Please visit the latest updated list of plugins on this blog.
Plug photo by Adam Mulligan on Flickr
One of the neat aspects about WordPress is nobody owns it. The blog platform, as an open source community, is collectively shared by anyone and everyone who contribute code and provide feedback about what works and what needs improvement. With more than 1,300 themes and over 13,000 plugins, the appearance and functionality of any WordPress blog is up to the blog owner’s imagination.
When you read an article on this blog and see related links underneath it, those links are generated by a plugin. When you add a comment and John replies to you, a plugin emails you that comment. When a search engine robot visits this blog and wants to know how different posts and pages are interconnected, a plugin creates that sitemap.
Some popular plugins that other people swear by, such as for search engine optimization on a blog, are not used here because the Thesis theme (which is used here) includes that functionality. Other plugins which are activated one day may be deactivated the next day for the simple reason that a different plugin may provide a different feature.
Looking back over the past 2+ years, plugins have come and gone on this blog, ebbing and flowing from 15 plugins in December 2008 to 23 plugins in March 2009 to 22 plugins in September 2009 to 35 plugins in February 2010 to 23 plugins in October 2010.
It is time for an updated list.
17 Plugins Used Everyday
1. CommentLuv is the reason why if you write a comment and include your blog in the website field, your most-recent blog post will appear under your text after you hit the “submit” button.
2. Comment Redirect, upon submission of your first comment on this blog, points you to a thank you page while that comment lies in moderation. Only your first will be moderated, per the comment policy, to ensure you are not spamming.
3. Feed Pauser halts the syndication of a new blog post for up to 20 minutes to let me ensure there are no typos and that the published appearance is how it was intended.
4. Google XML Sitemaps helps search engine robots know what the site looks like, enabling you to see the best post when searching for a keyword. Want to see the map?
5. Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin is responsible for the checkbox at the bottom of the comment form. By clicking it, you further prove (if the moderation failed) that you are not a spammer.
6. KeywordLuv works like CommentLuv; but while the latter provides a link to your last blog post, the former enables you to separate your name from keywords describing your website. If used properly, this will reward you with improved anchor text.
For example, writing Stephen @ Custom WordPress Plugins in the name field results in Stephen from Custom WordPress Plugins. Don’t merely write your blog name as the keyword, but use contextual words. When I write my name on blogs like Kikolani, I write Ari Herzog @ Social Web Tips. If you want to use this plugin on your own blog, you must enable the DoFollow plugin (or scroll below to learn how I get around the plugin).
7. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer prevents search engines from being alerted every time a page or post is updated. Without this plugin, you run the risk of search engines thinking you’re a spammer.
8. Page Links To is used to redirect older posts or pages to newer posts or pages. I use this for a few pages, though you’d never see it as everything happens behind the scenes. (While the newest version of Thesis includes this functionality, I keep the plugin intact or else I’d have a lot of broken links.)
9. PostRank also runs invisibly and shows me metrics about the popularity of blog posts to help me know what you like to read and what you hate.
10. ReplyMe emails any comment author when someone replies. This single plugin is responsible for a tremendous increase in threaded comments — and insightful conversations.
11. RSS Footer inserts a customized line of code at the bottom of every blog post whether you receive it by RSS or other means. The script also prevents would-be scammers from ripping me off and portraying my work as theirs.
12. Simple Trackback Validation is gobbledygook that reduces spam trackbacks by confirming the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the address of the web server the URL is referring, and then checking the remote web page and ensuring that page has a link to this blog.
13. Subscribe to Comments emails any comment author whenever there is a new comment. (Note this gives you all comments, whereas ReplyMe only gives you comments in reply to your comment.) It’s incredible how many WordPress blogs lack this simple and effective code to improve communications.
14. Twitterlink Comments lets you input your Twitter username which converts that into a link for people to follow you.
15. WordPress Database Backup runs every 24 hours and emails me a file to restore this blog in case something happens.
16. WPTouch provides a mobile-friendly view of this blog for smartphones and other mobile devices. Let me know if it doesn’t work for you.
17. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin generates up to three links at the end of every blog post that share common categories or tags.
6 Inactive Plugins Used Occasionally
These are plugins that are installed but activated infrequently to conduct time-specific actions.
1. Categories to Tags Converter converts categories to tags, and tags to categories. This is used a few times to change the taxonomy.
2. Contact Commenters, the subject of an earlier article illustrating how to turn a lurker into a user, enables me to target email messages to people who comment on specific posts or haven’t commented in a given period of time. It’s sometimes viewed as controversial but is generally accepted.
