WordPress is an amazing web publishing platform with tremendous capabilities right out of the box. But what truly makes WordPress my platform of choice is the dizzying array of plugins that you can download (for free, mind you) to customize things exactly the way you want.
Plugins are simply bits of code that you can add on (or “plug in”) that can do all sorts of things beyond the basic program.
As of this morning, WordPress had 5,546 plugins listed in their Plugin Directory that had been downloaded a total of well over 35 million times. That’s a whole lotta code!
Yesterday Rober Hruzek asked me which plugins I recommended. Well the short answer is, “It depends on what you want it to do.” But then he came back and asked if there were any “must haves” in my book.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that for me I’m a fan of things that make my life easier. So, with that in mind, here are 21 WordPress plugins that I have found make my life easier. I’m guessing they’ll do the same for you.
I don’t mean this to be an exhaustive list by any means. Heck, I’ve got more than twice that many installed here on SuccessCREEations alone. And not every one of these will work on every blog. Some of these are very popular plugins and some are more obscure.
Here’s my list:
Spam Protection
- 1. Akismet – [download]
- Pretty much the gold standard of WordPress spam protection. Akismet comes from the creators of WordPress and is one of 2 plugins bundled with WordPress when you download it.
- 2. Defensio – [download]
- Defensio is the spam protection plugin I prefer to use on all my own sites. The way Defensio displays spam in the spam folder makes it easier for me to review more quickly.
Actually I keep both plugins installed and updated (though only activate one at a time). The reality is tech stuff breaks and both systems have occasional outages where spam gets through. That way, if I see a problem with the one I’m using I can deactivate it, activate the other one, and never miss a beat. It’s all about making it easy in my book.
Utilities
- 3. Google XML Sitemaps – [download]
- Having your site rank well in the search engines is paramount. Once it’s set up the sitemap plugin will take care of keeping the major search engines abreast of what your site is up to.
- 4. WordPress Database Backup – [download]
- Servers crash from time to time. (Did I mention tech stuff breaks?) Having a recent backup of your database will prevent that sickening feeling of loss should you experience one. This plugin can automate that process for you. Oh, and don’t forget to back up your theme and upload files too!
- 5. All in One SEO Pack – [download]
- WordPress is inherently SEO friendly, especially when it is set up correctly. That said, the All in One SEO Pack can supercharge your performance in the search engines and help you bring in more of that search traffic.
- 6. Page Link Manager – [download]
- Do you have pages on your site that you don’t want cluttering up your main navigation? Page Link Manager creates a list where you can check which pages you want included and leave the others out.
- 7. Exclude Pages From Navigation – [download]
- A twist on the plugin above. Instead of creating a master list, this plugin puts a check box on the edit screen when editing pages where you can select whether or not you want the page you are writing to be included in the site navigation. You probably only need one or the other of these two.
- 8. Executable PHP widget – [download]
- Have you ever downloaded a WordPress theme because it had some cool functionality in the sidebar only to realize that if you added any widgets to that sidebar it disappeared? You can’t add PHP to the standard Text widget. Good thing you can add it back in with the Executable PHP widget. Very handy for making managing sidebars easy.
- 9. FD Feedburner – [download]
- One of the great things about using Feedburner is that you can track how many people are reading your blog. It also gives you a ton of different ways to customize your feed. The trouble is, when you set up a Feedburner account and point all the links on your page to that feed your plain old WordPress feed is still discoverable. And you will have some folks subscribed to that feed that you won’t know about. FD Beedburner will redirect your WP feed so everyone gets subscribed to Feedburner.
- 10. WordPress Mobile Edition – [download]
- More and more people are accessing the web via mobile devices. WordPress Mobile Edition makes it easy to accommodate viewing your WordPress installation on mobile devices.
Stats
- 11. WordPress.com Stats – [download]
- WordPress.com Stats is probably the easiest basic stats package to implement on a WordPress blog. Like the Akismet anti-spam plugin above, you will need an account at WordPress.com for WordPress.com Stats to work.
- 12. Google Analyticator – [download]
- Google Analytics is considered by many to be the gold standard of stats tracking packages. It gives you a ton more info than WordPress.com Stats does. There are several plugins for integrating Google Analytics into your WordPress site. Google Analyticator is my choice because it combines some good features and is easy to use. Keep in mind that Google Analytics only updates once a day.
