Wordpress has became the largest and the most popular blogging platform on the web, one of the reasons that WordPress is popular is because of the features and it has tons of plugin available. I believe that major internet marketers do have at least a blog and the blog is hosted by WordPress, people loves it because it has a lot of plugins available and we can enhance or improve our blog in easy way.
There are many plugins available on the net, either free or premium one. WordPress.org itself has up to 8,245 plugins in the database and all of them are free for download, the number doesn’t include plugin from other webmasters that don’t upload the plugin to WordPress.org, I estimate that there would be up to 10,000 wordpress plugins available on the net.
15 Must-Use WordPress Plugin In Year 2010
This blog currently is using up to 35 wordpress plugins, if you experience slow loading time, that might be some errors occurred from one or more of the plugins, just like what I mentioned about the Blogengage Button, but it’s back to normal right now. So here is a list of 15 wordpress plugins that I’ve been using, and I think they should be used for any blog in Year 2010.
1) Contact Form 7
This plugin generates a contact form, it allows people to contact you via the form in simple step. Many people are still leaving their email address in the contact page and ask readers to contact them via email, so readers have to open their email address account and send you an email. Since there is a plugin, why not you make the thing simple and make your readers happy?
2) Akismet
That’s the most common and useful plugin. It used to filter and block spam comment, it saves a lot of your time. It’s a default plugin, that will be in your wordpress plugin folder when you create a new wordpress blog. Many newbies don’t know what’s the purpose of Akismet, so now you know. Be sure you activate it.
3) Wp-Optimize
This plugin optimizes your wordpress database and your blog will load faster than usual. It removes all post revisions, cleans marked spam comments, cleans unapproved comments, and optimizes database tables. You don’t want to keep rubbish in your blog for a long period, use this plugin to clean your database and your blog will load faster.
4) Wp-PageNavi
A plugin that displays the page number bar within your blog, it makes your readers easy if they want to search something in your blog and don’t want to click the “Previous Entries” button, the page number bar would be faster.
5) Lucia’s LinkyLove
It’s a great wordpress plugin that I recently installed. It’s something like Dofollow plugin, it dofollow the commentator’s link when the readers leave enough number of comments in the blog, says 3 comments, otherwise they’re nofollow. This plugin is good to avoid people who just want to leave a comment and a dofollow link, then run away.
6) Top Commentator
This plugin is widely used by many bloggers. This plugin shows a list of top commentator together with the backlinks, it’s to encourage your readers to leave comment and increase the rate of participation on your blog. They leave comment and receive dofollow backlinks, and it improves your blog, that’s win win situation. So this plugin is a must-use for your blog.
7) Comment Approved Notifier
This plugin notifies the commentator who leaves comment in your blog and the comment is approved in email. I believe that majority of blogger read tons of blog in a day and leave uncountable comments, sometimes they wouldn’t remember which blog they’ve left their comment, so this plugin would be good to notify them that their comment has been approved in your blog, so they will return to your blog and see whether there is any updates.
8 ) Commentluv
This plugin shows the latest blog post with backlinks from the commentator. This plugin would help to increase the rate of participant in your blog as well as people likes backlinks, especially dofollow backlinks.
9) Google XML Sitemaps
A very common plugin that used to generate google sitemap for your blog, your google sitemap can be built in few simple steps in few minutes time. It saves a lot of time with the help of this plugin.
10) WordPress Related Post
As the name of the plugin, it shows related post in every of your single posts. It makes your blog sticky, which means your reader won’t be leaving your blog after reading a blog post, they would be interested to read other related post in your blog as well. Usually we place the related post at the end of the content.
11) WP Smush.It
It’s a plugin that would help to cut off the loading speed if you have many images displayed at the main page. It smush or optimizes the existing images to smaller file size, says from GIF to PNG. In future, every images that you add to the post, it will be automatically run through Smush.it. With that said, your blog will be loading faster.
12) Wp Super Cache
That’s a great plugin to give the best experience to your reader when they visit your blog, your reader will experience a better loading speed in your blog. This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. I’m sure you know about “Cache” in Google search engine right? It shows the latest snapshot of the site.
It goes same to wp super-cache, it shows the snapshot of your blog in a time frame, says it refreshes every 30 minutes if there is no updates on your blog. So your reader will be served static html files in your blog, and they will experience faster loading speed because the WordPress PHP scripts is much more heavier than the static html files.
13) Insights
It’s a plugin that saves your time, when you’re searching some relevant information with your blog post such as images, videos, blogs, news, books and etc, this plugin shows relevant information with your blog post and you can use them in your blog, but be sure to give credit to the owner.
14) All In One SEO Pack
It’s a SEO plugin that allows you to write your own title tag, meta description and meta keywords for the blog post you write. It’s must-use wordpress plugin if you like to receive organic traffic.
15) TweetMeMe
The last plugin will be tweetmeme. As we know, twitter is the largest social networking and microblogging service on the web, so you might want to share your blog post in your twitter and drive more traffic, at the same time you want others help you to re-tweet the blog post and drive even more traffic to your blog. So tweetmeme does the job, it displays a small tweet it button within your blog post, your reader re-tweets it and voila!
Wrap Up
Having excessive numbers of plugin in your blog might slow down your blog, so you might want to choose the best plugins for your blog and giving the best performance to your readers. These 15 wordpress plugins are the one that I think you should install for your blog in Year 2010, especially akismet, wp super-cache and etc, all of them help to improve your blog and may bring your blog to the next level.
