As I look through the sea of WordPress plugins to test and potentially add to this blog in order make my life easier, generate more useful data and make it more interesting for visitors I’ve realized that this could turn into a fairly complicated process. Considering that the number of plugins keeps growing almost daily there are several things one should consider when selecting a plugin:
What are you trying to accomplish and how important is it to you
How reliable, properly tested and updated is a particular plugin
Is it compatible with your theme, design and layout
Available alternatives
Here are some of the plugins I use (alphabetical order):
Akismet – fights spam.
All in One SEO Pack – helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your blog/posts.
Bad Behavior – fights spam. Ideally as another layer of protection with Akismet.
cforms – Cool, fully customizable forms (Example: My contact form).
EasyIP2Country – identifies where commenting visitors are coming from.
FeedBurner FeedSmith – helps you track your RSS feed subscribers.
Google Analytics for WordPress – adds your Google Analytics tracking code (the new ga.js one!) to all pages within your blog.
Highlight Author Comments – displays comments made by a post’s author in a distinctive style with no need to edit your template files, etc.
RSS Footer – let’s you add an extra line of content to articles in your feed, defaulting to “Post from: ” and then a link back to your blog, with your blog’s name as it’s anchor text.
Sociable – adds social media buttons to your posts, and does so easily, and beautifully.
WordPress Database Backup – creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database.
WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog.
The above listed plugins are in use now with another 5 or 6 currently in testing. You have seen my favorites, now it’s time for you share your favorite plugins. 🙂
How do you decide on a plugin, how do you determine that it is valuable to you? What are your favorite/must have plugins and why? Please share them and I will compile a list for everyone to see and will take a look at them myself.
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