Use wordpress? Here are a few “must have” plugins

Today I was trying to delete the comments on my Entrecard dropping system page, there was like a zillion of ‘em, and while I hate deleting comments I had to cause they were causing the page to load slower than the continents shift.

What does this have to do with plugins? Well, I’ve gone through a lot of comment plugins and none have done everything I wanted. Today I found a great one that gives you total control over your comments. Its aptly called Better Comments Manager. It’s great.

It allows you to reply to comments right from within the WP dashboard (either a threaded reply, or regular - this is SUPER handy), sort the comment by post (this was the specific functionality I was looking for), bulk edit, delete, etc… It works perfectly with WP 2.5.1 (the version I’m using), and I’ve noticed no issues using it with the Wordpress Thread Comment plugin. The WTC plugin gives your comments a thread feature for all to use, very useful.

After I installed the Better Comments Manager (BCM for the initiated) and tested it every way I could, it got me to thinking about all the plugins I use. Since I’ve spent hours upon hours testing a plethora of plugins, I figured I’d save you some time by listing the ones I found to be of use that have had no problems. Well, at least for me…

Before I give you the complete list you should know that plugins can have issues when used with other plugins and different versions of Wordpress. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to which plugins will work well with each other or what problems they’ll cause. So if you install a plugin and something seemingly unrelated go awry - deactivate the plugin and see if that fixes things. If not, deactivate all your plugins and start reactivating them on-by-one. Sometimes doing this will correct the problem with the new plugin and even WP upgrade issues.

Ty’s plugin picks and why you want them

(I must be going crazy ’cause I’m starting to talk in the third person )

Akismet - This is the standard anti-spam plugin that comes packaged with Wordpress. I’ve used other anti-spam plugins ranging from CAPTCHA options (an image box with random letters/numbers that need to be entered in the comment form) to sum solutions (i.e. “9-2″, you enter the answer to confirm you’re a person). While both of these methods work great at keeping you from being spamed by bots, the images in CAPTCHA plugins can be difficult to read and you may have readers that can’t do math that advanced ( ). The main reason I use Akismet is because it’s an invisible solution for my readers and it allows trackbacks to come through. While it’s not perfect, it does the trick most of the time. You’ll need an account on wordpress.com as you’ll need your API key (password of sorts - its free to get one) upon configuration.

All in One SEO Pack - This is a very useful plugin. It allows you to change the title, description, and keywords of individual posts and pages making them that much more SEO friendly.

Better Comments Manager - Already described above.

Buy Me a Beer - This is a nice little “tip” requesting tool. You have the option to ask for a beer or coffee and its super easy to set up. One of the things I like about this beggars tool is that it displays your shameless request for money at the bottom of every post automatically AND in your RSS feeds. Its easy to set up and fairly configurable. You can see it in action at the bottom of this post.

cforms - This is the best forms option I’ve seen for Wordpress by FAR. Totally customizable in every possible way from form elements to CSS styling. You can set up password fields, upload file fields, and just about any other field/button/drop-down list/whatever you could want on a form. It also includes a handy widget option to include forms in your sidebar. You can see it hard at work on my contact me page.

Comment Relish - This is a plugin every blogger should have!!!! I mean it, if you don’t have this plugin, or one that is similar you’re missing out on so many potential RSS subscribers. With Comment Relish working, every time a new reader leaves a comment it will email them whatever you want. While the main intention is to thank them for their comment and then suggest they subscribe to your feed, you could use it to email anything you want. Its very user friendly and configurable, and don’t worry about pissing off everyone that leaves a comment, it only emails them the first time they do. Of all the plugins I’m listing, this is one of my faves for it’s simple, yet incredibly useful functionality.

FeedBurner FeedSmith - This plugin will track all the ways to access your original wordpress feeds and send that data to feedburner so you can track all your possible subscribers. Handy for sure if you use feedburner.