3. Maintenance Mode is an “under construction” splash page that temporarily appears when I make programming changes and don’t want you to see anything. When I upgrade WordPress versions, for instance, I activate this plugin. The rest of the time, it remains inactive.
4. Simple Tags lets me bulk edit categories and tags associated with posts.
5. Top Commentators ascertains who are the top people who wrote comments over a given period, with links to whatever URL they wrote when commenting. This plugin was responsible for the list of the top 70 commenters of January.
6. WP Options Manager is a plugin not to be taken lightly. It lets you delete tables from your blog database. I’ve used it occasionally to delete stored information from deleted plugins.
A note about DoFollow
The KeywordLuv plugin specifies that in order for it to work, the DoFollow plugin must run simultaneously.
DoFollow runs on this blog, but not as a plugin. As I shared with Christy Correll about plugins affecting load time, someone pointed me to a PHP script that runs as a custom function on this blog.
function do_follow_commenters($output) {
return str_replace(” rel=’external nofollow’”, “”, $output);
}
add_filter(‘get_comment_author_link’, ‘do_follow_commenters’);
Do you use any of these plugins?
Or, are you a fan of a plugin not included above?
Got a question about plugins?
About Ari Herzog
Useful plugins Ari but no mention of security plugins.
Limit logon attempts and Firewall plugin by SEO Eggheads are a couple of simple to use security plugins.
Love Subscribe to comments to get the conversation going and people interacting and GASP plugin to save you having to trawl through the spam every day.
I used to use Akismet but have moved over to GASP like most people seem to be doing.
Purpose of a security plugin? To prevent hackability?
Ah, here’s a few more for ya:
404 Notifier – Used occasionally to identify 404′s in the site
Bei Fen – A backup tool that I’ve found I like over all the others. Does multiple schedules, and also backs up all the files as well as the DB. I have three scheduled backups running. One is daily, and overwrites the prior day. Weekly, also overwrites the prior week. And monthly, it doesn’t overwrite the prior month.
Login LockDown – for added login security
Pretty Link (Lite Version) – See my recent post regarding this one
W3 Total Cache – Perhaps the best caching plugin available. I’ve tested them all, and this is one I like the best.
I’m preparing to start writing a post on the plugins I use. It’s probably going to be a few articles actually, since you can group these into several buckets (backup, security, performance, etc…)
I’ve often wondered what you were using for your comment emails….ReplyMe eh…have to check that one out
What it the logic of a WordPress plugin for login security and not a .htaccess script? Load it on the server and not the blog, no?
Login Lockdown with count the attempts to access the site, and after the 3rd failed attempt, you’re outta there. It will also mask login errors so that no details are provided as to why the login failed.
It only activates when the login page is accessed, so there is no overhead with the plugin.
I do some htaccess stuff as well, as well as some other things. You can never be too careful or thorough when it comes to security.
Would love to read your take on the W3 total cache.
My site load time is hopeless and I’ve been thinking of using a caching plugin.
One of the great disappointments of WordPress over a static site.
How great an increase in speed did you get?
In my opinion, it’s the best of all the ones I’ve tested and played with. The other major one WP Super Cache always seemed to fail after a while, then I realized there was a conflict with another process occurring. I didn’t get that at all with the W3 Total Cache.
Caching, in itself, will increase your page load times dramatically. W3 offers a few added caching techniques beyond what WP Super cache will do, so based on functionality, W3 beats Super imo. They both should do very well, and you would do well to get any type of caching going on your site.
Keep in mind, that when you make changes to the theme, you need to flush your cache since cache is a snapshot of a page, and not a dynamically built page (which contributes to slow response times).
Hit me up if you need an assist!
Correct me if mistaken, but a caching plugin only affects returning visitors and a new visitor would have everything load uncached, no? Also, if there is a minimal number of plugins that load for visitors, e.g. ReplyMe wouldn’t load for a visitor as it works after the fact, caching is moot?
Well, there are different flavors of cache. One might be server side, where instead of making calls to the database over and over, the server retains a copy of the page on disk and just serves that up when a request comes in…saving time by not having to interpret the php and make the database call just to provide a page. This would help every request, regardless of whether the visitor was new or not.
I believe you’re thinking of browser caching. When I first visit a site, I don’t have a copy of the page on my local disk, so the site needs to prepare and serve one up for me. After that, my browser might serve up the same page from my browser cache, thus not having to hit the server for the page.
