Wordpress plugin recommendations

Ever since I released my wordpress theme Amazing Grace, I have been getting lot of requests to publish what wordpress plugins do I use. It seems to be popular to publish your favorite plugins as always someone can find something new and useful.

I use quite a lot of them but most of them are not visible and work "under the hood" enhancing Wordpress functionalities. So here are they in alphabet order.

Add Meta Tags

Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives. This operation is automatic, but the generated META tags can be fully customized. Also, the inclusion of other META tags, which do not need any computation, is possible.

Since Amazing Grace is already optimized for SEO optimal titles and headings I was only missing meta tag descriptions and I found that this plugin does it in a good way.

Comment Quicktags - Reloaded

Inserts a quicktag toolbar on the blog comment form.

It is the nice addition above the text area of the comment box, allowing you to quickly add wordpress tags like links, quotes etc..

Contact Form ][

Contact Form ][ is a drop-in form that allows site visitors to contact you.

You can see it in action on my contact page.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

Generates a fully customizable browsable sitemap.

You can see it in action on my sitemap page.

Enforce www. Preference

Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

I use Feedburner for my feeds (which I recommend you too) and this plugins makes it possible.

Google Analyticator

Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google's Analytics.

It is very easy to use and powerful plugin as it also enables tracking of outgoing links and downloads.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

Tell the search engines where and what to index. Very useful and fully automatic.

Math Comment Spam Protection

Asks the visitor making the comment to answer a simple math question. This is intended to prove that the visitor is a human being and not a spam robot. Example of such question: What is the sum of 2 and 9?

I've used this successfully to prevent automated comment spam because I wasn't a believer in Akismet. But maybe this will change as I do not like an extra field in comments. Update: Now replaced with Akismet.

My Page Order

A Wordpress plugin to let you set the order of your pages.

I use this to sort the pages how I want in the sidebar menu.

Search Pages

This makes search queries look at pages and posts instead of Wordpress default of only posts.

So when you search something on my blog pages are included in the results too.

Similar Posts and Similar Posts Feed

Displays a list of posts similar to the current one by comparing the way they use words.

I've tried several "related posts" plugins and this one has proven to be the best by far. You can see the results below every post in my blog and also in my feed. Very useful and customizable.

SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

Smart Update Pinger

Replaces the built-in ping/notify functionality. Pings only when publishing new posts, not when editing.

Fixes serious wordpress flaw and in turn help you from being banned from ping services for spamming.

Smart YouTube

Easily insert YouTube videos in posts and RSS feeds.

Yes it's my plugin and the best there is for inserting YouTube videos to your posts :)

Subscribe to Comments

Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

Useful plugin that keeps your readers updated on replies to their comments for example.

Theme Test Drive

Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one.

Another my plugin, this one you know very well. Useful when you are testing new themes for your blog.

Thumbnail Viewer

Simple plugin for showing larger images of your thumbnails. It’s very similar to Lightbox, only much smaller.

Very fast and very small to use, I prefer it over lightbox. Try it in the dream garage.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

This one is a gem, provides fully automated problem-free Wordpress update.

Wordpress Database Backup

On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

This one is a must if you want to insure you blog. Read more about it here.

WP AJAX Edit Comments

Allows you and your users to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments.

You can try it out in the comments box. After you submit the comment you will be able to edit it. It's a usability quirk.

WP Super Cache

Very fast caching module for WordPress.

It is much more advanced version of well known WP Cache plugin. Allows you to survive first page of Digg effect. Not that I am worried anyhow :)