- 13. Woopra – [download]
- If you are looking for more extensive real time stats then you should consider Woopra. Their WordPress plugin integrates their stats into your WordPress Dashboard. And they have a desktop application (for both PC & Mac. Yay!) where you can see what people are looking at on your site right now.
Fun Stuff
- 14. Wp-Cumulus – [download]
- I’m sorry, but WP-Cumulus is just about the coolest plugin I’ve seen. It’s what powers my tag cloud. And it even comes with a sidebar widget that you can see over on the bottom of my sidebar there.
- 15. What Would Seth Godin Do – [download]
- A little bit of marketing here. This plugin shows a customizable message to anyone visiting for the first time that doesn’t get seen by returning visitors. You can get creative how you use it.
- 16. TweetMeme Button – [download]
- There are a whole lot of Twitter plugins for WordPress. In my desire to keep life easy, I like the TweetMeme Button. It simply adds a button at the bottom of the post. Makes it easy for people who like your post to tweet it.
- 17. Subscribe to Comments – [download]
- The rumors of the death of email have been grossly exaggerated. There are still a good many people out there who like to get updates and notifications via email. If you allow your readers to subscribe to your comments some of them will. And it might just bring them back to your site more.
- 18. TD Word Count – [download]
- There was a time, back in the day, when WordPress didn’t have the little “Word count:” number at the bottom of the edit window. And if you’re a little, um, focused (a polite way of saying anal) like me you might want to know how many words you were typing. (This post is well over 1200 so far. Did I mention I’m a tad on the wordy side?)
Anyway… The TD Word Count plugin gives you all kinds of word related stats. Like, for instance, I’ve got over a quarter million words here on this blog. Yeah. Wordy. And focused.
And… I just noticed that this plugin hasn’t been supported since, well a long time. Since WordPress version 2.1 in fact. That being the case you might want to skip this one. Did I mention I’m focused?
Niche
- 19. NextGen Gallery – [download]
- NextGen Gallery is the preeminent photo gallery management plugin. I’ve seen sites that have thousands of photo galleries all running along seamlessly with NextGen gallery. Here at SuccessCREEations I’ve got one.
- 20. WP Super Cache – [download]
- For high traffic sites, WP Super Cache will dramatically reduce the server load. This is a very powerful plugin and installing it is not for the feint of heart. Nevertheless it is phenomenal plugin that can probably reduce your server costs if you are bumping into bandwidth issues.
- 21. Podcasting – [download]
- If you are into podcasting then you’ll probably want to take a look at, well, the Podcasting plugin. It makes managing your attachments and integrating with iTunes easy.
UPDATE: The podcasting plugin has disappeared since I wrote this post. Instead I now recommend checking out the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting Plugin.
Well there you have it. 21 plugins that will make your life easier. And it only took me 1,427 words to tell you about ‘em! 
Excellent Post. Thanks
I use the WordPress backend for my personal blog and am planning on incorporating it into our future website for employees to blog from. As of yet, Google Analytics is the only gadget I’ve used, but your recommendations are excellent. I read about the capabilities of Feedburner today, in particular … automatically resolving the standard WordPress feed issue is a great feature.
Hey, thanks for putting this list together, Chris – it’s so easy to get swamped with all the plugins (and their features) that you end up with “forest for the trees” syndrome. Since I’m about to start tinkering with the ol’ homesite, I figured I might as well go straight to the horse’s mouth and ask!
I appreciate the comprehensive answer, Bubba, and a tip o’ the hat to ya!
Thanks for the plugin tips. What do you think of Mippin’s mobilize? I installed it on all my blogs last weekend and it seems pretty nice.
Great list of plug-ins. There are so many out there that one can get overloaded by all the potential options. Thanks for presenting us with a list of useful plug-ins, it appears all of them have a lot of potential to help people’s websites.
good list thanks – I’m just getting into all this so I will hae a browse through the things you suggest
Thx very much!
There are so many out there that one can get overloaded by all the potential options.
thanks for the list
Usefull article! Hello from Russia!
Ultimate list of plugins. For stats “Fire Stats” plugin is also good. Also add WordPress Duplicate content cure plugin to your list
So many plugins, that I start to be confused within them. WP now is very big. But I still want to find good randomizing plugin.
