In this article I will be showing you the WordPress plugins that I consider essential. They are not necessarily the most feature rich plugins available or the best supported; these are the plugins that I find myself installing on my blogs and websites time and time again and believe that WordPress would be improved if they were integrated into the WordPress core.
Please note, that this article is not about the best WordPress plugins available. As such, I have decided not to include any SEO plugins in this list as if your theme is designed correctly, WordPress does a great job of looking after SEO for you. Those of you who are looking for a great SEO plugin should check out All in One SEO Pack, Headspace 2 or my personal favourite WordPress SEO by Yoast.
Login Lockdown
In a Nutshell: Allows you to lock out anyone who enters an incorrect password or username after a set number of times. The IP address of those who are enter incorrect login information is recorded too.
Until an update during 2010, the first username created by all WordPress installations was named admin. Those of you who started their blog before this update probably still use the sign on admin to login to your blog; which is a big risk as it means that all someone has to do is guess your password in order to login to your website and have full control over everything. Since then WordPress has allowed users to create their own username and password when they first install the script, however this doesn’t stop people without permission trying to access your site.
Login Lockdown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. It also allowed lock out people who enter incorrect details for a set period of time. It’s a great deterrent and makes your blog safer from unauthorised access.
Feedburner Feedsmith
In a Nutshell: Redirects people from all of your feeds to your Feedburner subscription page so that every subscriber can be tracked.
Feedburner remains my favourite way to track how much RSS and email subscribers my blogs have. There are alternatives available and the results and every now and then the subscriber count seems erratic, however it is still the best option for counting the number of active readers you have.
Developed by Steve Smith before Google bought Feedburner, Feedburner Feedsmith redirects all WordPress RSS feed options like http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc, to your Feedburner page. This ensures you track all subscribers.
Google XML Sitemaps
In a Nutshell: Automatically creates an XML sitemap for your website so that search engines can better index your content.
There are a few sitemap plugins available however ‘Google XML Sitemaps’ is my personal favourite. The plugin generates the sitemap for you though you have complete control over what is indexed, what areas of your site should be given priority and the frequency certain pages are indexed. Very easy to use and helps search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to index your content.
Download Google XML Sitemaps | Announcement
Simple Link Cloaker
In a Nutshell: Allows you to ‘cloak’ your affiliate links so that the URL’s are shorter.
It’s very important to cloak affiliate links in my opinion. Affiliate networks frequently change the affiliate URLs for affiliates. If you use a link cloaker this means you just need to update the link once in your admin area. Compare this to having to update dozens and dozens of posts and pages that have the affiliate link within the post.
Over the years I tried dozens of different link cloakers. Many of them tracked clicks and impressions but unfortunately, a lot of them conflicted with the WordPress permalink structure. Simple Link Cloaker doesn’t do anything fancy; all it does is make your URLs nicer for visitors, but it does what is designed to do very well.
If you are looking for a no frills link cloaker plugin that is reliable, I encourage you check it out.
Subscribe to Comments
In a Nutshell: Allows commenters to receive email updates when someone else comments in the article they commented on.
One of the most popular WordPress plugins available, it still surprises me that this useful plugin from Mark Jaquith has not been integrated into WordPress itself. Subscribe to Comments encourages commenters to return to your website when someone else comments; a must for anyone who has comments active on their website.
Download Subscribe to Comments | Announcement
User Role Editor
In a Nutshell: Lets you change the capabilities of user groups easily.
By default WordPress assigns certain capabilities to user groups such as administrators, editors, authors, contributors an registered users. Unfortunately, WordPress does not allow you to edit these capabilities by default.
User Role Editor fills this void and allows you to determine how much control each user group has. It also allows you to create new user groups to suit your needs.
I install this plugin frequently as by default contributors are not allowed to upload files or images. To give a contributor the ability to upload images for posts, all you need to do is check the upload_files box and click update.
An essential plugin for anyone who needs more control over what their users can and cannot do.
Download User Role Editor | Information
Jetpack
In a Nutshell: An amazing product from WordPress developers Automattic that comes packaged with several different plugins.
I have been using Jetpack on all my websites ever since it was released. Jetpack is essentially a collection of useful plugins, integrating such popular plugins such as WordPress.com Stats and ShareDaddy. It also includes a URL shortener, Gravatar hovercards, shortcode embeds and much more.
Download Jetpack | Information
Akismet
In a Nutshell: The most popular comment spam prevention tool available online.
It’s easy to forget about Akismet and forget how useful it is as it’s been around for so long. It is also the only real plugin that comes packaged with WordPress so you probably have it installed on your WordPress website already (The other plugin that is packaged is the pointless Hello Dolly).
It’s only when you deactivate Akismet for a few days do you realise how good it is at reducing comment spam. Akismet is constantly improving by receiving millions notifications from millions of users of what spam is being sent.
An essential plugin that I encourage you all to activate.
Download Jetpack | Information
Portable phpMyAdmin
In a Nutshell: Allows you to use phpMyAdmin directly from your WordPress admin area.
Installing Portable phpMyAdmin will save you a lot of time if you edit your database semi-frequently. To access a WordPress database I normally have to login to my hosting cPanel and then click on the phpMyAdmin link. Once this plugin is installed you can access everything from your admin area. You don’t even have to enter any login information as the plugin gets it directly from wp-config.php.
Download Portable phpMyAdmin | Information
Editorial Calendar
In a Nutshell: Organises your posts in a calendar and allows you to drag and drop posts within the calendar.
A fantastic plugin that makes scheduling articles easy. The plugin creates a new ‘Calendar’ link in the posts section of the admin area. The calendar page shows all posts in a traditional calendar view rather than the default list that WordPress uses. Articles can be scheduled for different days be simply dragging and dropping them onto the day you want them to publish.
Local Storage Backup
In a Nutshell: Backs up your posts locally so when you lose your connection you won’t lose any of your work.
You won’t even realise this plugin is working unless you lose your internet connection. There is no settings page and no templates to edit. The plugin is a life saver when you lose your internet connection and will display a small message in your post editor that the connection is down rather than letting you hit publish and lose all of your work.
Simple, useful and for me, highly essential.
