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Although there are quite a few top Wordpress plugin lists floating around on the Internet many are out-of-date and many I just don’t agree with so I’ve asked around the office and compiled a list of Wordpress plugins that will make your blog sing and dance.
General Wordpress Plugins:
- Akismet – a comment spam filter that successfully reduces the number of spam comments on your blog.
- Lightbox Plus – automatically sets all images in your blog posts to open in a light box, by default Wordpress opens images in the same window and some users find it hard to return to the original post.
- NoFollow Free – removes the nofollow tag from your comment links, we’ve debated this one for a while but as long as you have Akismet enabled and moderate your comments then extra relevant comments can only help your blog.
- Wordpress Automatic Upgrade – allows you to upgrade your blog quickly and securely.
- Wordpress Database Backup – backs up your database on demand or through a scheduler.
- WP Security Scan – ensures that you have taken every step to secure your blog.
- cformsII – allows you to create advanced contact forms for Wordpress pages quickly and easily.
- Google Analytics for Wordpress - adds your google tracking code to your blog so you can see how many users you’ve had, where they’ve come from, what they’re viewing and lots of other bits of information!
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Wordpress Plugins:
- All In One SEO Pack – allows you to set your own meta details including title, keyword and description amongst other things.
- Google XML Sitemaps – generates a standards compliant XML sitemap for your Wordpress blog.
Social Media Wordpress Plugins:
- ShareThis – allows users to share your blog posts on social bookmarking website including Digg, Facebook and MySpace.
- Twitter Tools – publishes links to your blog posts as tweets.
- SphinnIt – adds a Sphinn button to all blog posts.
- Flickr Photo Album - allows you to pull in Flickr photosets and display them on your blog
Don’t agree or think we’ve missed something please leave a comment below, we’re always eager to learn!
Topics: SEO Resources |
November 5th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I really dislike Akismet for spam detection. Too many false positives I found and you have to trawl through and delete the spam. I use http://www.theblog.ca/anti-spam
I don’t use CFormsII either, http://yoast.com/code/enhanced-wp-contactform/ is my form of choice. Easier to configure and gives you the referring keyword and pages the user has visited.
I use the XML sitemap mentioned above but also this http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/ along with http://www.simonwheatley.co.uk/wordpress-plugins/exclude-pages/ to create a html sitemap.
I use this one sometimes for embedding PHP code, http://www.nosq.com/blog/runphp/
http://www.thrusites.com/blog/?page_id=28 This is a good plug in for affiliates and SEO. Auto links certain words.
I found this plugin from your article about “Wordpress not being indexed” http://yoast.com/wordpress/rss-footer/ I use that. Very useful for getting a few backlinks from scraper sites.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I replaced Askimet with wp-spamfree and go a nice simple spam free contact form thrown in. You might want to check it out.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Thanks for the suggestions, we are going to look at anti-spam and wp-spamfree as alternatives to Akismet. We use alinks to auto link words, but the link seems to have died so I didn’t put it on the list, cheers for the cross-link plugin Ben!
November 21st, 2008 at 8:24 pm
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