One of the things I love about WordPress as a blogging platform is how Plugins extend its functionality hundred fold. Just like how Firefox becomes more than a browser with its 1000’s of available extensions.
Searching for a good WordPress plugin in the WP Plugin directory can be like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack. When I started out blogging, I just started finding the good plugins by asking the authors of blogs I frequented. Some talk about what they use and some bloggers would gladly tell you if you asked them nicely.
If you wonder what I use here in ShanKrila, you don’t have to anymore. Here is a list of WordPress plugins that I have found and started using them in the months years of blogging. Plus, my wife Shriya provides WordPress services through KarShanMedia.com. And we have collected a huge number of plugins that she uses in her different projects. I have tried to categorize it based on its utility.
This will be a continuously updated page so that it’ll serve as a reference for myself as well as to anyone else running a self-hosted WordPress blog.
I recommend bookmarking this page and checking back for updates. Also, I’d appreciate if you shared this article with your friends in your social network of choice.
Last Updated: July 1 2011
WordPress 3.2 release is imminent. So, I will note where the WordPress plugins are compatible with 3.2.
Best Admin WordPress Plugins
- 404 Notifier
Allows the blog administrator to track 404 pages generated by the blog. You can choose to email it or even receivei as a RSS feed. Very useful when you are moving blogs or changing categories to avoid 404 errors. - Ask Apache Google 404
AskApache Google 404 is a sweet and simple plugin that takes over the handling of any HTTP Errors that your blog has from time to time.So this plugin uses some AJAX code, Google Search API’S, and a few tricks to display a very helpful and Search-Engine Optimized Error Page.
- Shortcode Exec-PHP
Makes it easy to add PHP code snippets to your posts through the use of shortcodes. Re-use PHP code in many posts and pages. Offers one place to manage PHP code with syntax highlighting. - WordPress Database Backup
Every WordPress blog must be backed up with this plugin. You do not want to lose your hard work. Ever. Easy to configure and use. Schedule backups to run every night and email it to you. You could also backup anytime you need and download it. - Contact Form 7
Adds a simple drop in form for users to contact you. You can create multiple forms easily with advanced layouts and spam protection. If you would like to store your form results in the database, check out the Contact Form 7 to Database Extension plugin. This makes it the best WordPress feedback plugin. - Adminer
Adds phpMyAdmin interface right in your WP Admin panel. Manage MYSQL database with ease and speed without having to worry about command line and ssh access. You can even install this as a PHP script without WordPress for your other non-WordPress projects.
Best Ad Management WordPress Plugins
- Ad Injection
One of the best ad management WordPress plugins there is. It may seem like a bit convoluted but once you start adding ads and setting it up to show in various places of your site, you’d never want to go back. You don’t have to edit your WordPress theme files anymore.
Just plug in your ad code from multiple ad networks and forget about it. Very convenient. It even makes A/B testing very easy by randomizing ads that appear in a single space. - Who Sees Ads
Another powerful ad management plugin like the previous one but with a control panel where you can set things like how old a post has to be to display ads, etc. I am still torn between the two but I have to use them both to find out which one I like better.
This plugin recently stopped working for me. But, a very useful plugin nonetheless if it was updated.
Best Slideshow WordPress Plugins
- NextGEN Gallery
Hands down the best plugin there is for creating galleries and slideshows. With the many advanced options like albums and galleries, the options are limitless. - Smooth Slider
For those looking for a simpler plugin with an image slider capability this is a great plugin to try. - jQuery Colorbox
Adds a lightbox/colorbox effect to thumbnails. If you have a gallery in a post, you can create a slideshow!
Best Comments WordPress Plugins
- Disqus
This is what I use in all our WordPress blogs now. Externally hosted comment system takes the pain out of managing comments by yourself. Intense Debate is a similar platform. - AJAX Comments
Lets you post comments quickly without leaving or refreshing the page. - Highlight Author Comments
Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by post’s author. - Live Comment Preview
Lets your commentators see what they type as they type. A huge help for avoiding and correcting typos. - Show Top Commentators
Encourages feedback and comments by rewarding your top commentators with a link to their blog. - Subscribe to Comments
Essential for any blog to allow your readers to easily follow comments they are interested in. Readers can opt in to get notification of new comments in the blog post by email. You can add a small opt in button at the bottom of the comment form. - WP-Twtip-ID
Learn how to Integrate Twitter into WordPress comments and discover your readers in Twitter.
