15 Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Blogging: 15 Must-Have WordPress Plugins

As more and more of our clients implement WordPress-based blogs on their existing websites, there is training needed to understand how to make the most out of WordPress. First, let me give a plug for the video tips on WordPress.tv – it’s an excellent place to go and hear real people explain different tips and insights into the WordPress platform. But in addition to those killer videos, we’re going to provide some insights into WordPress right here in our trusty internet marketing blog.

Today’s topic is “Must-Have WordPress Plugins.” This is my list of preferred plugins I automatically upload to each of the 31 blogs I’ve set up. Let’s dive in.

1. Akismet
This is a given. EVERYONE should have Akismet activated. This plugin recognizes spam comments with 80-90% accuracy and automatically puts them into a spam comment folder. This is extremely important in order to service your legitimate commenting readers. Otherwise, you’ll be wading through hundreds of spam comments that take up half the size of your screen each and you’ll waste a lot of time. Akismet has blocked hundreds of thousands of spam comments from the comment stream of my oldest blog.

2. Mobilepress
I love this plugin because it makes reading blog content via smartphone so easy. Go check out this site via your phone’s browser – you’ll see what I mean. Yes, it’s awesome that the iPhone can show me entire web pages, but when I’m looking for content via mobile, I want fast, simple, and uncomplicated. Mobilepress delivers. There are a few other plugins that offer similar functionalities, but this is my preference.

3. EasyTube
EasyTube makes posting YouTube videos about as simple as possible. Any YouTube video that’s not protected from distribution offers a direct URL to that video. You simply post this into your blog post: . Replace URL with the video’s URL and click “Publish”, or write the rest of your article above or beneath it. Your readers can watch the video right there on your blog post page without leaving your site. Trust me. This is gold.

4. Sociable
This is my favorite plugin for social bookmarking / submission buttons. Of course, customizing your social media submission buttons is always an excellent way to add that custom and professional feel to your blog. But for those simply wanting the option of adding whatever buttons are most applicable to your readership. A few buttons are missing from this list, including BallHype, YardBarker, SocialMedian, and Plurk, but there ARE more than 100 options here, so I guess they’re forgiven. The reason this type of plugin is necessary can be summed up in two words: viral marketing. You want people to share your content with their friends. This plugin makes it much easier for people to do just that, which means your percentage of viral content promotion will increase simply by making the process more simple.

5. Twittar
As Twitter becomes increasingly popular, more and more of your commentors will use Twitter. And since Gravatar hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, Twittar will take the email address of the commentor and check Twitter for an avatar. So basically, this plugin increases the number of faces you’ll see when people comment.

6. Another WordPress META Plugin
This is one of the plugins I’ve used the longest. Basically, it creates a field for META Description and META Keywords beneath your post so you can easily add these tags without coding. I’ve always preferred to let my post titles remain as-is for Title tags, so this plugin was all I needed for invidual tag creation. Sadly, this plugin is no longer supported, which means it will not be updated in the future, possibly causing problems with future versions of WordPress. You’re probably better off going ahead and adding the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin instead. That will keep you in good shape for the future. What can I say? I still prefer the old plugin.

7. WordPress Thread Comment
I love this plugin. I know that WordPress has incorporated some of the capabilities of this plugin, but I prefer to leave threaded comments disabled under the Discussion tab and continue using this plugin. I’ve tried both options, and the plugin produces threaded comments that are much more attractive, in my opinion. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, threaded comments give you the ability to reply directly to someone who has left a comment, and your response is indented and placed directly beneath the comment you’re responding to. This allows you to have comment conversations without scrolling all over the place to try to find every response to a particular comment. Included in the features are AJAX enabling, a check box option for receiving email notifications of comment replies, author reply capability from the dashboard, and auto @comment author name insertion so you can tell easily who is being addressed.

Important note: if you have AJAX Comments plugin activated, you will have to disable it to use this plugin, otherwise it will seriously affect your page’s CSS.