Also, be bear in mind that you’re recommended to update all your wordpress plugins to the latest version, the owner may fix some bugs or add some new features.
Do you use any plugin from the list? Any other wordpress plugin that you think is great and must be used but not in the list?
About Lee Ka Hoong
It’s a good list there, and I use most of the plugins there, and will add a couple that I didn’t know about.
I would also recommend installing the WPtouch plugin. It makes your blog iPhone friendly. It’s a great plugin!
.-= VikingBlogger´s last blog ..How To Optimize Your WordPress Blog For iPhone, Android And Other Mobil Phones With WPtouch =-.
@VikingBlogger,
That’s a good idea since there are many people start using iphone to surf net and blogging. Thanks for your recommendation Staale! :)
An excellent list. Any reason you left keywordluv off of it? The commentluv/keywordluv/linkyluv/top commentator combo is great for bloggers who want to reward/encourage their commentators.
.-= Will@laser hair removal´s last blog ..Where On Your Body Can You Get Laser Hair Removal? =-.
@Will,
That’s a great combination of plugin but I don’t recommend it as everyone is using keyword in the name and end up you may lose pagerank on the page, I’m still using the plugin because I don’t really care about that, at least for this moment. Who knows someone changes my mind in future? ;)
Thanks for this post Lee. I just installed WordPress on one of my websites. So I definitely need to learn which plugins I should be using. I already have some of these installed, but I now see that I should install wp-optimize too. We all know how important load time is.
@Jeremy,
Yea Wp-optimize is a great plugin and you should use it as well if you urge for better load time.
As a wordpress starter, I am aware of optimizing wordpress blog through wp supercache but I haven’t noticed or read anything about wp optimize. But now I know about it thanks to you.
.-= Sushant @ Techooze´s last blog ..Techooze is Now Dofollow Blog With Commentluv =-.
@Sushant,
Wp Super-cache, Wp-Optimize and Wp Smush-it are good to be used on blog to speed up the loading speed. I hope you find these useful Sushant. :)
WP Smush.It is a awesome plugin. Some one suggested me this plugin and I am loving it. Even if I optimize my images, sometime there is scope for more. This plugin further reduces size of image and saves my bandwidth.
.-= Agent Deepak´s last blog ..Get your Face on Facebook =-.
@Agent Deepak,
That’s a plugin that Andrew recommended me, that’s an useful plugin. I don’t care about bandwidth since I have unlimited bandwidth, but I want to give all my readers the best experience while landing my blog. ;)
I agree on most of the plugin except WP Smush.It. It slows down my blog after I activate it. Not sure what went wrong and most of my images was in JPEG format. Anyway, WP Super Cache is the best performance plugin in WordPress :D
@Ah Hong,
Did you go to your cpanel to smush all your images? The plugin will smush all your images from JPEG to PNG format, it will speed up your blog. I agree with you, wp super cache is the best plugin for wordpress blog, I strongly recommend every wordpress blogger should use this plugin in their blog.
Yeah, I did. Maybe I will try again the plugin and recheck the performance using YSlow and Page Speed plugin. Cool Firefox add on to measure your blog speed improvement :D
Hi Lee,
stumble upon your blog from Serradinho.com looking for thesis tutorial..nice customization here..
i just want to ask you if you can show me or maybe teach me how to make the footer exactly like yours..
i cant keep my eyes with your footer when i enter your blog..i dont know how you made this work..but for me its shows horizontally..
hope you can provide the custom_function.php tutorial for me..
thank you in advance..
p/s: this blog was so adorable..love the footer..
if its too long, u may respond to my mailbox.
@aviationMY,
Thanks for reading this blog and glad to know you.
Anyway, I’ve sent the tutorial to your mailbox, let me know if you face any problem with the tutorial. :)
hey dude,
i’m using quite a number but i’m gonna check out the wp smush it, optimizer, comment approve and insight.
cheers man.
.-= Olusegun´s last blog ..Broke-Ass Blogger or MSI Blogger – Which One Are You? =-.
On the top of my to-do list for the new blog is a contact form. I see contact form 7 a lot nowadays, is it really one of the best?
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Here We Go! Theme Construction Part 1 – Your Participation Is Wanted-Needed! =-.
@Dennis,
I used to use “cformsII” before but it slow down my blog because of the heavy script. I switched to Contact form 7 few months ago, it’s clean and easy to manage. So I would recommend contact form 7 to everyone else. Are you going to use it too Dennis? I see that you’re structuring your blog…
I’m seriously considering it, it’s the one I hear the most about nowadays.
Yes, About & Contact are the first two pages to go in and will be done very soon.
Are you open for questions if I have any problems with it?
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..UPDATED – Here We Go! Theme Construction Part 1 – Your Participation Is Wanted-Needed! =-.
@Dennis,
Of course Dennis, why not? I’m happy to do that. I would definitely help if the problem is not out of my knowledge and experience. :D
I always ask first when I can. That way when I become a huge pain in the ass, I can say, haha your fault. ;)
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Theme Construction Part 2 – What Should Go WITHIN The Blog? This Is The FUN Part! =-.
Great list… plugins are great.. sometimes it’s hard to not add 50 of them..lol
But plugins restraint is best.. pik a few that work and are used daily.
.-= John Paul@Make Money Blogging´s last blog ..My First Product Launch Results and Reality =-.
@John Paul,
Haha absolutely, when we find some plugin which is really useful to our blog, then we just install and end up with more than 50 plugins in our blog. Anyway, excessively of plugin would slow down the blog loading speed, so we should try to keep it in low number. :)