My favourite type of WordPress-related posts are the ones where the site owner has written out a list of the Plugins they use and why they use them.

This is my list of the Plugins that I’m using on my site right now and why I use them. I’ve only listed the Plugins that actually add something to my site (improved functionality) or are useful (for example, by cutting down the amount of time I have to waste maintaining my site).

• Askimet^{^} and Bad Behavior^{^} – these work best together; Bad Behavior stops almost all spam from invading my blog. Anything that gets through is caught by Askimet and, while it’s waiting for me to decide whether or not the “spam” is actually a legit comment, it keeps it off my site.
• Broken Link Checker^{^} – I have a full time job and, I’ll admit, checking through every single page of my site, looking for broken links, is tiresome and just plain boring. That’s where this Plugin becomes very useful for me; I install this Plugin and it keeps an eye on links for me. When I open up my admin panel, I get a little message saying that “there are [x] broken links”. As well as that, it warns my visitors that a link isn’t working by putting a line through it until either I remove the link or update it.
• FeedWordPress^{^} – this Plugin works by grabbing the RSS Feeds of your chosing (Tumblr^{^}, Twitter^{^}, Flickr^{^}, Del.icio.us^{^}, etc) and displaying them as individual blog entries on your website.
  Sometimes I can’t blog from this site but I can post entries to my Tumblr account^{^} using the email function on my phone (don’t ask why I can’t just email it to my “WordPress only” email account…it’ll take too long).
• NoFollow Free^{^} – whereas most anti-nofollow Plugins will just strip nofollow from all of the links, this one can be set up so that only people who have commented on your site [x] times will have nofollow removed from their link. I don’t want to give out a free rankable link to just anyone – only my regs.
• Plugins Used Plugin^{^} – a nice, simple Plugin that lists all of the Plugins I’ve used. I don’t want or need a big nasty table taking up most of the page, telling everyone what each Plugin does; what version it is, etc.
• Search Excerpt^{^} – this improves the search function bundled with WordPress already, by showing the relevant part of the post as the excerpt.
  Without this, it would look like some of the results weren’t relevant, as you wouldn’t be able to see if I really did mention the search term within the post.
  Here’s an example for when you search for “Myke”.
• Theme Test Drive^{^} – this theme allows you – and only you – to view the new theme / layout you’re making for your site. It wasn’t until I got this Plugin that I realised just how long it was taking me to create new themes / layouts for my site.
• WordNote^{^} – this adds a little “notes” section in your Dashboard and you can use it for whatever you want. For example, right now, I have a list of posts that I would like to write out at some point and a list of things I need to do.

What are the most useful Plugins that you have installed right now?

Related Entries:

1. Spam

Tags: WordPress