Must Have Plug-In's for WordPress Users

[Maw Books]

A place to list plug-in's for WordPress users. Feel free to list your favorites!

[Jessica]

Star Rating for Reviews is a must-have, customizable way to have your ratings go visual.
http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/star-rating/

[Maw Books]

All in One SEO Pack

Essential.

Redirection

Great for broken links, etc. I used it for when I set up my permalink structure wrong and I didn't want to break incoming links. I also use it to redirect some pages listed on top off site (challenge blog, my website, amazon store).

Askimet

Must have this one! Essential for spam. I do get a lot of false positives though.

Batch Categories

When I first started my blog, I had no clue what I was doing with my categories. They were so messed up! A couple of months ago I went back and redid the whole thing. This plugin was essential. Eliminates need to go into every post to change the category or the tag.

Comment Prompt

You would not believe how many people have left comments because of this plugin. I have it set so that after five visits to my blog it displays a personalized message. You can set it up however you want.

Subscribe to Comments

Need I say more?

Theme Tester

LOVE this plugin! You can test run themes without it showing to the public. What would I do without this?

Okay, more coming . . .

[Steven at Book Dads]

Do you find some sites "scraping" and reposting your content. They typically use your RSS feed to get the content.

Use a plugin called "RSS footer" http://yoast.com/wordpress/rss-footer/

It creates a footer in your RSS feed with a link back to your blog. This way you link back and something back from those who copy your content.

[Maw Books]

Comment Info Tip

Gives some stats about the commenter when you roll over their name.

Google Analyticator

Easy way to add your Google Analytics code to your blog. Great for people like me who don't want to mess with their template.

Liz Comment Counter

Show off the number of comments your blog has. I've seen this modified beautifully. Not sure how to tweak it.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

Your blog won't ping until scheduled posts are actually posted and other stuff.

Most commented posts widget

This is how I easily figured out my most commented posts.

Twitter Tools

Will update Twitter automatically when you publish and can choose which posts to go to Twitter.

Database Backup

Now only if I could get this to work for, I'd be so happy!

Enhanced contact form

Tells me how they came to my site and which pages they visited before leaving me a comment.

[Maw Books]

A great article listing 17 really useful Wordpress plug-ins:

http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/01/17/17-really-useful-wordpress-p...

[Maw Books]

So excited. I just discovered this plug-in that lets you set the limits to how many posts you show on each page. I was always perturbed that if you clicked on archives/categories/tags that only the first five posts were shown, then user would have to click next to discover all 40 posts in a category. Who's going to do that 8 times?

This plugin:

http://www.virtualmarketingblog.com/seo-wordpress-custom-query-stri...

allows you to set those limits! Now I have all my posts showing under archives/categories/tags. An example. I'm hoping this will help people discover older posts easier!

[Trish Collins]

Hmm...when I click on your example, I only see five posts, then I have to click on next page. Is that how it's supposed to work?

[Maw Books]

I should have updated this one. After using this plug-in for a week, the query that it created kept crashing my server and I had to take it off. So I'm not using it anymore. For the week, I had it, I really liked it (except for the crashing part). There is another similar one that I was going to hunt down and try instead. I'll let you know when I do. But in the meantime, I did build my archives using the plug-in below.

[Maw Books]

I just built my archives using this List Category Posts plug-in. You can use it on posts or pages and it has a sidebar widget I think. So far I've found it really easy to use and haven't had any problems!

[Christine]

WP Spam-Free: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/

I haven't had a single instance of spam since I installed this a few months ago -- more than 22,000 bits of spam blocked so far with no false positives! I find it works much, much better than askimet (though I use both in conjunction with each other).

[Trish Collins]

It's funny you mention this, because I've been meaning to post about a spam plugin I've been using:

NoSpamNX

I love it!

"It does not require JavaScript, Cookies or Sessions. It does not change your comment template in any, given you full compatibility with other WordPress. or Browser Plugins. NoSpamNX adds additional formfields to your comment form, invisible to the users. If a spambot fills this fields blindly (which 99.9% of all spambots do), the comment will not be saved. You can decide if you want to block these spambots, mark them as spam (Akismet or similar required) or put them in moderation queue. Furthermore, the IP address of catched spambots can be stored and blocked for 1 hour, 24 hours or indefinitly."

I was getting 20+ spam per day, now I get 1 or less.

I use it in conjunction with Akismet as well.

[Maw Books]

20+ per day?! If only I were so lucky.

Thank you for posting these two plugins. I've had as many as 10-20 false positives a month and 20 spam go through a month with Askimet. Enough that I have to wade through my spam before I can delete them. Even long time commenters will get dumped into spam. I have no idea why. I knew there were other options out there but I hadn't taken the time find them.

I'll look into these!