I’m not familiar with ReplyMe, but it sounds to me like the only impact that would have is on the server itself. But then, when it activates, it’s most likely dealing with new content, and you cannot cache content that doesn’t exist yet.
So many post ideas in one comment!
I’ll elaborate on this a bit. I did write something a while ago on browser caching and how to clear it (http://www.waynejohn.com/what-is-cache-how-to-clear-or-delete-cache/), I might extend that idea to include how servers cache…but I always felt that might go right over the heads of my readers. I tend to do that all too often. haha
Very good tips, Ari, planning on adding a couple of these that I did not know about yet (especially on the comment front). Keep up the great writing.
John
Keep in mind I try to reduce the number of plugins installed, to reduce bloated load time. Thus, I only keep activated those that are necessary (for me) at a moment in time.
Thanks, Ari. One of my favs is the WPtouch plugin. I’ll definitely check out the others on your list for my WordPress blog.
I’m also a huge fan of WPTouch. One of my favorite plugins, probably 2nd to CommentLuv
Had you been using something different to provide a mobile-friendly version of your site?
Here is an article I wrote about the plugins I use on my blog: http://bit.ly/i7ASIq – 23 plugins that covers commenting, sharing, rating, related posts, Minify engine, image optimization, broken link checker, videos and images’ enhancements and galleries, analytic, wibiya toolbar that is very useful, and more plugins that I don’t see them posted here so far. I hope it will add value.
With respect to Wibiya, I installed that here briefly 13 months ago and promptly removed it when people complained.
Hi Ari, hope you are doing fine. I have a rather off-topic question for you. I’m facing some kind of difficulties with my blog and I thought you could help me. As you might well know, I offer guest posting opportunities and reward guest writers with two dofollow backlinks in the bio line. However, I have recently noticed that any outgoing links on my blog post are automatically attributed as nofollow. I mean, there is no rel=”nofollow” inside the post editor panel but still when the post goes live, all the outgoing links (except the inbound ones) are nofollow. I am not using any plugin that might do this.
Could you tell me what’s causing this problem?
Links by default are attributed as nofollow, unless you make them dofollow. Not knowing what plugins, scripts, etc., you employ on your blog, it’s impossible to know what is or isn’t causing anything.
For me , the topic of “do follow” or not is just a myth that is nothing but a storm in a cup of tea. It is an over rated issue that many people who comment on blogs fell for. See for yourself the discussion here: http://bit.ly/hdrnp0
Two things I care about when commenting: Do I add value to the conversation and did I inspire someone to visit my blog? Follow or no follow, anchor text, juice link, branding, Blah..Blah..Blah.. Doesn’t make a difference one way or another.
I guess you didn’t see my comment in that link you shared, eh?
No, I did and I know your stance on blogging. My comment above was meant to others not exclusively for you. You just happened to be the reply button.
for seo purpose i use SEO Ultimate 4.8 and it’s cover many SEO things in my blog. I love to use this plugin but it’s crashed with all in one seo plugin.
I’m glad you haven’t mentioned the Akismet plugin : I’ve had big problems with this as my comments are not appearing on wordpress blogs and I don’t do spam comments. The Growmap Antispambot plugin is a much better solution to combating spam – there’s also a lot of info on the growmap website about the problems with Akismet.
Akismet said goodbye here four months ago. Good eye, Sean.
Hey there Ari,
Always interesting to see what plug-ins other bloggers use – and we seem to share a few.
Others I like:
Hello Bar – nice, unintrusive way to promote something.
Back-Up Buddy – premium, but best database back-up option around.
Gravity Forms – another premium plug-in, but offers much more than your standard form options.
Lijit Search: more than just a search form, it pulls content from your other properties (or that of your connections) and offers a great analytics option to understand your readers.
Cheers!
How do you insert images into your blog posts? When I looked at your blog’s index to find a similar plugin list, I saw mention of an outdated code called Photograbber, but what about now? Surely you’re not like me manually finding and pasting, are you?
Yeah, I removed that plug-in a while back (found the results it was returning pretty poor). Now it’s a manual search over at Flickr for Creative Commons ones.
I use a lot of the same plug-ins Ari!
I just recently added the do-follow plug-in after seeing @kikolani’s awesome blog.
Your thesis theme is also very nice and I just did a post on another great theme for WordPress.
See you next Friday….Thanks again!