8. Get Recent Comments
I’ve found this plugin especially helpful for websites that receive a steady flow of comments. This plugin is a borderline honorable mention rather than must-have. For blogs getting started, this won’t help you at all unless you initially fake some comments to give the impression of popularity. But whenever you have comments coming in regularly, you can paste a little code or widget into your sidebar and let visitors easily see the most recent comments made.

Benefits: First, it makes it more immediately obvious to visitors that your site is popular enough to get comments and conversation flowing. Second, it gives committed visitors an easy way to check up on the laste comments so they can reply or just feel like they are in the know. It’s also an excellent way to send traffic to internal parts of your website. If I see the beginning of a very interesting opinion or comment, I can click on that comment and I will be taken to the article/post page where I can read the whole story and all responses to the subject.

9. WP-Polls
Experience has proven that the simplest options of engagement are the most effective. It will take you a few hours to get completely comfortable with this plugin on your own, but once you’ve got it, you can add polls to any post, page, or sidebar. You’ll find that a well placed poll will ALWAYS get more responses than your number of comments. Clicking a multiple choice button and “Enter” is MUCH easier than sharing a well-thought out opinion in the comments section. Plus there’s anonymity. Plus there’s a chance to see how your opinion compares to the masses. It’s a win win, and you can learn a lot about your readership and the effectiveness of your writing through strategic polls. You can also create a Polls Archive page that allows users to review the results of all polls posted on the site. You can’t go wrong with this plugin.

10. Seesmic-WP
Another ingenious plugin. This allows you the writer to record and add video to your post straight from your “Add New” post page. You will need to create a user account on Seesmic.com, but it’s well worth it. I’m spending a lot more time with this plugin lately. But wait! That’s not all! Not only can YOU post video easily, your visitors can now make comments to any post using video! This is awesome. It’s not very popular yet, mostly because Seesmic is still not hugely popoular. But it will be. Eventually, you’ll see a huge rise of video commentors on blogs as people get more comfortable with social multimedia.

11. WordPress Related Posts
You can get more traffic to deeper and older parts of your blog if you add the code provided from this plugin to your single post file, just above the comments section. It will list links to a few older articles on similar topics to the post on the current page. This plays off the assumption that if someone took the time to read this article, there must be some interest, and if we can make it easy for them to see some optional other articles of the same vein, we’ll probably get our reader to venture deeper into the site.

12. Woopra
No matter what, use Google Analytics on your blog. It’s the most comprehensive and easy to use javascript-based analytics program there is. But Woopra is another beast entirely. If you haven’t already, run over to Woopra.com NOW and register your blog. It may take a few weeks to receive acceptance into the Woopra program. Once you’ve been approved by Woopra, you’ll need to add the plugin. You can also download the Adobe AIR desktop app if you like (I would) OR you can just login to Woopra.com and view your stats there. The primary benefit of Woopra is that you get live streaming stats, so you can see exactly how many people are on your site at any given moment, where there from, how they got there, etc. If you’re going to spend much time developing your blog, this will make you MUCH more informed about your visitors.

13. Twitter Tools
Plain and simple: if you have a blog that you update at least a few times per week, you could benefit from a Twitter account if you don’t already have one. Twitter Tools plugin integrates your blog and your Twitter account so you can 1) post links to your latest posts on Twitter, 2) post your most recent tweets on your blog sidebar, or 3) turn your tweets into blog posts without any extra effort.

14. Notify On Draft Post
You only need this plugin if you have more than one contributor and you need editorial control over all content. With this plugin, you’ll receive an email every time someone adds a new post into the queue. Speaking from personal experience, this will keep you from accidentally sweeping quality posts under the rug and forgetting to publish them. A must have for a blog manager.

15. Subscribe to Comments
Only a few people may use this, but it’s the best way to keep track of what’s been said in the comments section of a particular post once you’ve left the site. You may come across some blogs through Google searches or shared links from friends. Later on, you forgot what the URL was, and you’re ticked off that you can’t find it. Subscribing to comments gives the blog permission to email you whenever someone else comments on the same page you commented on.

Other honorable mentions:
These plugins don’t make it into every blog I setup, but are always in my folder of important plugin resources in case the site calls for it.

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