Google XML Sitemaps - with an easy set-it-and-forget-it set up, this is a plugin I highly recommend. It will automatically build a Google friendly XML sitemap every time you change your blog (new page, new post, deleted page, and so on). This helps to ensure your blog is indexed correctly by Google. I’ve had many posts turn up ranking well on Google’s SERPs (search engine result pages) and I attribute that to keenly written posts, the All in One SEO Pack I mentioned above, and this plugin.

MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad - See that little blue stripe at the top of the page? The one with the random text link ad on it? Yup, thats done with this plugin. You can set it to rotate as many text ads as you’d like, configure the stripe color, change font color and style, and more. Its free and just one more way to help you to monetize your blog.

MyAvatars - This is the plugin that creates the avatars in my comments. If you have an account on MyBlogLog.com (a huge portion of blogger do) and leave a comment on my blog your avatar will be displayed. Its a bit tricky to set up the styling (alignment styling is done via a css file), and you need to edit your comment.php file by placing a code snippet where you want the avatar to be displayed (i.e. by the commentators name, the comment date, in the comment text, etc..). This one’s more for intermediate to advanced users but is still a great plugin.

pageMash - A very useful plugin that helps to organize your page structure (thats pages, not posts). Gives you total control of parent and child page placement (what goes where) and will even allow you to totally hide a page from your structure making it only accessible directly. With a user friendly drag-and-drop interface this is a great plugin.

Sociable - See all those little social media/bookmarking icons at the bottom of this post? Those are automatically put there by Sociable. With options to display just about every social media/bookmarking site on the planet. With an easy to use drag-and-drop interface this is the best bookmarking plugin I’ve seen or tried. In addition to all the different media sites it comes pre-loaded with, you can set it to display on single posts, pages, your front page, and anywhere else you could find it useful. I love this plugin.

Subscribe To Comments - The name pretty much sums it up. This plugin facilitates people subscribing to comments via email on a per post basis. Handy.

WordPress.com Stats - Again, the name says it all. Like Akismet you’ll need your Wordpress.com API key upon configuration. I like this pluin as it tracks visitors in real time, although I’m not too certain of it’s accuracy. Another drawback is if wordpress.com is down, so are your stats. Still a nice little plugin.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - Alright, I guess these last few plugins are pretty self explanatory. If you’re looking for an easy way to upgrade your wordpress to the latest version, this is by FAR the easiest way. It does everything from downloading the newest version of Wordpress to backing up your WP database to disabling your other plugins to installing the new version automatically. I do recommend you manually disable your plugins before using it and then manually reactivating them when you’re done. You never know when a new version of WP will cause issues with your plugins. You can save a ton of time later trying to narrow down which one(s) aren’t working with the new WP version if you manually handle the plugins.

Wordpress Download Monitor - This plugin is very handy if you offer any type of file downloads to your readers. use it to upload whatever you want and then easily insert a download link in your posts and pages. You can track the total number of times any file is downloaded, and choose to display this info to your readers too. If you offer any sort of downloads I highly recommend this plugin. You can see it in action on my Entrecard dropping system page (I use it to handle the bookmark file I offer for download)

WP Super Cache - Advanced caching plugin. Speeds things up a lot and saves you a ton of bandwidth. This is a MUST HAVE if you’re expecting a high volume of traffic (make the front page of Digg?). You can set cache times, exclude files and directories, and set certain pages/posts to be “lock down” if you are expecting a spike in traffic on them.

WP_Auctions - Lets you set up a swell little auction widget. Sell whatever you heart desires. You can customize the css styling of it to match your theme and have as many auctions running as you’d like. You can see it in action in my right sidebar.

Yahoo/MSN Style Smileys - This is a new plugin for me, and so far I like it. As the name suggest you can use Yahoo or MSN style smileys. It’s just slightly tricky to set up as it’s not totally plug-and-play, but it adds heaps of life to the WP factory installed smileys. In addition to giving you way better smileys it boasts a clickable smileys feature you can add to your comments sections, and when you mouse over a smiley it displays the text needed to type it. And hey, who doesn’t like smileys?!?!?

That’s it. These are all the plugins I use and all work and play well together. What more could you ask for? And if I never have to type the word “plugin” again that’d be just fine with me…

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