Updated July 3, 2012
Here share with you our top 10 favorite WordPress plugins. These are the plugins that we have found to be the most useful when looking to quickly extend the core functionality of WordPress.
01
w3 Total Cache
Improve site performance and user experience via caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support. W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. The beauty of this plugin is that you can use it out of the box, or customize it to the nth degree.
02
All in One SEO Pack
WordPress SEO plugin to automatically optimize your WordPress blog for Search Engines. A must-have plugin for every WordPress installation. Optimizes your WordPress site for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). For the average user this plugin is all you will need.
Features include:
- Advanced Canonical URLs
- Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
- Optimization of your page and post titles for search engines
- Automatic generation of META tags
- Removal of duplicate content typically found on WordPress blogs
03
Disqus Comment System
Disqus, pronounced “discuss”, is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.The Disqus comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus.
04
Simple 301 Redirects
Simple 301 Redirects provides an easy method of redirecting requests to another page on your site or elsewhere on the web. It’s especially handy when you migrate a site to WordPress and can’t preserve your URL structure. By setting up 301 redirects from your old pages to your new pages, any incoming links will be seamlessly passed along, and their pagerank (or what-have-you) will be passed along with them.
05
Global Posts Ordering
This plugin makes it possible to adjust the global order of posts from different post types. Basically, it tries to get together the best functionalities of the superb plugins postMash and Simple Page Ordering. Global Posts Ordering uses the stand-alone admin options page of postMash for globally setting the order of posts and the very cool AJAX approach of ‘Simple Page Ordering’. Best you test it yourself and see if it fits your needs.
06
Attachments
Attachments allows you to simply append any number of items from your WordPress Media Library to Posts, Pages, and Custom Post Types. Pro version also available here.
07
Popularity Contest
Which of your posts/pages are most popular? Popularity Contest keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular. There are numerical values assigned to each type of view and feedback; these are used to create a ‘popularity score’ for each post. You can do all types of fun things with this data, e.g., check out our top posts section.
08
Types
Types makes it easy to customize the WordPress admin. Define your own content using custom post types and custom taxonomy. Redesign editing screens using custom fields. The integration between custom post types, taxonomy and fields lets you do things that no other custom-fields plugin can do. This is a great tool to quickly organize your edit pages to your liking. Your clients will love it!
09
Category Visibility-iPeat Rev
The main purpose of this plugin is to give more control over what categories are seen and where. It is highly usefully in using WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System), especially if a non-technical person is doing the content management.
10
Google Sitemap Automator
This plugin will generate an XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content. Best suited for light users, as more advanced and trafficked websites require a more detailed approach to sitemap creation.
