August 16, 2012 / in General Information, WordPress / by Jason Terry
WordPress continues to grow and powers almost 55 million web sites. We continue to deliver WordPress powered sites to companies all over Kansas City, and I thought it was about time we did a roundup of some of our favorite plugins for WordPress.
If you don’t know much about WordPress, it is a content management system that allows you to easily control the content on your web site. “Plugins” are pieces of code that you can bolt on to WordPress to make it do more than it can right out of the box. (Most plugins are free, there are almost 21,000 plugins and more are added every day.)
For example, we worked with Donna Rimbo at Christ Church Anglican on their new web site. One of their requirements was that the site have the ability to do Podcasting. If we were to create a custom solution for podcasting, it could have costs thousands of dollars. However, in the world of WordPress, there is a free plugin called BluBrry PowerPress Podcasting. Using this plugin, we had podcasting set up and working in a few hours. Check out what one of the podcasts looks like here.
So here goes, a list of our favorite WordPress plugins! (If you have a WordPress plugin that you love, be sure to mention it in the comments below!)
This plugin makes it easy to set up complicated forms.
This plugin makes navigating to the pages on your site so much easier!
This plugin adds a little bio box (like we use on BlueGurus.com) with author info at the end of your blog posts.
This plugin does a better job showing your recent posts with a thumbnail image, content excerpt and more. (Used on BlueGurus.com homepage!)
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.
Supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.
WordPress SEO plugin to automatically optimize your WordPress blog for Search Engines.
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
Enables the advanced features of TinyMCE, the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Adds a more advanced paging navigation interface.
Lets you make a WordPress page (or other content type) link to an external URL of your choosing, instead of its WordPress URL.
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. (If you are doing the backups yourself, we actually prefer VaultPress instead, but it is a paid service)
This plugin allows you to implement super security captcha form into web forms.
Blubrry PowerPress brings the essential features for podcasting to WordPress including full iTunes support, web audio/video media players and more.
Plugin allows you to set up advanced rating and review system for post types and comments in your blog using single, multi and thumbs ratings.
WP-Members™ is a free membership management framework for WordPress® that restricts content to registered users.
Smart Youtube is a professional WordPress Video plugin that allows you to easily insert videos/playlists into your post, comments and in your RSS feed
Adds a splash page to your site that lets visitors know your site is down for maintenance. Full access to the back- & front-end is optional.
Easily add a Favicon to your site and the WordPress admin pages. Complete with upload functionality. Supports all three Favicon types (ico,png,gif).
My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface.
If you are interested in more lists of great plugins, check out these links:
http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2012/07/best-wordpress-plugins.html
http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/best-wordpress-plugins
http://www.sitesketch101.com/15-incredible-wordpress-plugins-you-need
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