If you've ever set up your own WordPress site and gotten lost in the wonderful world of WordPress plugins you are not alone. Plugins add loads of feature and functionality. I've been playing with WordPress for over a year now and have fine tuned my list of plugins with Pizzaz!
Akismet – Already included in WordPress. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need an API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”
WP Player – Play mp3s and podcasts in your posts by converting links and tags into a simple, customizable audio player. By Todd Iceton
Amazon S3 for WordPress – If you're not using Amazon S3 for all your media storage, run don't walk to Amazon S3. This Plugin allows you to retrieve objects stored in Amazon S3 and post them in WordPress. Speeds up your blog big time! By Joe Tan
Calendar – This plugin allows you to display a calendar of all your events and appointments as a page on your site. By Kieran O'Shea
Pretty Link – Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website! By Blair Williams
Simple:Press Forum – Fully featured but simple page-based forum. This one takes a little work to get it going, but it's worth it. By Andy Staines & Steve Klasen
TweetMeme Retweet Button – Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts. By TweetMeme
Contact Form 7 – Simple, but flexible, contact form plugin. By Takayuki Miyoshi
Quotes Collection – Random Quote sidebar widget helps you collect, manage and display your favourite quotations on your WordPress blog. By Srini G. I have this installed on my portal site, https://adelarubio.com. I love it!!!
The easiest way to install Plugins is to click on Plugin on the sidebar, from within the Dashboard. On the Plugins page, click on ‘Add New.' Enter the Plugin name in the Search window and click on ‘Search Plugins.' Once you find the Plugin install.
Have fun and do share your favorite Plugins below.
Thanks Adela – great resources! I could have you used the S3 one last week when I was having trouble with my video from there… I paid for a vimeo account to host my videos instead because it wasn’t working well! Smiles!
Thanks Adella for posting these – I’m just getting started with WordPress, so I appreciate all the insights! What I’m wondering though is how do you get the nice “Sign up” boxes like you have at the top sides of your page – I’ve been trying to figure that one out for awhile!! Thanks!!
Thanks for the tips. I haven’t played with any plugins except what my WP developer helped me put in. Time to upgrade.
Thanks Adela – and all. This was extremely useful for a wordpress-beginner like me ! Greetings from Denmark.
Thanks Adela. There are a couple of plugins here that I don’t have and will be adding. Another of my favorites is Jeff Johnson’s ‘Free Traffic Getting’ plugin. It optimizes your site by recommending other SEO plugins and then applies tweaks to help with SEO. It does help with traffic too. Here’s the link:
http://www.undergroundtraininglab.com/tgsp-install/
Cheers
John
Thanks for sharing this Adela! I have learned about a couple of plugins that I did not know about before. Some of my favorites are: LinkWithin found at http://www.linkwithin.com which shows a thumbnail image of 3 or more related posts at the bottom of each post; Collision Testimonials, which allows you to show a random quote in your sidebar from a pool of 2 or more; WP Greet Box, which allows you to have a greeting message displayed when new visitors arrive can be customized to have them subscribe to your RSS feed, special report or other; in addition to Akismet, Contact Form 7, Pretty Link and TweetMeme.
I have used several of these plug-ins for my personal site and my client sites. You have recommended some great ones! I will be also adding a few to my favorites list.
Thanks for your recommendations. It is always helpful to know what others have used!