Being the software engineer and tech enthusiast that I am, it seems that I almost always find more joy and satisfaction in figuring out what I can tweak in my software/gadgets than using them as intended. Xbox? Bought it so I could mod it. PSP? Custom firmware, of course. I have more software on my PC than I will ever know what to do with.
This is why I give you my list of essential WordPress plugins. I have spent 5 times more energy over the last few days finding plugins and tweaking this site as much as possible than filling it with content (sorry). But after all is said and done, why not share my results? So here is my list, in no particular order:
- Advanced WYSIWYG Editor - The built-in WordPress editor is a great tool. However, there are other options available, such as this one. It doubles the number of toolbar buttons, adding functions such as subscript, superscript, text and background colors, etc.
- Dean’s FCKEditor - Advanced WYSIWYG Editor not enough for you? Then try using the FCKEditor instead. If you can’t find it there, you can’t find it anywhere.
- Akismet - Check your comments against a constantly-updated database of the latest spam. Great solution to keep your comments free of Viagra posts.
- Contact Form ][ - Not much to it. Easy contact form to place in any post/page with a tag. Saves time from having to do it yourself.
- Digg This - If you’re a Digg user, you realize how quickly a post on the Digg front page can get your web site the traffic it needs (or sometimes can’t handle). Make it easy for Diggers by using this plugin.
- Edit N Place - Allows you to edit your posts on the pages where they appear. Very handy to save yourself from having to login to the admin console for simple changes.
- Google Sitemaps - Automatically creates a sitemap.xml file that is optimized for Google’s spider. Can potentially provide faster indexing in the monopolistic search engine.
- Head Meta Description - For the few search engines that still use meta tags as a priority for indexing, this plugin creates a meta description tag for each post.
- Installer - Very handy plugin! Allows you to install and uninstall plugins and themes from the administrative console, saving you from having to upload them yourself when you don’t have the time or the ability to ftp to your web server yourself. You can also provide a remote URL to a plugin or theme that will automatically be retrieved and installed so you can skip the entire process of download them manually.
- Lightbox WordPress Plugin - Lightbox is a brilliant image preview/slideshow tool written in javascript. This plugin ports it to WordPress.
- Live Comment Preview - Allows your users to see an exact preview of their comments as they write them. Not quite essential, but could be useful to some.
- Live Post Preview - Similar to Live Comment Preview, but indispensable for administrators. This plugin will allow you to preview exactly what your post will look like before you publish it. It’s a good way to prevent erroneous posts before they go public.
- Popularity Contest - This plugin will allow you to see which of your posts are most popular.
- Sociable - Great plugin! This allows you to place social-bookmarking links (over 30 are available!), with icons, at the bottom of each post. You can choose exactly which ones you want to appear, as well as their order. Great AJAX options interface makes it easy to configure. A++!
- WP-PostRatings - Allows you to place on your posts, wherever you desire, an AJAX 5 star rating control. Very nice, professional look.
This list is by no means comprehensive. Also, some of these I may uninstall soon if I find I don’t like them anymore. But this is what I currently have installed after a fairly in-depth search for anything I could find that would make my site more attractive. If you look closely, you may see some of these plugins hidden around…
