I occasionally get emails from readers asking about my favorite WordPress plugins, so I thought I’d put a post together. I’m sure that to at least 80% of you, this post is about as fascinating as watching water boil, but hopefully it’s helpful to some.
1. Akismet
Akismet keeps the spammers at bay.
2. WP125
This plugin allows you to easily manage 125×125 ads within your WordPress dashboard. I couldn’t live without this one. It notifies me when an ad is about to expire and takes it down when the time comes.
3. Comment Email Responder
I love, love LOVE this plugin. This allows me to reply to a comment in my comment section, and if I desire, it sends an email to the person I’m replying to with my response. The other thing I love about Comment Email Responder is that, unlike some systems that email the commenter, this one lets the commenter email you right back within your email program. In other words, it comes from my email address, rather than some no-reply email server. It’s annoying to get an email reply from a comment I left for another blogger, and it’s from a no-reply email address so that I can’t just zap back a response. I either have to go back to the post and reply in the comments again, or I have to know their email address and plug it to reply privately. This Comment Email Responder avoids that hassle. Granted, it takes the discussion out of the comment section, but it makes it easier to continue the conversation.
4. Subscribe To Comments
This plugin allows you to receive email notifications of new comments if you want to follow the conversation on a specific post.
5. Google Analytics for WordPress
“This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding lots of features, eg. custom variables and automatic clickout and download tracking.”
6. LinkWithin
Link Within is available for all blogging platforms, not just WordPress, but I love it so I decided to include it here. (Actually, it’s a widget, not a plugin. But anyway.) It recommends similar posts from your blog and increases the time readers stay on your site.
7. Print Friendly & PDF
This is another one that you can install on other blogging platforms as well as WordPress. It allows your readers to print a post or to make a PDF from it and save it to their computer. I use this because I post so many recipes. This way, anyone who wants to print out a recipe can do it with a couple clicks. The other cool thing about this is, when you click on the Print Friendly button, it brings up the post in a PDF view, and you can click on whatever paragraphs or photos you want to delete. That way, you don’t have to print out all of my clever commentary, unless you want to, of course. You can just the recipe itself and perhaps one photo of your choice, rather than all 212 that I often include in a recipe post.
8. Sociable
This plugin automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites (such as Twitter and Facebook and Stumbleupon) so people can promote your posts if they so desire. They are the cute little icons you see at the bottom of my posts.
9. Add Sig
This adds a custom signature to the bottom of your posts. You can write anything you want in here. On my posts, I use it to suggest that readers subscribe to Musings of a Housewife and follow me on Twitter. Some in the comments had trouble finding this. Here’s the site for the Add Sig plugin.
10. What Would Seth Godin Do
This plugin displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors.
And, since I seem to be unable to make a Top Ten list with only 10 items…
11. All in One SEO Pack
I put this last because with Thesis and its awesome built-in SEO, I’m not sure this is necessary. But if you don’t have Thesis, the All in One SEO lets you use a different page title tag for your page or post (I do this a lot within Thesis — I use a more SEO friendly title tag, but I can still use clever post title if I want.) It also lets you control the meta description tag and the title tag for the pages on your site.
What about you? What would you add to this list?
Great list, Jo-Lynne! I have WP Thread Comments, which does the same thing, and it makes it so easy to respond on the blog and by email at the same time.
I have tried Link Within, but it was doing weird things with linking to my old Blogger Blog. I recently had someone straighten out some mistakes I made, so I’ll try it again now that I have 301 redirects on the old urls (super GEEK talk, I know!)
I would add Comment Luv! I adore being able to click their latest post and go comment right away! ( although I need to get better with that!)
Great list! You have things on here that I haven’t seen on other lists (like the signature, linked within, and all in one SEO pack). I am off to WP to hunt down some new plug ins!
Jo-Lynne — this is really helpful and awesome stuff. Thanks!
Jo-Lynne, I didn’t know about WP125. When I read that I was like, “YES! I need that!!!” So … thanks
Thanks Jo-Lynne…….since I literally just moved to WP 1.5 week ago, this is VERY handy!! I have several of these, but I’m looking into the others!!……..I’m still trying to “settle in” and get all of my old posts categorized and tags straight……
As always, your posts are timely and needed. We discussed this before, but it great to have it written down somewhere. Have fun at PV!
Thanks. Great post. I have already installed a few of these.
I have two WP.org blogs (well one is a blog, the other is a used as a website) plus I am moving one from Blogger to WP next month. Most of these are things I really need right now and will definitely use for the one I’m moving.
Thank you so much for sharing the information!
This is such a great list! I’ve been looking for a signature plug-in but just haven’t been able to find one. Thank you for your suggestion!
I just tried searching for the signature plug-in but can’t seem to find it. Is it actually called “add sig”? Thanks for your help!
I guess it’s a download?