I go back and forth between Drupal and WordPress a lot. I like the easy plug-ins that wordpress has to offer, but I also find that Drupal has most of what I need and is more customizable. 6 of one half dozen of the other I guess.
A great selection of plug-ins. I use 8 of them along with reducing the php calls that are unnecessary in the header template. It really speeds up page loads. Too bad you have to manually do this.
Thanks for the nice set of plugins I am going to use these in my blog.
Talking about plugins, WP also has a plugin called plugin Manager that really helps installing and managing all your plugins, so you dont have to download and ftp it up to your site.
works great
-Dave
Just a heads up to anyone thinking about using WP Super Cache, after you install it, make sure all your other plugins are still working. Where some plugins simply aren’t compatible with your site at all, and will keep it from loading, super cache can be sneakier, especially if you use any ajax calls on your page. Double check all your actions, bookmark, rate, comment, etc. because sometimes when the page is cached things go a little funky. If you can get it working right thought it can get your page loading so much faster.
Also, I love wp cumulus, I’ve just never found a page that it was practical on.
<3
Akismet is a great spam filter. Although it will flag my comments since I use keywords in my name, I like the option to submit your comment anyway for a moderator to review. Most mods realize I’m actually contributing to the conversation and usually approve my comments.
The subscribe to comments is also another useful plug-in that I recommend to any blogger. It’s simple and great for commentors. It’s too hard for me to constantly check the articles I have commented on on a blog. Receiving an email notification is great and it often leads to a comment conversation with other users.
Great list of plugins, I actually use many of these on my WP blog too. One question, though… why do you prefer to use Defensio rather than Akismet? What do you like better about it?
Good list and I am using 17 of the 21. I will have to look into the mobile plugin and woopra sounds very cool, I have not heard of that one.
Pretty good list, you have some of the more important ones in there. Without plugins, WordPress would simply not have the appeal it does today.
I think the plugins are great. I do have one problem though. The WordPress plugins page is ineffective, because it is so hard to find a plugin. Their only form of categorization right now is tags and a primitive search, are you kidding me?
I think something that would benefit WP and its users a ton is to improve the searchability and easy of navigation through their plugins page, right now I find the plugins I’m looking for through Google, I simply can’t find anything good easily with WP’s plugins page.
If you have a blog, a good extension is “Yet Another Related Posts” plugin (YARP) by Joost de Valk, simply awesome for a blog, it keeps your readers on your site longer and looking through relevant content.
Regards,
OZ
That’s a great list, I probably use about 5 of the first ten and there are a good few others that look useful. I too get the ‘wood from the trees’ problem when searching for plugins and having this concise list with comments is really useful.
Great list. Would also add Login Lockdown which helps protect your WP login section by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range and Twitter Tools whih allows you to feed posts to your Twitter account.
Will have to check out the Page Link Manager as I have been looking for such a plug-in.
Wordpress is awesome with all the templates to choose from – love it. When it comes to plugins there are almost too many out there to choose from. One I particularly like is KeywordLuv, but the list you have created is awesome. Thanks for putting it together.
good information keep it up!
The Google XML Sitemap plugin has shown to be the most important and cost-effective thing I have ever done on my website. With this plugin Google gets notified about new sites and posts on my blog immediately and I do not have to wait before the spiders any more. I have been analyzing my web traffic in detail the last two years and I can see a dramatic decrease in the time between each time the Google spiders are coming for a visit. This is really recommended. Changing my standard RSS feeds and start using FeedBurner has also given me a much better understanding of my subscribers through this channel.. The One In All SEO Pack has also been extremely important to attract new readers through Organic Search.
Great plug-ins. I use 3 of them I will have to see about the mobile plugin. Woopra sounds like it could be verry good. I havn’ heard of that befor..
The WORDPRESS is really a great web platform available on the web and the list of the plug-in available is countless and in this post you have given the glimpse of these features. Thanks for this nice post.
You’ve provided great list of plug-ins here! Personally, I like the Spam protection plug-in, it can really help in blocking the comments of those desperate link builders out there. On the other hand, there are so many other plug-ins available similar to these WP plug-ins.
