Jonathan Dingman

9 WordPress Plugins You Need

November 19th, 2008 by Jonathan Dingman | 39 Comments

As a WordPress enthusiast, guru, and lover, I use plugins every single day and am constantly researching new plugins — even creating plugins.

These are the top 9 plugins that I’m in love with. Check them out and see if they’re a great fit for you.

  1. MobilePress - This plugin is unique because it’s the only one of its kind that I can find. It “mobile-izes” your site to fit the iPhone, the Blackberry, and any other mobile device.
  2. Nice Search - This plugin turns your /?s={query} into /search/{query} which is a) more search friendly and b) easier to type, I feel. I use it quite often on my own site and it’s just really easy to use. A simple, yet effective plugin.
  3. Viper’s Video Quicktags - This plugin gives you the flexibility to integrate videos into your posts. While the default embed code will work, this plugin gives you the flexibility to manage your videos on a larger scale — site wide, rather than on a post by post basis.
  4. RSS Footer - This plugin lets you easily add a line below each post in the RSS. Whether it’s an advertisement or a simply copyright notice, it’s great because you don’t need to do anything extra to get it working — just activate, add your line that you want, and you’re done.
  5. Feed Footer - Wanting to run up to 10 different ads in each post via RSS? Now you can! This plugin is great for rotating various ads via your RSS footer. This plugin is similar to RSS Footer, but it will let you specify up to 10 different messages/ads.
  6. SEO Slugs - This plugin let’s you focus on writing, not making sure every aspect of your post is SEO friendly. In short, this plugin will strip words like “a”, “you”, “what” or “can” from the permalinks of your post, since those keywords are ignored by search engines.
  7. No Self Pings - There is one major item that really bugs me about WordPress. When you link to yourself using the full URI, WordPress will “ping” itself notifying another post that you wrote about it. My view: if I want to show that, I will make it happen. I do not like self pings at all, so I have No Self Pings activated to prevent this from happening.
  8. Subscribe to Comments - This plugin is something that ought to be part of the WordPress core, honestly. It will give your visitors the ability to subscribe to the comments of a specific post after they leave their own comment. This is great for when you want to be notified of new comments which may be an answer to your question or you just want to hear what other people have to say about that post.
  9. WP Super Cache - This plugin is, well, a life saver. Whenever you get “dugg”, “stumbled” or “slashdotted”, this plugin will let you serve every single visitor instead of having your server crash [and lose out on a ton of traffic]. WordPress still does not have an amazing integrated cache system, so this plugin creates static pages to be served to your visitors. This plugin is a must.

This post was written by Jonathan Dingman, a WordPress-aire. Anything you need from WordPress plugins to WordPress themes, he’s your man to get the job done. Contact him to get a quote or setup a client call.





Comments

39 responses so far ↓

  • Richard V. Burckhardt on Nov 19, 2008 at 10:31 am

    Nice list, but why do I only see nine plugins?

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 19, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    Was a typo in the title, I corrected it. There are only 9 in this list.

  • Richard V. Burckhardt on Nov 19, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Just checking. Didn’t want to miss anything good!

    ;-)

    Richard

  • Susan on Nov 19, 2008 at 5:41 pm

    WP Super Cache is a precious plugin to have for any wordpress user.

  • lucky luck on Nov 19, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    Thanks, nice list plugin.

    This is serveral plugin I’m using.
    - SEO all pack.
    - XML sitemap
    - Social bookmark
    - Rating post

  • amir on Nov 20, 2008 at 12:58 am

    Very informative article.

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 20, 2008 at 1:02 am

    Thank you. I will be releasing more of these kinds of articles as I can find more plugins/themes which I feel is important.

  • Jeffrey Alexander Brathwaite on Nov 20, 2008 at 3:22 am

    Great list! Will start using some of your suggestions right away.

    Thanks again

    JB

  • Jaydip on Nov 20, 2008 at 4:01 am

    First time I had seen versatile list of WordPress plugin. This is very usefull info. I am sure going to use few of them.

  • ABnCParties on Nov 20, 2008 at 7:21 am

    Ditto. I used to have to search all over for useful plugins.

  • Jeff Howard on Nov 20, 2008 at 8:25 am

    I would add the Google Analyticator. It makes it really easy to setup tracking on all your pages. Plugin is here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 20, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Jeff, I just don’t see a reason to install a plugin to do the same thing as adding a few lines of code to the bottom of your theme. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

  • Joost de Valk on Nov 20, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    @Jonathan: I would, but with another plugin though, namely my own Google Analytics for WordPress :)

    Ow and I would prefer you link to the “original page” for the plugin instead the wordpress.org page :)

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 20, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Joost, I link to WP.org because it’s the central hub and takes care of all changes, downloads, updates, etc. The links will end up going back to you anyway.

    And I still don’t like having a plugin just for google analytics, I still think it’s stupid ;)

  • golan on Nov 20, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    Thank you, great list!

    Just tell one thing: what’s wrong with self pings? they bring us so desired inner links, don’t they?

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 20, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    Golan,

    those links are already nofollowed, so they aren’t going to bring any value to the search engines.

    Unless your theme is setup in the best way possible, those pings aren’t going to bring any value to your readers.