Best WordPress Performance Plugins
- W3 Total Cache
This is by far the best performance WordPress plugin you can find. It enables page cache, database cache, minify, CDN WordPress integration, etc supercharging your WordPress site to serve more pages with less resources. - WP Super Cache
For those who don’t need a robust solution like W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache offers a simpler interface with substantial performance boost. Try this on and see your WordPress pages speed up. - WP-Cache
Speeds up your blog by caching posts and pages to serve them faster. A lot of options to fine tune to your needs. Check out this modified version as well that claims huge speed increase.
Best Post WordPress Plugins
- In Series
Making a series of posts is very easy now. Have some common posts, create a new series by connecting them together. Check out our Firefox Extensions Series for a sample. - Simple Tags
Adds plenty of options to extending WordPress tag management - SRG Clean Archives – Displays archive listings in a clean uniform way in a collapsible menu style. Either look at current month or look at all posts in your archive.
- What Would Seth Godin Do – This weirdly named plugin is simply awesome. It just detects new readers and displays a custom message. You can configure it and format it in HTML and choose to make it appear at the top or bottom of a post.
- Yet Another Related Posts PluginI like this better than the other Related Posts plugin because this brings up posts based on tags or categories of WordPress 2.3. If you consistently tag posts like I do, you might see better results with this one.
- WP Social Bookmark Menu (aka Sexy Bookmarks)
Adds a CSS sprite based social bookmark buttons that pop out as you hover over them as seen here in this blog.
Best RSS Feeds Plugins
- Ozh Better Feeds
It gives you plenty of options to manage your feeds including adding footer notes and Related posts to every feed item. If you find your blog posts being scraped by someone else, add a permalink signature so you get due credit. - FeedBurner FeedSmith
Detects all your possible feeds in your blog and redirects to your FeedBurner feed address. No need to update your WordPress template code with your FeedBurner address every time you change your theme.
Best SEO WordPress Plugins
- All in One SEO Pack
Fastest way to get your blog optimized for SEO. Offers plenty of excellent options. A must have from the get go. - Dean’s Permalink Migration
If you are changing your site wide Permalink structure, use this plugin to make it transparent. It’s transparent even to Google and doesn’t hurt your PageRank. - Google XML Sitemaps
Generates a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog. Supported by Ask.com, Yahoo, MSN Search & Google. - Homepage Excerpts
If you display full posts in your Homepage, you could be getting bad karma from Google for having duplicate content in your home page as well as the single post pages. But, a lot of readers prefer not to click through an excerpt to read a full post. This plugin helps strike a balance by making a customizable number of posts as full and the rest of it as an excerpt in the home page without tweaking your template.
Best WordPress Stats Plugins
- Google Analytics for WordPress
This is the one I use. You can authenticate to Google and select your site right from the plugin settings page. Choose if you want this loaded in the header or footer. You are done. There are advanced settings too if you want to track downloads, etc. - Counterize
A great stats plugin that saves IP, timestamp, visited URI, referring URI and browser information. It shows unique hits, page views for the month as well last 24 hours in a graph. A very nice utility for local stats addicts. - Mint Analytics
If you use the Mint web analytics program, this plugin makes it easy to include the tracking code and birdfeeder code in your blog. Minty is a similar plugin for Mint. - Google Analyticator
Another good Google Analytics WordPress plugin. Enable Google Analytics code from with in Admin panel by entering Google Analytics UID. No need to add the JavaScript to your theme code. - WordPress Stats
Tracks views, pageviews, referrers and clicks with the WordPress.com stats. It shows what people clicked on as well as search terms. You need a WordPress.com API key (free) to activate this.
Best Styling WordPress Plugins
- WP CSS Live Editor
If you are crossing over from Drupal, you may already know about this utility. It lets you edit CSS live on your browser, view changes and save it to a file. Very useful for those who like to tweak live. You could also use Firebug but this is nicer.