Wow. Thanks for the list. I am currently using a few of these and am going to try the WordPress Mobile and Pagelink Manager. Thanks for doing the research.
I highly recommend adding WPing.fm to the list as well. If you are into social networking, this is a great way to update your status with a link to you latest blog post!
Thanks again.
A great selection of plug-ins. I just use All in One SEO Pack. maybe i want to try all.
thanks for info
wooow it’s a fresh info for me..i’ll try it, thanks for sharing knowledge, don’t forget to visit my blog too my friend
Thank you for the great list of plugins. I was already using a few of them, but had no idea about the others. Thank you for the great information.
Haha thanks! To be honest I had no idea you could customize yourself so much using WordPress! I’m going to try to download one plugin every couple of days so I don’t overwhelm myself, but will definitely use most of these.
Hope I have the need to use WP super Cache someday!
But seriously a great list/post. I found and lost a thread on the warrior forum from about a year ago like this. I knew most of these but not all of them.
Here’s something i was looking for. thanks a lot
Executable PHP widget, i thing i really need this plugin, thx for sharing… i’ll bookmark blog for my reference..
thx
Thank you for the great list of plugins. I have started a non-blog website using wordpress. Can you just have a look at Speedy cash Advance and suggest which plugins will be the best ones for me
All in One Seo Pack works like a charm – I used it from the first time and I’ve never had a single problem – all my inner pages are properly indexed with no duplicate WordPress issues…
This is a great list. Thank You. I only use a handful of plug-ins in my blogs.
Just starting to think about the performance impact on the page if all these plug ins are used. This is part of the reason I try to use few plug ins as possible. Another issue is the maintenance and upgrade of all these plug ins.
The WordPress Database Backup Plug in is a very important one. Once I accidentally dropped my database and had to pay the ISP additional dollars for a retore of the backup!
‘All in One SEO Pack’ is truly a great pluggin, I use it on all of my wp blogs. All the others I still have to try but they seem very promising.
Excellent list !! Your example of the NextGen was excellent but try having a model for your next gallery. Photograph her every morning for 40 days and replace your demo images. I’m going to have to try the podcast plug too. Cheers -
Great post dude, im going to check some of these plugins out right away. Thaks.
I recently downloaded the All in One SEO Pack. Its a great plugin and it makes me feel like I’m doing some real marketing for my blogs. This is a terrific list, thank you.
Great list. I’ve known about a few of these plug-ins and have used some of them at my own blog. However, I have more that I want to try from this list.
Great list, you have some of the more important ones in there. Without plugins, WordPress would simply not have the appeal it does today.I think the plugins are great. I do have one problem though.Just starting to think about the performance impact on the page if all these plug ins are used. This is part of the reason I try to use few plug ins as possible. Another issue is the maintenance and upgrade of all these plug ins.
The WordPress Database Backup Plug in is a very important one. Once I accidentally dropped my database and had to pay the ISP additional dollars for a retore of the backup!
Good list.
By far the most usefull one to me was All in One SEO Pack. It really made me focus on SEO a lot more than before.
Thanks for the plugin tips. I installed it on all my blogs last weekend and it seems pretty nice.
Great list, I found that I was only using a handful of your suggestions. Looks like I know what I will be downloading this afternoon. Thanks again for the great info.
Wow, there is impressive. A very complete list of MUST-HAVE plugins. So far, myself use only 2 out of your 21 plugin. Planning to install the Database backup and Page LInk manager soon.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for your wordpress plugins.
i have a few of those plugins. i’m gonna try the others. Thank you so much for sharing these plugins!
I so agree with Wp-Cumulus! Best plugin & the coolest ever! : ) Awesome list, going to try a few different ones here.
I’ve been procrastinating about installing WordPress and starting a blog mainly because i dont have any inspiration to do it and i dont want to waste my time if i wont get any visitors.
Hi, your post is amazing for me to learn about wordpress pluggin. But I was confused to choice the best pluggin for SEO. Give me your advice. Thank you so much
Wow thanks for #15…that is pretty cool
But I was confused to choice the best pluggin for SEO. Give me your advice. Thank you so much
Thank you for the plugins list. I am using few of them. Many of these plugins are new to me. Very helpful post.