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/add-signature-plugin-for-wordpress/
This is an awesome list! Thank you so much. As a WP newbie, I am soooo lost in the world of plug-ins! I’ve bookmarked this for the day I have to sit down and polish up my new blog. (No, that day doesn’t have a date, but I am sure it will happen soon. Right???)
I can’t seem to find comment email responder when I search for plugins. I despise having to download them and go that route, any ideas why it’s not showing up?
Nevermind, I did it anyway. Thanks for this great list!
Glad you found it. I hate uploading them manually too.
Thanks again for this list. I just finished adding all the ones I wanted. I wanted to note that my dashboard had an upload option for adding the zip file for a new plugin. I didn’t have to FTP with my host or anything. Is that new or something I’d missed before – the ability to upload and activate a plug-in zip file from my WP dashboard?
Subscribe to comments was just what I needed. Super! Couldn’t find Link Within as a plug-in.
That’s a very helpful list! I’m thinking about moving to WordPress, in my copious freetime, but in the meantime, I’ve been tweaking my blog in Blogger just to make it a little better. I can’t wait to go to Bloggy Boot camp in September and understand all of this stuff even more!
I was just now looking for some of these. Perfect timing, thank you!
I am literally in the process of moving from blogger to WP right now – and this list ROCKS! Thank you so much!
I found the add sig download {it’s not a plugin} but the download link isn’t working, for anyone who’s looking for it.
Great info. Thank you!!!!!
Shelle, thanks for clarifying about the Add Sig. I will amend my post.
Glad the rest was helpful!
Hey, so I’m doing a Cutest Kid Contest on my blog- and have had a hard time finding a good voting widget…. I’ve found one I will most-likely use (voting doesn’t start until the 27th) the problem I had with most widgets was:
a- they showed the results after the person voted (I want it to be a surprise)
b- they limited the amount of poll answers (picture titles) I could put on the poll to 20-30 at most
I thought I found one that would let me set it up for everything I wanted- so people had to be a fan on the facebook page in order to vote, and could only vote once a day, and the above mentioned issues were resolved. But I have tried to join their site twice and had no luck.
Do you know of a good poll/voting widget?
No, unfortunately I don’t. the only one I tried didn’t work out too well.
We use the “Threaded comments” on 5 Minutes for Books, similar to your reply comment thing, and I LOVE it. Absolutely love it.
I need to sign up for that Link Within for sure.
So glad you posted this list! I was JUST talking to my husband about wanting a better way to respond to comments and email the commenter also. I’ve been essentially cutting and pasting, and it’s a big time killer. Also, you reminded me that my Print/PDF feature for recipes got deleted a while back and it needs to be re-installed!
This is the most useful plug-in list I’ve seen in a long time. Thank you!
I just forwarded this link to Tim because he’s the technical mastermind behind my blog.
wow, thanks! I use some of these, but not all.
Do you know if a plugin exists that will automatically send an email to commenter with my response if I reply to their comment (in addition to the comment posting on the site)?
I always wonder if readers come back and get my responses if they don’t know to click “notify me of followup comments…”
Yes that’s #3 on this list!
Jo-Lynne, this is a great list. I love the link within feature on your website. Now I know how to do it on my own. I’m trying hard to look like a blogger who knows what she is doing.
JoLynn, I just wanted to drop you an update on adding plugins. I was checking out my blog analytics last night. After installing the Link Within plugin, my bounce rate dropped from ~85% to 5.6% in September, page views per visit went up from 1 to 4.6, and of course average time on the site went up too. I think the images really help to catch the readers eye rather than just a list of text links. Thanks so much.
That’s good to know, thanks!!
To add my own plugin. I love zemanta. It is a contextual analyzer that helps me find photos for my posts. Overall the plugin does a good job about making sure the photos are legal to use (CC or wikimedia commons). It also has a feature for finding related links, but I don’t ever use that.
Cool. I’d love to try that.
are you aware, jo-lynne, of any plug-ins that allow you to have a 2-line post title??
Nope, although mine go onto 2 lines if they’re too long. Yours don’t?
Jo-Lynne: I was wondering which related posts plugin do you use? I cannot find one which has images. or maybe it is my theme not displaying it correctly?
wait, i think I figured it out, I think you are using linkwithin
You got it!
Thank you so much for this list!
Building a new site on WP, and this is a great help. Thanks!
This is a great post. Thank you.
I just installed LinkWithin and already love it. I want to install the Comment Email Responder but can’t find it in the wordpress plugin marketplace. Do you know if the name has changed since you first posted this? I was just telling my husband last week that I wanted a way to reply in email to comments and this sounds perfect.
Thanks
I just googled it and this is what I found. I don’t use it anymore b/c my theme supports that feature so I’m not sure if it is still a working plugin or not.
http://www.legalandrew.com/projects/comment-email-responder/