More to come…
Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
Best WordPress Newsletter Plugins
Best WordPress Social Media Plugins
Best Premium WordPress Plugins
Best WordPress Video Plugins
Best WordPress CMS Plugins
Plugin Usage Tips
- Make sure you backup your WordPress files, if a plugin requires you to modify a template file.
- While upgrading a plugin, most times it is best to delete or atleast rename the current plugin folder/file and then upload the new plugin code.
- Take the time atleast once a month to update your plugins to the newest versions.
- Don’t let your WordPress blog get bloated and uninstall plugins that you don’t need or use anymore.
I have done my best to make sure the links are correct but it is the nature of the web that they do change at times. Please report any broken links through comments or by Contact Us form.
I would love to find new and better WordPress plugins. Also, I would love to hear if you’d like a listing of Top WordPress Themes like free wordpress themes, wordpress magazine theme or Adsense optimized WordPress Themes.
Feel free to sound off in the comments if you know or have found a plugin that does a better job than the one listed here.
Help make this list a great reference for all the WordPress bloggers out there. If you are a blogger with an iPad, check out the best iPad apps for blogging.
Check out the top 10 WordPress 2.9 features here.
Really useful thanks for sharing, 🙂
Franca Richard’s last blog post..Worst Plane Crash In The World
Thank you!!!!!!!!
Very Nice! That is the best list I have every seen. I am going to have to do some serious digging and check out some of those plug ins. Thanks for all the hard work.
Jasons last blog post..Give Browser Specific CSS Files With PHP
Jason, you’ve made my day and given me the motivation to update this list even cooler plugins I have found and started using. readers like you make this blog better every day. For that, thank you! 🙂
good plug-in
I mean with all these over there, WordPress has never been so so good. Thanks for the list.
Wow, thats quite the list of plugins. Thanks for taking the time and sharing them! Some I didnt know about on there.
is Commentluv and KeyWordLuv making the revised list?? 🙂
BlogMeTheMoneys last blog post..Adsense Alternatives: Part 4 of 4
thanks..
Damn, that’s a huge list… I would add the redirection plugin to that list… It enables tracking of 404 errors and inline adding of right 301/302 redirections…
Olivier, thanks for the comment. I will look into that plugin as it sounds very interesting.
thank you for your guide. i have downloaded lots of plugin for my 3 blogs.
willys last blog post..How to charger a nickel-based battery ?
many plugins never heard before. i think i will use some of them.
thanks for sharing your plugin list.
Wow, nice list. =P
There are a ton of plugins on this list I haven’t tried before.
Justin Briggss last blog post..Creative Social Marketing with MyBlogLog
Justin, glad you like it. I will be updating this shortly with multitude of new plugins that are out now.
Great list of plugins. You should add Platinum SEO to the list.. It is created based on All in One SEO but it has a lot more to it. I just learned about Democracy so I will have to try that out this week. Looks nice and you know how I love AJAX!
Aarons last blog post..Going “Green” – Small Business Can Do Its Part
That is a huge list! And I thought I was using a lot of plugins!
Since I switched to the Semiologic Pro Theme, I’ve been mostly using the included plugins (about 70) but have been slowly adding back any that I really missed.
WP2.5 looks like it will take care of some of the issues for which we needed plugins before.
Louises last blog post..Maryland Crab Cakes Recipe
already used some of them. mmm, I’ll try to spend more time researching on your list. thanks 🙂
WatchUOnlines last blog post..brian stokes mitchell
Thanks for the plugins. They are really useful for beginners.
Wonderful list of plugins. I really like how you have the series links at the end of your post. Is that done with the series plugin you mention in the post?
JB, thanks! That’s the plugin.. there is another one named Organize Series that you might be interested in trying out too.
Wow, what a long but GREAT list of recommend plugins. I love AskApache Firefox Adsense…never heard of it till now. 🙂
Susans last blog post..1 Theme
I’ve been using WP-SuperCache for the past month (WP-Cache is outdated) and it works wonderfully. Thank you for your list of plugins and for the awesome work you do! I know it took a LOT of time to compile the list and I admire the work you put into it.
Nice list, I read through your picks and found some plugins I’ve never heard of but sound pretty neat. Now if I only had the time to play with customizing my wordpress sites.
Wow, that is some list of plugins you’re using! Thanks for the info and not keeping it a secret.