I like the idea of the ‘Feed Pauser’ because however hard I try to proofread a post and look at it as a preview before publishing I (almost) always spot something that I want to change after I have clicked the ‘publish’ button.
Which is why I never made it in print journalism because there is no way to re-edit something after the press has started rolling.
I have heard of a lot of these plugins but not all of them. Thanks for listing these. My favorite one though is commentluv.
Okay, now I realize I didn’t understand the ReplyMe plugin. As a user, I assumed I was checking the box to get notified if someone responded specifically to my comment. No, you get an email for all comments. 20 emails later, I’m going to manage my subscription
How is the text after the checkbox confusing, Kristy? How would you rewrite it?
Same here as I mentioned when you posted about ReplyMe, Ari. There is no perfect way to clear confusion but replyMe when elected to send a reply SHOULD override any other notification plugins. Also, one plugin that will offer three comment subscription options (None – Replies only – all comments) as Intense debate offers where the default option can be Replies only.
If not, better phrasing to your wording can help too. Maybe something like this: Check this box to be notified with all comments. Leave it unchecked and you will only receive replies to your comment.
Makes sense?
Hah! You’re a big evangelist of IntenseDebate, Joy, but it’s not coming here. You can keep selling me on it, though!
Thanks for the suggested line.
Your link to RSS Footer, then says ‘plugin has been succeeded’.
‘Customised code prevents scammers’. Does it? The garden bloggers get hit by successive waves of scammers. They seem to have tried everything. What works? Are you saying that writing ‘This article was written by Ari Herzog’ with an embedded link, prevents scammers?
Diana of EE
Preventative? No. But consider that most RSS scrapers don’t edit RSS so that footer is proof who wrote it. It also gives a backlink.
Here is an example of a trackback request I received today, which scraped the entire blog post from another site that syndicated it. If it wasn’t for the RSS footer information, one might think that site created it.
I wonder, with the benefit of being able to tag the post with your author information, do you think there is any downside to having a site scraper like that site linking to you, in terms of Google indexing and ranking…
I know that linking to a “bad neighborhood” might be bad for business, but what about links from a “bad neighborhood”?
I once went back and forth with Danny Brown on that question. I asked it, and he replied that he looks at the words used for the link and that even a scraping site sometimes gives inbound traffic. Works for me.
Make that 18 plugins, now that I activated WP-PluginsUsed that is the new power behind this plugin page showing every active and inactive plugin on this blog. With this 18th plugin, I don’t need to write blog posts explaining which plugins I am using.
I like that idea, Ari. Yet another idea that I might take from you as well.
Heh, it would be different nearly every day, in terms of inactive plugins. I’m constantly testing and trying plugins to see which is better.
The huge orange switch board is amazing. I looooove that. I wanted a thank you page for comments and I have got that here. Contact commentator plugins creates interest. i haven’t tried it so far. Superb list. Have to read this once again. i don’t want to miss any.
You can add After the Deadline plugin. It’s very useful for checking grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Try that.
I currently use 4,5,6,10 and 15 from the first list, with various similar plugins that do the same job as some of the ones on your list.
I am checking out RSS Footer, MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer and WPTouch – thanks for that
I notice you back your database up every day! Mine is every two weeks… any reason for it being so often? Do you delete old backups on receiving a new one?
Out of list two, Contact Commenters is a plugin I recently started to use, as you well know
Top Commentators is something which again, as you probably know I am going to start using on my Philosophy Blog. It’s installed and I am considering giving it ago very soon
Reading your post in January 2010, my question is why not do more top commenters posts? Why did you stop? I plan to start, inspired by a few of the other blogs I read.
Also, about the dofollow script, what exactly does that do? Could you not just go into the comment-template.php file and just delete the rel=”external nofollow” tag?
I use Link Love, Simple Facebook Like, Dagon Design Sitemap Generator Plus (for HTML not XML sitemaps) and Customized Recent Comments which are publicly visible.
I use Broken Link Checker, Autoptimize, User Role Editor, Login LockDown, User Role Editor and WP Super Cache ‘behind the scenes’.
Finally I use Let It Snow! at Christmas time
Thanks for this Ari, I may be using some new plugins soon!
Considering the database backups occur automatically and do not affect blog load time, only minimal server resources, and they’re sent to email, I have them sent to an archived folder automatically so I can delete them whenever I want.
Changed mine to every week now Ari
I think I will create a folder like you suggested, as then at the end of each month or so, I can just go in and delete all the old backups, leaving me with just the newest
BTW did you get my reply to your email entitled “Your blog comment about blog archives…”?
