7 Awesome WordPress Plugins
One of the great things about WordPress is that it can basically do anything you want. If you feel there is something missing, just write or download a plugin. It’s amazing how many plugins are already available. Below, I highlight 7 plugins I’ve used, find helpful, or just think are interesting:
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Akismet
I’ve been using Akismet from the moment it became available and it’s made life considerably easier. Akismet is a spam management tool. Check that. It is a hassle free spam killer. Akismet now comes bundled in WordPress 2.0. -
WP On-Demand Database Backup
Coming from the world of dealing with highly sensitive financial data, this plugin is particularly important to me. If you are not backing your database up on a regular basis, you are messing with fire. You need this plugin. It also comes bundled in WordPress 2.0. -
Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports
My friend and team member (at Silas Partners) is an uber WordPress plugin developer. I recently became aware of his reports plugin, which ties in data from Google Analytics and FeedBurner. Using his plugin, I can check out stats from both of those services via a “Reports” tab within WordPress. That saves me time and that is why it is an awesome plugin. Thanks, Joe. -
Flickr Photo Album
Joe makes the list twice. This time with his Flickr photo album. While I wouldn’t publish an album (especially not on this blog), what I do like is that this plugin pulls in photos from a Flickr photostream to quickly post to a blog entry. -
Customizable Post Listings
With this plugin, you can quickly create a WordPress page with any sort of content you want. I previously used it alter the home page of my blog, changing what and how much information was displayed for each post. -
Jerome’s Keywords
Thanks to Jerome, you can add in Technorati tags to each of your posts rather easily. I previously modified the plugin to work for other services too, although I am no longer using this plugin. -
Author Limit
One of the fellas who helped me code this great design created a plugin to limit the length of the author name and title for my comments section. Rather long trackbacks were effectively “breaking” the design – he threw together a quick plugin to limit the author length to ’33’ characters. Why do I include this plugin? To end with an encouragement that if for some reason WordPress isn’t doing what you want it to, even a couple lines of code from a plugin might solve your issue. And the chances are that if you are wanting a plugin to do something, someone has already written it.
Have any plugins that you think are awesome? Feel free to share them below.