I can personally vouch for the All In One SEO pack. It’s done good things for me. Dialing in the content of my site is turning out to be half speculation, and half education on the current search engine technologies.
Thanks for your plug-in recommendations. I’m in the planning stages for a new WP real estate blog site, and this will be very helpful with improving Day-1 functionality.
Thanks for the plug-ins, the spam protection is very good and the All in One SEO Pack is important, all blogs should install it!
Thanks for the info I’ll definitely try the Google Analyticator plugin, ive been struggling to figure out how to get google analytics to work with my wordpress site. I tried a couple other plugins with no success.
great list – I think I use most of them – I also really like Feedsmith plugin instead of the Feedburner one you mentioned – it essentially does the same thing…
Hi. I just signed up for wordpress account and your article helps me a lot inorder to start my own wordpress site. http://www.BusinessHQR.com ..
Cool stuff, thanks for sharing!
Beautiful entry! I’ve already installed some of your recommended plugins and also subscribed to your feed. Really good stuff… Keep on going
Thank you! Didn’t even realize they had a mobile plugin!
Hai, really useful article. Nice..
These are great and I’ve never even heard of some of these. Definitely going to try out the stats plugins, it’s be interesting to see how they compare to Google Analytics stats. I would also recommend Head Space 2 for SEO.
wow this is that i’m looking for info about what best plugin to use to our wordpress blog. .. many plugin that i never heard before. for example the pluggin wp-cumulus i never use this plugin but i believe this very cool. thanks for sharing bro
now i’m bookmarking for my next visit thanks
Thanks for the plugin tips. What do you think of Mippin’s mobilize? I installed it on all my blogs last weekend and it seems pretty nice.
I hope my server as well as my host doesn’t broke down with all of this plugins.
Hey, is there any way to use these on a Blogspot blog? Some of them sound really cool but my site is on Blogspot, not WordPress.
I really want one of those rotating balls of words on my blog. It looks so awesome…
Hi! is there any plug-in to make bulk post from draft? I have searched but no luck.
Thank you for this informative post. I always love reading about new tips and techniques for increasing the popularity of my websites. I look forward to reading more from you in the future!
Awesome! Thank you so much.. I bookmarked your site so that I can utilize the plugins.. I’m looking forward to adding the “What would Seth Godin do?” plugin to my blog! Thanks for giving so much value,
MD
Hi Chris,
Do you know of any plugin that will allow me to create a site that people can register for and post content to? I’m looking for something that will create a site similar to Hubpages…
Thanks in advance!
Wow. Thank you so much. I’ve been looking for a podcasting plugin for wordpress for ages!
It must be me, but I can seem to easily find the proper download for the Podcast plugin…
The download link only points to this page:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting
I would Love to know where to get the right plugin download.
Thanks
Heya Stephanie! I wrote this post more than a year ago and that podcasting plugin seems to have died through neglect.
My recommendation now would be to check out the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting Plugin. That should get you the podcasting functionality you are looking for.
Dear Lord this could help many people if it just were put in the wordpress from the start… Thank you for sharing this list!
A great selection of plug-ins. I just use All in One SEO Pack.
Thanks for the plugin tips great selection of plug-ins..
Its so nice to see this good information in your post, I was looking the same which you post on blog, thanks now I have the thing which I was looking for my work.
You missed Contact Form 7, really good plugin for making custom contact forms.
I recently got on board with Pretty Link Pro and it manages and tracks short links… makes it so much easier when tweeting short urls and I keep my brand intact by using a short domain I own (pstam.com) instead of resorting to bit.ly, etc.
Great list. All the good ones. The only one that I would add is Sociable so people can Facebook and all pretty easy.
Thanks!
Hey thank you a lot! NextGen Gallery is such a fantastic plugin! I searched for a tool to present my pictures! Simply thank you!
The WP database backup plugin will be very useful especially since I have lots of posts that use to be from my Blogger posts that were moved over.
You missed Contact Form 7, really good plugin for making custom contact forms.
That all in one SEO pack is by far my favorite. It allows you to easily customize what pages are follow and no follow. Adding a lot of value to having a wp blog as far as SEO goes.
Hey, thats a great list of plugins. I have just downloaded 3 out of the ones mentioned in your list. Just one questions though, If I use too many plugins, will it slow down the speed of loading of my blog?