested to know how you added the statistics box. Thanks.
Connor Wilson
March 17th, 2008 at 6:16 PM
The plugin in called General Stats.
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