Must have plugins

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dagscot

New member
Are there any plugins that you simply should have installed when you're running a Wordpress site? I'm guessing we all want traffic so some kind of good SEO plugin would seem obvious. What else? A good gallery or image plugin? A cool slider?
 
I try to keep plugins to a minimum because too many slow the site down, plus there is a higher risk of something going screwy. I've helped people try to figure out problems on their blogs and it is darn difficult and time-consuming to do when they have 20-30 plugins installed. I've seen people have 35 plugins on their blog!
 
Good And Must Have Plugins For Wordpress

The thing is that you must try your best to keep the plugins count as low as possible, so only use those plugins which you really need for your wordpress Blog. One plugin i have used is WPCache and this i used to make the website speed faster and it worked. This i can say for sure is the must have plugin for a wordpress blog.
 
web-top-mouse said:
The thing is that you must try your best to keep the plugins count as low as possible, so only use those plugins which you really need for your wordpress Blog. One plugin i have used is WPCache and this i used to make the website speed faster and it worked. This i can say for sure is the must have plugin for a wordpress blog.
Click to expand...

I tried that plug in and thought W3 Total Cache was a little better. But I guess it all depends on how you configure them and what works best for your site.

But the Plugins other than that I think are important are:

Yoast SEO plugin
Stick Admin bar to the bottom
Printer Friendly and PDF
A social plugin <I use sexy bookmarks>
Google Libraries
and
WP optimize

I know I am missing some other good ones.
 
I must have tried and tested 100's of plugins over the years but usually have the same ones installed in most of my blogs:
All in One SEO Pack
bcSpamBlock
Better WP Security
Bridge SEO Tag Wrap Keywords
Broken Link Checker
EditorFontsize
Facebook AWD All in One
Gab Captcha 2
Google Analytics
Google XML Sitemaps
Google Analytics Dashboard
Moderate Brief Comments
NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
Slick Social Share Buttons
Subscribe To "Double-Opt-In" Comments
TinyMCE Advanced
Trackback Validator
WordTwit
WP Captcha Free
Wp-Insert
 
Ha! Thanks. It does seem counter-intuitive to have over 30 plugins. I'd imagine something like 6 or 7 would be a maximum and then it's just a matter of knowing which of the hundreds available to include in your 6 or 7. Something good for SEO. Then maybe a few more for analytics and optimizing the pages of your site.
 
You can't really put a number on how many plugins you use, you install the ones you need. Some like the Google XML Sitemap one only run once a day, or per published post, depending on your setting so it really just sits in the background and does nothing. Whereas WP-Insert is working every page refresh, it is those one you don't need a lot of. :)
 
Absolutely get a similar posts type plugin on your list. It helps visitors find other important pages and it gives you internal links which Google reports on in GWT.

I recommend the "similar posts" plugin by Robert Marsh. It might say outdated on wordpress.com but he built it to be timeless since it uses an external library for the heavy lifting and won't be affected by wordpress changes much.
 
All-in-One SEO by Yoast! Great plug-in to check on how well your on-page SEO is, along with great tools such as an automatic sitemap generator and easy meta tag editor. It's completely free, no additional features if you purchase it or anything.
 
I don't use any SEO plugins. I'm very much of the "take it or leave it" mindset when it comes to Google: I produce quality content on the site's topic and if they don't like it, too bad. There's much more money in interested community traffic than in random wanderers anyway and I'm just tired of worrying about the constant Google changes. Keywords, yes... the rest, can't be bothered.

I always install:

Google Analyticator
Editorial Calendar (and Missed Schedule checker)
W3 Total Cache

...and that's about it. Anything else depends specifically on the site.
 
If you were to only have one plugin, I'd go with All in One SEO. It's amazing how much it can help your site, by simply installing it. I also suggest to get security plugin also, just incase. If you do require other plugins try to keep the from being too server intensive. You don't want your site running slow or get in trouble with your hosting company. Badly coded plugins can really take up alot of RAM so stick with good reviewed ones.
 
dagscot said:
Are there any plugins that you simply should have installed when you're running a Wordpress site? I'm guessing we all want traffic so some kind of good SEO plugin would seem obvious. What else? A good gallery or image plugin? A cool slider?
Click to expand...

I almost always use the following set of plugins on my EP blogs:

Akismet
All in one SEO pack
Exec-PHP
Google Maps
Site Map
Wordfence Security

Apart from the above base set, I will use other plugins as needed.
 
If you have new blog, you should get those plugins first:
WordPress SEO Plugin - very good and simple SEO tool
Wordpress Firewall 2 - basic firewall, once it's installed, you can set it and forget it
Thumbnail For Excerpts - best way to add thumbnail images to a WordPress home page
Hyper Cache - allows each WordPress post to act as a static page
Delete-Revision - saves different revisions of documents
Defensio - comment anti-spam plugin

After installing them, your blog is completely safe and secure! :p
 
I always install some Amazon plugins, like Amazon Showcase or EasyAzon, even if I'm not building a review site. You never know when you'll want to link there.
 
Hi Dags,
WordPress provides a great collection of plug- ins. My favorite WordPress plug -in is All in One SEO Pack, this plug- in is definitely very important because it is essential to rank high with the major search engines(such as Google, Yahoo and Bing).
There are other important plug-ins I would like to share:
1.WP- Insert: It is for a privacy policy.
2.Google XML Sitemaps: It tells where your page is located.
3.Sociable: This plug-in enables visitors to share the content on your website with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
4.WP Maintenance Mode: Adds a customizable “under construction” message to your blog while you get your entire content ready to launch. For more information you may visit simplewebsitetutorials, where they provide information regarding how SEO plug-ins work.
 
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