Plug-ins personalize your blog making it as unique as you are. Chris from CDCStudios has tested all of these and incorporates them into his blog as well as his clients.

DISQUS

Drop in replacement comment management system that allows threaded comments for more integrated discussions. It also has a ranking system and serves a frontline spam catcher to take a load off of Askimet. Out of all of the plug-ins that were new to me, these is by far the most intriguing to me.

Twitter Tools

Auto-tweet new blog posts, sidebar widget for your tweets, archive your tweets and tweet from your blog.

OpenID

A single digital identity for 30,000+ web sites. So if you use OpenID that is one less log in that your users have to remember if they are OpenID users. I HATE having a gazillion log ins. I do have an OpenID but only two of the sites that I use regularly have adopted this as of yet.

Clean Archives Reloaded

All of your posts in one place, shows number of comments and helps with SEO.

WP 2.5 Gallery Lightbox

No special short codes are needed to add this tnifty lightbox to your blog pages.

Super Cache

Creates cached version of your site that speeds up your site because there are less database queries. Logged in users don’t see cached pages, they will always see the current page. This is handy if you got comments pouring in. This is probably one of the most update plug-ins available to WordPress.

WP-Contact Form

Get your feedback securely and prevent spam to your email. It has drop down subject lists and prevents the need for a special email account. It is basically a secure php mailer that resides as it’s own page in your blog.

Mint

This is self hosted but it isn’t free. It does cost $30 per domain. It provides live stats tracking in a customizable dashboard. It has a number of plug-ins like an integration between feedburner and this. Stats update in about 3 minutes after visit. The high degree of customization and flexibility make this stats plug-in stand out among stats plug-ins.

YARPP

Uses a unique scoring system to automatically find relevant related posts. This can be added to each post or use it as a sidebar widget. You do need at least a handful of posts before this is going to show helpful information.

iPhone Webclip Manager

Simple custom bookmark icons for the iPhone. it doesn’t change even if your theme does so your readers keep the convention of your icon constant and easy to find on the iPhone.

WP-DBManager

Automatic backups and can backup to server or email. It will also do optimization to speed up your site. This is probably one of the easiest plugins to use and important. If you want to try a theme from a site other than WordPress, use this plug-in. Unfortunately some hackers are distributing themes that will delete your database tables!

WP Automatic Upgrade

Backs up all of your core files as it runs. Puts your site into maintenance mode while upgrade is progressing. It is all done with from the dashboard. If it is a security patch, it will do it automatically after a set amount of time to keep your site secure. Chris loves this, says it is the most important plugin he is presenting today. Others, including Lorelle, lament how it just plain does NOT work on some web servers and some others it is a bit buggy. This is especially true if the original install was a one button install versus a FTP install.

Sociable

This plugin allows you to choose from 67 different social media sites, try to keep the list under 10. More than that and the list is overwhelming to your users. This list is added to the end of your posts and make it easier for your users to promote your posts. Chris likes this better than Share This because the pop ups on Share this can be wonky on mobile devices.

Honorable Mention:

• Calais Autotagger - Help creating tags for your new posts
• Calais Archive Tagger - Help for creating tags on your archived posts
• Fluency Admin (theme) -Change the look of your admin panel
• iWphone (theme)-Optimize your blog for iPhones!
• Treasurelicious - What do you treasure?

Tags: Plug-ins, wordcampdx, Wordpress

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.