    I use the Related Posts method where it will automatically pull related posts on a regular basis and continually update the list with even more relevant posts, instead of having 5 or 10 ping backs where the reader may not even look.

  • golan on Nov 20, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    I see, thank you.
    But there are not nofollowed, at least on my blog, but maybe that’s because of DoFollow plugin.
    So - it does bring some benefit from SEO point of view, but of course has nothing to do with helping readers )

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 20, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Golan,

    By default, nofollow is added, so the majority of users will see no benefit.

    I also have dofollow on my blog, but my Related Posts achieves a similar effect and it’s far cleaner, with better internal link, I feel.

    A pingback can often pull a random link name and then it would render the link useless, again.

  • golan on Nov 20, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    And there are plugins I use:

    - Akismet
    - All in One SEO Pack
    - commentluv
    - Dean’s FCKEditor For Wordpress
    - GoCodes
    - MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
    - NoFollow Free
    - Similar Posts
    - Sociable
    - WordPress Database Backup

    As for WP Super Cache, I don’t use it because I don’t anticipate a big traffic in the nearest future, and also I’ve heard many stories of how it breaks database and works incorrectly with different plugins.

  • golan on Nov 20, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    *A pingback can often pull a random link name and then it would render the link useless, again.*

    Yes, self pings give no benefits, I’m agree with you, but what I wanted to ask - do they hurt? )) so do we need to install additional plugins to get rid of them? )

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 20, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    I actually say yes, they do hurt, in 99% of the cases, because it will create a poorer user experience. What if, because of the poor user experience, someone doesn’t want to link to you. That could up potentially hurting your rankings.

    Ultimately, I just feel self pingbacks clutter the page, so I turn them off completely.

  • golan on Nov 20, 2008 at 5:13 pm

    Yeah, I see… You’re probably right…
    Thank you!

  • Frank Schulte-Ladbeck on Nov 20, 2008 at 6:17 pm

    Ok, I am new to this, and it might be a dumb question, but I delete most pingbacks, because they seem to be from spam sites. Self ping backs I deleted for the cleaner look, so I should add that plug-in, but I have come to the opinion that all pingbacks are not so great. Is that wrong? Or should I be choosy about the pingback?

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 20, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    Frank,

    I’m actually on a similar page with you. A lot of pingbacks are definitely spam and should be deleted. But once in a while, you’ll see a legit pingback from through from an article actually talking about what you wrote. Those you ought to keep.

    I add the plugin to stop self pingbacks just because it’s a waste of my time to go through and delete pingbacks, this plugin does all the work for you.

  • Justin Seibert on Nov 20, 2008 at 7:00 pm

    @Jonathan - Great suggestions (and in the comments, too). Thanks for putting together!

  • Ajay on Nov 21, 2008 at 8:55 am

    nice list
    thanks for all of these wordpress plug-ins

  • Samuel Lavoie on Nov 23, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    I personnaly prefer Headspace 2 over SEO pack plugin, as it include other goodies and the plugin recent evolution.

  • Rahul on Nov 24, 2008 at 2:14 am

    Nice post. I like #2 Nice Search and will give it a try. Thanks again.
    Cheers.

  • Christina on Nov 25, 2008 at 9:27 am

    I haven’t quite acquainted myself with these Wordpress Plugins and having been able to discover your post is a relief. Thanks. I’ll be checking on those plug-ins in the coming days. Your discussion with golan also have given me some useful insights. I also think Nice Search will be very handy and might be the first one I would try. :D

  • Devasish Gupta on Nov 25, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    I’ve bookmarked this page. I’ll be using all the plugins mentioned here.

    Hope you come up with other important and useful plugins in the future also.

  • Tobias Fox on Nov 25, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    two plugins I’ve been missing:

    for earning money:
    “Adsense-Deluxe”

    against comment-spam:
    “Math Comment Spam Protection”

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 25, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    Tobias,

    I strongly recommend NOT using a cpatcha plugin as it’s poor accessibility in my opinion.

  • Ben McKay on Nov 26, 2008 at 8:13 am

    I like sociable like many, but looking for a related comments plugin that’s decent at the moment…any ideas/

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 26, 2008 at 9:50 am

    Related comments? That’s a plugin that just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t see any reason why you would want that because your visitors will probably not ever care about related comments.

    Related posts, yes, related comments, no.

  • Ben McKay on Nov 26, 2008 at 9:58 am

    ….oops, I meant to say Related Posts!

  • Jonathan Dingman on Nov 26, 2008 at 11:50 am

    Oh, for related posts, I use this plugin:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/similar-posts/

  • Ben McKay on Nov 26, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Brill, I’m going to check it out - thanks.

    Ben

  • Roni on Dec 4, 2008 at 9:08 am

    Thought I’d also let you know about Kaltura’s All in One Video Pack for WordPress blogs. This is not just another video embed tool - it includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses, manage and track your video content, create playlists, sidebar showing all recent videos posted and video comments and much more. Check it out and download it here: http://corp.kaltura.com/wordpress_video_plugin?general&campaign=wordpress-comments. Showcase your blog, see examples and pictures of the plugin and get support in our forum: http://community.kaltura.org/viewforum.php?f=4

  • Viphole on Dec 21, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    Very useful plugin list, thanks! ;-)

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