Last thing, about the dofollow script, what exactly does that do? Could you not just go into the comment-template.php file and just delete the rel=”external nofollow” tag?
Great list of plugins. My favorite is ComLUV. Its a great way to reward your commentators while promoting a lively discussion.
I use most of these plugins on any new blog I start. They have become sort of standard for my blogs.
Hi, Ari. I am using Joomla for my website, which is where my blog is located as well, so I am not using even one of the plug-ins you mentioned here. There are a number of plug-ins that I would love to use though, in time…when I have my own WordPress blog.
What no SEO plugins
?
I use the thesis theme – so it already caters for some SEO functionalities, but I still have the SEO title tag plugin to be able to give categories optimised titles.
I also use the decategorizer plugin because the pagination was wonky on my 4 main categories.
Otherwise I hand coded a couple of features like the most popular posts and recent comments that I show in the sub column.
Thesis allows for the title to be changed. You can nix that plugin of yours. What other SEO plugins?
Hi Ari, the last time I looked at Thesis – which was when I set up the blog a year and a half ago – you couldn’t add optimised titles to your tag pages without plugins – sorry meant tag pages not category pages.
I also like to vary slightly the anchor that points to a post and the title tag of that post, to add keyword variation to the latter, so will keep this one
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
I can’t see your comments! I was going to respond to a few that I saw come in over the weekend, but they’re missing!
You can’t see what?
I see Leo’s comment (now), and your reply. That’s all. No links to the other 42 comments…they aren’t here as far as I can tell or see.
You don’t see the link for previous comments, as seen in this image? I deleted your next comment, btw.
Shoot…I do now…but I swear I didn’t see it earlier.
Man…perhaps I’m just too busy and need to slow down. Sorry for this Ari…delete this entire thread, lol.
I swear I didn’t see it there…
I must admit it did the same for me, I had to go back to the “your comment has a reply” email to click the link in it – I am not used to get comments on 2 pages
At least I’m not alone! hahaha
Wow, this was great Ari. I’m amazed at how when I think I’ve got ‘all’ the plugins I read an excellent post like this one and realize that there are a few I’m missing. From this list I’ve installed 3 new ones. That’s huge.
Thanks for such a great article.
Marcus
Glad to inspire.
What did you find to install?
Thanks for the list, I just added 3 new plug-ins from this list. But How do I set it so that they look like your comment area?
I want to put the submit button at the end and the rest of the options above it?
Btw, I’m also running Thesis.
Ari Thanks that great list of plugin. But i have a question to you is too many plugin slow down the blog?
Thanks for the useful list. I’ll include a link to this post in the post I’m writing right now about Top 5 WordPress plugins to increase blog comments. Thanks for sharing
Thank you Ari, I learned so much from your blog post about WordPress plugins. I am new to WordPress. My blog was set up on it for me and then I decided to make it into a blog-site, I am not a big fan of elaborate websites and feel that a blog-site can serve the purpose of both, a blog and a website. I would be interested to know what you think about my idea.
It’s curious that you took my entire blog post and put it on your site, so thank you for including a reference to my name as the author.
No doubt that ReplyMe is a a great plugin and I recommend almost all the same plugins. For maintenance mode my theme has it built in so I don’t need a plugin to turn it on and off. I use the NOFF Or NoFollow Free plugin instead of DoFollow, this only gives DoFollow after certain criteria is met by commenters like more than 3 comments…etc. Gives you greater control on who you give the DoFollow to.
A very handy – and useful – list of plugins. It always amazes me how differently some plugins work. Best as they work well, WordPress issues an update, and then a plugin is incompatible with a new version… So it can be cumbersome to find the plugin that causes trouble when no errorhandling is shown. [Especially thinking of the loss of the DashBoard as sudden screen of death... :'-(]
I found here a lot of great ideas that I find excellent to test. Thanks Ari for the post and everyone eles for the comments and suggestions.
Beside many of these ideas, I found useful to use some plugins like AddThis, Digg Digg, Easy Privacy Policy.
BTW, can you suggest me some plugin to use so that my readers can follow me on FB, Twitter, RSS or else? I used Social Gator and Social Media Widget but I would like to have something simple and with the possibility to make it very visible. For example to put a text “Follow me on Facebook” and a FB icon, same for twitter, RSS and receiving by email my posts. Not just the icons, but also a text near. Any idea?