As a freelance writer I work with many different blog owners on a regular basis and that means I get the chance to see just about every plugin imaginable.
Every once in a while I’ll come across a new one that is just amazing and I wonder how I ever blogged without it. I want to give you a list of the top 11 must have plugins for any Wordpress site.
CommentLuv – This is a great tool for new blogs that provides a link back to the commentors most recent blog post. This will attract new readers and triple the amount of comments you see on your blog. Download it
Ninja Affiliate Plugin – One of the recommended plugin for affiliate marketers, it helps you cloaking your affiliate links, automatically converting keywords on your blog to affiliate links and a lot more to help you make money from affiliate products. Download it here
Google XML Sitemaps – If you want your blog indexed by Google you need to use this plugin. It tells Google where all of your pages are and which ones need to be indexed. Download it here
Wordpress.com Stats – I know, you already have an analytics account but this one shows you your stats from your dashboard. No more logging into a seperate site, although you should keep your other account to compare the numbers. Download it here
Pingler – This plugin tells all of the major search engines and directories that you’ve updated your blog and it does it automatically after each new post is published. Download it here
Sexy Bookmarks – No, this doesn’t have anything to do with porn. It’s just a really nice looking set of links to all of your favorite social media bookmarking site that helps remind your readers to share your blog with others. Download it here
Subscribe To Comments – Many blog themes come with this pre-installed and I think it should be a requirement. This gives your readers the chance to get notified when someone else comments after them. It helps bring readers back and engages them. Download it here
Related Posts Plugin – This will show your readers a list of articles related to the one they are currently reading. It will get them to click deeper into your site and stay longer. Download it here
WPtouch – How often do you read blogs or surf the web from your phone? You’ve got readers doing the same thing so why not optimize your site for their phone with this plugin. Download it here
Akismet – It’s built into Wordpress and for a good reason. It’ll catch 99% of your spam comments, important if you install CommentLuv. Download it here
Contact Form 7 – Probably the easiest to use contact form available. Let’s you customize how many fields and what they say, plus you can insert it into any page or post on your site. Download it here
Plugins are not going to get your site to page 1 of Google but if you have the right ones installed they can sure get you pretty close. The rest will be up to you, providing great content and doing your off page SEO.
46 comments
I like posts like this because I always find a plugin that I have not heard of before. The WPTouch plugin is the one that takes it this time. No cexcuse not to make my blog look nice for people using their phones now. 🙂
WPTouch plugin is a great find , my analytics report showed that I have a high number of users comming from iphone and this plugin works like a charm to make the blog iphone friendly …highly recommened for all blogs
We don’t really need the Wordpress stats and Sexy Bookmark because there are some alternative we can choose such as Google Analytics … 🙂
I prefer WP Shortstat and Share This over those two.
Hey Josh, great compilation you’ve put together! Out of all of these I may give “Google XML Sitemaps” a shot!
-Jean
Great plugin suggesting,
But are you sure about akismet? It has a lot of false positives and it can mark comments as spam even if there aren’t.
Oh, and nothing about seo plugins like all in one seo and how about w3c cache for speedy loading?
Thanks for recommending the W3 cache plugin. I really needed a plugin to help speed up my sites loading times.
– Robert
@Alex
You are right about w3c cache plugin , it has great capabilities to speed up your blog. If it was not for akismet all of us would be spending half our time cleaning out spam 🙂 Matt Mullenweg and his team are doing a great job on Akismet ..although I agree that at times it does pick up positive comments as spam but full marks to the team for such a valuable plugin….
SEO wordpress is also a great plugin and highly recommended, if you are using the Thesis Theme then the SEO capability is already built in.
@Zk, yeah akismet isn’t perfect but its certainly a must have plugin. The only thing I wish they had was more support for those who happen to get banned from posting comments, always seems impossible get out of their “bad” list lol.
-Jean
You are right. In the past, I once got into the bad list and I could get out of it by sending them an email. But since then perhaps their users have grown to so huge that they may not entertain such requests anymore!
Good list of plugins..Since internet on mobiles is getting popular…WPtouch is a must…
I did get the chance to try WPtouch and can’t say enough good things about it. I recommend it.
– Robert
Yes, Wptouch is the best plugin man.
It’s a great article! I have tested in the past all the above plugins except Ninja Affiliate as I don’t use affiliate links on my blog. I have to say that Comment Luv brought me many more comments. I also very much like Disqus, which is a global comment system that connects conversations across the web. It also increased by blog’s popularity.
Thank you for sharing that list!
I’ve seen Disqus on other blog but have never used it..I should give it a try
Yes, it is definitely worth recommending! To start you have to create an account for a commenter and then you can install the plugin on your blog. I have been using it for a while and I really love it (I think I should work for Disqus as I am doing to good marketing for them:)
What about intensedebate? How does disqus compare to intensedebate?
I am looking also one more plug-ins for making a News site map , Is It available anywhere
Hey Tej, do you mean news aggregation plugin?
Great list of plugins Josh, I use most of them in my blog except WPTouch instead of that I use the Wordpress Mobile Pack. I dont know which one is better but well works good for my mobile readers
Very good plug-ins choices.. i got most of them. and I love askimet..
I also really like slimstat, its like google analytics but easy to read on a daily basis.
I am thinking of starting my own blog and this post is very helpful. I will take you on your suggestion of using CommentLuv plugin in my own blog.
If you use affiliate network like CJ for monetization of your blog, you can use plugin NoExternalLinks to reduce the quantity of external links from each page.
I made a gaming site with Wordpress, but I feel that it still just looks like a simple Wordpress blog. I want it to look like most popular sites, like Engadget. I’d like to know if there are plugins I can use to change the basic Wordpress look, so it won’t look like your basic blog.
WPtouch and Contact Form 7 are good wordpress plugins. Good list of helpful plugins.
Thanks, that’s a great list!
Great post,
I have downloaded two from above.
Thanks for sharing here with us.
I used almost of those plugin, but not really interest for the Wordpress Stats as well. I am now using Google Analytics.
Wow… Cool plugin, absolutely neat and practical, and really user-friendly. thanks for sharing this effective plugin, it make blogging more enjoyable.
Lot similar to my list of must have plugin…. my list is a bit long tho 😀
That’s an excellent list of quality plugins. 🙂 WPTouch and Contact Form are two I can personally vouch for too.
Like all the plug-ins, love it.! Im gonna apply this to my blog .
All in one SEO plugin is also a plugin which I really like. Along with Google Analytics stats implementation.
I love all of these plugins. And I have to say that they are all awesome! My favorite is of course CommentLuve, love it!
I haven’t tried the WPtouch, checking it out now. Thanks for sharing!
me too…need to check more on wptouch !
does wordpress offer plugin for android as well ?
I think i’ll get Google XML Sitemaps for now. But i’ll bookmark this page to grab something else )
Superb looking plugins!
I am going to download them all right now.
Thanks for this great sharing.
Wow those are great plugins, I have most of them but I also really like Slimstat as well.
Ninja affiliate is the best plugin if you like to rule the affiliate market 🙂
Hi Josh, thank you very much for your plugin lists! I’ll download this plugin WPtouch
Good list of wordpress Plug ins i am also using most of the plugins but my website loading speed gonna be slow
Thanks for the great plugin mate… been using it for a while now and it’s working great on my site.
You have missed an important plugin called “Reply Me”. Its a great plugin to get the conversation going on your blog
plugin is really a nice utility i have tried it