Wordpress plug-ins - any recommendations?

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[squadron]

I'm pretty new to this blogging thing and I've been reading about, and playing with some Wordpress plug-ins. So far I've installed:

Akismet
All in One SEO Pack
Google (XML) Sitemaps    
Hello Dolly
Post RSS
SimpleTags
What Would Seth Godin Do

Is there any other plug-ins I should think about? What plug-ins could you not live without? I've heard a lot about tag warrior, but I can't find the download for it. Is it any good?

[Lani]

If you're on WordPress 2.3+, Ultimate Tag Warrior isn't needed.  The tag functions have now been built into the core.

To manage Tags now, I use "Simple Tags" (sorry, no time to find link).  The original developer of UTW has designed some plugins for 2.3+ as well, but I wasn't entirely happy with them. 

[Meg]

I like

Comment Luv
Lucia's Linky Love
Subscribe to Comments
Top Commentators
Wordpress Database backup
Youtube brackets

I'm not sure if Ultimate Tag Warrior would be necessary with the others you've got. Someone else warned me away from it once....

[goatlady]

I love Subscribe to Comments. I also use Optimal Title and Head Meta which are probably covered in your SEO bundle.

[Snoskred]

I have a lovely list of the plugins I use on my blog - this is something I think more Wordpress bloggers should consider doing - hint hint everyone..

Snoskred's Plugins

The reason I put the page together, well there was two of them. I wanted to put them up on the blog in case anyone was wondering what I was using, and we supply this package of plugins as standard when we install a new blog, so I wanted people to be able to know what all those plugins did.

I just added two more to the standard package that aren't on that page yet - Get Recent Comments and Popularity Contest. To save anyone the huge amount of hassle I had with Popularity Contest trying to get it to work in the sidebar (and I haven't put it on my own blog as yet, not sure if I will) I also added the popularity contest widget.

[Vanessa_vjad]

Hi,

If you want to add YouTube or Google videos etc to your blog - in my opinion you can't go past Vipers Video Quick Tags - by using this plugin you don't need to worry about codes or embedding etc you just put the actual link to the video in - much easier and neater

Cheers

Vanessa

[FormerAdmin]

My favourite plugin (apart from the aforementioned Akismet) is Feedburner Feedsmith. It passes most of my RSS subscriptions through Feedburner so that I can keep track of them.

I could change the default K2 template such that the feed URL was hidden in the template footer and add a groovy big RSS button (and this is on my todo list).

Speaking of todo lists - at Donna's suggestion I now use http://todoist.com/. It is a good thing

Cheers, Andrew

[Suzie]

I have looked at todlist, but having just done the switch to a mac have found igdt.com which i am exploring today. for anyone with a mac this is a great list of addons

at Zen Habits

Leo ( zen habits)has a great blog  and has taken it from nowhere in Jan 2007 into the top 100 now, worth checking out and something I would like to follow this year

[Snoskred]

I love Leo's writing. He is the one responsible for this article which taught me the water habit -

9 Great Reasons to Drink Water, and How to Form the Water Habit

It totally changed my life in a good way.. maybe those of you looking to make resolutions should consider this one

[Lee]

I quite like Community Cloud which gives you a tag cloud of your commenter names which I think is a nice way to give a little link love to regular visitors.

You can set after how many comments that a person's name will show up and it grows in font size and colour the more they comment.

[swollenpickles]

Other ones I like are Alex King's popularity contest plugin. That lets you do a lot, and display posts based on their 'popularity'. I've just been through a bit of a redesign and I used the popularity contest plugin quite a bit to display different info across my site (like the top 3 posts etc).

If you want to easily incorporate adsense into your blog posts have a look at "mighty adsense". That's pretty easy to use.

For lazy SEO try "All in one SEO".

WP-Post ratings is pretty cool if you want readers to rate your posts or whatever. You can also output the results with php.

wordpress database backup is pretty much essential, as is google sitemaps.

WP Video is good for quickly adding youtube videos into posts.

That's a start anyway. Have fun!

[tiddlytwinks]

When using YouTube videos in Wordpress, what is meant by using the "bracket method"? I have a plugin that uses brackets to post youtube videos, but how do I do it?

I'm asking because (not realizing I had this plugin at the time) I embedded two different videos in the same post, and it looked fine in internet explorer, but with Firefox everything was all screwed up. I ended up having to delete the videos altogether. 