Is it hard to using wordpress on a stand only server ? I only ever try from wordpress domain directly.
Is there a big difference between word press and drupal? We are getting to the point of starting development with one or the other but we are trying to do some research first… Any thoughts?
Don, welcome to ShanKri-la and thanks for asking such a great question. I love both Drupal and WordPress. Drupal, as you may already know is built from the ground up as a Content Management System (CMS). It is great in a lot of respects and the availability of Drupal modules make it suitable for a variety of websites.
WordPress, primarily known for its excellent blog features, is also being used a lot for CMS sites.
So, to make a decision on what to use, you really need to list your requirements and see what either one has to offer for the functionality you need. One may be best suited for your case than the other!
Hope I didn’t confuse you further. 😉
K-IntheHouses last blog post..DriverSide – Car Owner’s Best Friend
Don — Drupal, WordPress (Lets include Joomla too)
* WordPress is for a full-on high traffic global blog or a college magazine
* Joomla is for an arty magazine, a car dealer or a college portal
* Drupal is the atom bomb that landed on the web where you can build your own flickr, delicious, youtube, myspace, new york times. Think big, drive carefully and splash out a couple of hundred on a drupal theme.
*None* require heavy PHP coding.
* All * require regular linux and mysql installation (at the host), plenty of configuration (modules,settings) and maintenance (updates, upgrades)
No effort alternatives are weebly, wetpaint, soup.io, tumblr and blogger……..
DKebb
Dafe, thanks for that excellent and eloquent reply. That just should have made it really clear for Don! 🙂
DKebb – Thanks for the comments and breakdown of each, this really opens the doors a little more, do you prefer one over the other, let me know, thanks again!
K-IntheHouses thank you for your comments as well, I guess I guess I do need to make sure I have a list of requirements and compare them to the attribute of both WP and Drupal, your insight helps a ton! Thank you!
Don, you are very welcome. DKebb did a great job explaining the differences and most importantly how they are in fact powerful and simple to use. 🙂
Great list, I especially like the fact that you categorized them. A definite bookmark.
Dineshs last blog post..SEO (Services) Basics – Good Keyword Research
Dinesh, glad you liked it. Please do check back later as I am about to completely revise this list with even more new plugins that have come out and are sitting with me. 🙂
a really long list you must’ve spend some time with this, some of them still works and really very usefull.
MOin, thanks a lot buddy!
Thanks for great resources.
I really like how you have the series links at the end of your post. Did you do that with the series plugins you mentioned in the post? This is a wonderful list. Thanks for sharing them with us all
great stuff thank you…
This is a super solid list of plug ins. Now I don’t have to run all over the net to find what I need as build my blog. Greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Mike
mikes last blog post..New York Porcelain Veneer Experts are Here For You!
Its a nice post about online shopping because Online shopping is fast becoming the most preferred mode of shopping whereby shoppers can reap the advantages of Internet shopping from the luxury of their homes.
I use Ad-manager for ads on my site. All in One SEO is a great plugin. I should try other plugins which I think important lik Iframe, Contact form III etc
x10s last blog post..10 facts of the Moon
Now thats a good list. I hope you keep it updated especially after the release of WP 2.7
Ashfames last blog post..WordOff strips unwanted stuff from what you pastes in WYSIWYG editors from Word
a really long list you must’ve spend some time with this, some of them still works and really very usefull.
Nice list of plugins. I use most of the SEO ones. I might give Site Unavailable a try. I use a plugin called maintance mode or something and it’s wornderful. Wonder if this other one is any better. It’s a really nice way to throw up a screw when I’m making big changes. I use on my niche sites as well. I can keep up some ads for the traffic that lands on the page while the site is down.
Justins last blog post..Affiliate Networks for Making Money
It a nice site collecting all info about Coupon.
I use to buy some of these coupon and i need this information.
Thanks for your time to post this article.
Wow, so many plug-ins. I’m interested in the SEO plug-in and what it does for you. Have you had any luck with gaining more traffic or rankings?
I’m reading over the features and will give it a try myself.
wow, your blog rocks, all useful plugins in one place
Zakłady bukmacherskies last blog post..Betfair – zakłady pomiędzy graczami