[Meg]

Hi Tiddlywinks

We have a thread that might help you out with this problem.

http://www.aussiebloggers.com.au/forum/index.php/topic,596.0.html

[tiddlytwinks]

Thank you Meg! I was trying to find one before posting my message but didn't see that one! Thank you!

[Meg]

No worries - I knew it was there, I just had to find it  If you're still unsure, feel free to ask a question over there...

[Sueblimely]

Thanks for finding the link to the YouTube thread, Meg.

I have a list of the plugins I use on one of my blog pages - I used a plugin to create the list too. Plugins Used

The only one that I wish to add to this list at this stage is a Top Commenter plugin. Not sure if I am keeping the Yahoo Shortcuts plugin as yet. I have it installed mainly to test it out  and for a tutorial and review post I am in the midst of writing.

[imaginif]

Is there a bed plug in?
If only I could plug my bed into my theme, I could blog maintenance while sleeping.
How cool would that be.......speaking of sleeping: now that I am going to be a grandma (is there anyone in the world that doesn't know that yet?!) I might toddle off for a Nana nap.

[Lani]

I didn't know that yet!    I've had no time for reading lately.  Congratulations.  You're are going to be one fantastic Nana!

  :zstork: :balloon:

[DzRBenson]

All in One SEO Pack
Automatically sorts out your post for Search Engine Optimisation
Google XML Sitemaps
Creates an automatic Site map for Google
obsocialbookmarker
Add favorite icons to each post
Technorati Rank
Adds a Technorati Widget to your blog
WassUp
A great real time stats program for your blog
Akismet
Wordpress spam detector
Bad Behavior
Prevents Bots with Java
WP-SpamFree
Prevents Bots with PHP

Dale
http://dzrbenson.com/blog/

[kathiemt]

Is there a bed plug in?
If only I could plug my bed into my theme, I could blog maintenance while sleeping.
How cool would that be.......speaking of sleeping: now that I am going to be a grandma (is there anyone in the world that doesn't know that yet?!) I might toddle off for a Nana nap.

No, I didn't know that!  Congratulations.  I keep telling people I'm happy to wait and my kids were told I didn't want to be a gran till I was 50. Well, that's happened now and my eldest has been married almost 4 years - guess it can't be that far off. :zstork:  I've been told it's even better than the first time round with kids!

[Ian]

I'm using Who Sees Ads which seems pretty good.  It allows you to set up rules for displaying ads, eg display only to search engine visitors, don't display to regular readers, etc.  So, assuming its working properly (it is as far as I can tell), regulars get the ad-free version of my blog, drop-ins from google and the like get the ads ...which is supposed to be good as they are more prone to clicking on ads.

(I'm sure I saw this mentioned in another thread, but do you think I could find it by searching on all sorts of different words and by who I thought might have posted it .... No Way!)

[Sueblimely]

I just went searching for a tag cloud plugin as the inbuilt Wordpress one is not configurable and my largest tag font size was huge and sticking out of the sidebar. I discovered  Wordpress 2.3 Configurable Tag Cloud Widget. Via the widget you can configure the color of the tags and size etc. Works fine and is much less obtrusive than the inbuilt feature.

[mattpacker]

Pretty sure most, if not all, have been mentioned already, but here's what I'm using on mine;

Akismet
All In One SEO Pack
Breadcrumb Navigation
Feedsmith Feedburner
Google XML Sitemap
Limit Posts
Most Commented (not displayed on current theme but used in backend)
My Category Order
Popularity Contest (not displayed on current theme but used in backend)
Wordpress.com Stats
WP Contact Form

I've also played with a bunch of other advertising related plugins but haven't found anything that I really liked and that fit my website well..

[freediver]

I wrote a lengthy article on the topic and being a plugin coder myself, my criteria is pretty sharp

Wordpress Plugin Recommendations

Hope you find some useful new ones!

[goatlady]

I've just set up a new blog for a trip that I'm going on with my partner and a mate - hell bent for wacken '08 - and I was thinking of putting AdSense on it so I can earn like 3 cents

I have AdSense on other sites that are not blogs, so the code is inserted manually into the template. What's the very best AdSense plugin for WordPress out there? I've seen AdSense Manager and it looks pretty comprehensive. Are there any others out there?