★ WordPress: The 7 Essential Plugins
May 24th, 2011 | by Patrick Cox | Published in Design, Usability, WordPress | 10 Comments
There are so many plugins for WordPress that you’ll need to round out your WordPress site. This list is really just a few plugins that I personally believe should be included in the core installation. Next time you set up another WordPress install, upload and install these guys and you’ll be so happy you did.
1. Contact form 7 + extensions
Every website needs a contact form and Contact Form 7 is hands down the best, most customizable contact form plugin. With this plugin you can create basically any form you want from your standard contact form to an email newsletter sign up. You can customize all elements of any contact form and update them when ever you want. The forms can then be embedded in any post, page or widget with a simple short code. You can also fully customize the email message that is sent and use any email address for any form.
Contact From 7 also has some really great extensions that you can add to your standard plugin, from storing your information in an easy to use database to submitting your subscribers to your Campaign Monitor account
2. WP super cache manager
Super Cache serves up static pages to your visitors instead of the larger, dynamic WordPress PHP files making your website perform faster. Super Cache is easy to use and install and will automatically update you .htaccess file. It also has a really cool featured called the “lock down button” that will store the static files and prepare them for heavy traffic from Digg and other social media sites.
3. Dagon Design sitemap generator
Not just another XML site map generator, its much more than that. The Dagon site map generator creates an actual user friendly and customizable site map. If you are concerned with your users as well as your SEO than you need this plugin. It is fully featured; category/page exclusion, support for multi-level categories and pages, choose what to display, show comment counts and post dates and many, many more options and features.
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
4. Broken link checker
This plugin is rad if you have a lot of contributors, posters and comments on your site. After install, broken link checker searches out broken links and images in your posts, page and comments and lets you know where those broken links are. It also has a few pretty sweet optional features like preventing search engines from searching broken links and styling broken links differently. This plugin can be a huge time saver for editing your authors’ posts, its like “link proofreading”.
5. Register plus
Okay, so this one isn’t that essential, but its freaking awesome and you should always add it to your site. Register Plus has a long list of features, but some of my favorites are:
- Customize you register page with you own logos and colors
- Add more profile fields for your contributors and users
- Password creation for users on registration
- New user email verification
This plugin is great if you have a lot of contributors, especially new ones. Most features revolve around providing your users a better experience with your website, but even if you use this plugin to customize your login screen it will be well worth it.
6. Smart 404
We all know how cool 404 pages can be. The 404 page is like the only page a designer has true control over, so 404 pages are just getting more and more creative with every site. Its almost like designers challenge each other to 404 page design battles. But, even the most creative 404 pages can be the worst page a user sees when navigating a site. This plugin is smart, just like its name. Instead of getting a 404 page, this plugin with find a post, page or any other content and display that to the user instead of a 404 error page. In the words of Miley Cyrus, “Its pretty cool.”
7. Search everything
This plugin is a search booster, its main purpose is to make your standard WordPress search more relevant by searching every comment, tag, custom taxonomy, post, page, draft, custom field, attachment and much more. It’s like injecting Nos into your websites search engine. This plugin is just another way of making your website more user friendly and its very easy to install.
What are your favorites?
Since there are literally thousands of WordPress plugins, what are the plugins that you always install? What are your very favorite plugins? Which plugins would you like to see as part of the core? Drop us a comment and let us know.
May 25th, 2011at 5:59 am(#)
Hi Patrick,
great list of plugins, but I really miss 2 essential plugins in this list:
1. Askimet (or something else against SPAM)
2. All in One SEO (or another SEO-plugin)
I have published my ‘most wanted list’ for WP-plugins here.
Thanks for sharing, Cheers & Ciao ..
May 25th, 2011at 7:11 am(#)
i will be so glad to use your product u will hear from me, keep up the nise job buy.
May 25th, 2011at 8:13 am(#)
Gonzo – ya, I should have put those in. Those are definitely 2 plugins that should be incorporated into the core. I like you list, I need to install “do follow” and “thank me later”.
May 26th, 2011at 4:59 pm(#)
Hi Patrick,
.. yes, please install the ‘dofollow’. Why? Internet has become what it is by spreading link-love to everyone! Without link-love we wouldn’t have internet as we know it ;-P
But the best is that you’re rewarding your reader that leave constructive comments on your blog .. like me? Hahaha ..
Cheers & Ciao Amigo ..!
May 26th, 2011at 5:02 pm(#)
Yep, it done buddy! Now I’m officially spreading the link-love.
May 28th, 2011at 9:30 am(#)
I’ll put in a vote for Yoast’s SEO plugin, it’s the best in terms of functionality, code quality and usability.
Another vote for Useful 404s, which also notifies the site admin of broken links by email.
May 30th, 2011at 11:55 pm(#)
are we missing 301 redirect pluggin? thats another plugin we make sure its part of our check list..
cheers,
Rathan
August 28th, 2011at 8:05 pm(#)
I stumbled on this the other day, great article. I use Contact Form 7 on virtually every WordPress install, It’s amazing. I also agree with Rathan, you need to ad 301 redirect to the list.
September 8th, 2011at 11:22 am(#)
Contact Form 7 should be at the top of every list, always! Espicially since the author has added the new (and awesome) special mail tags like get_post_name etc.
Great list, I do agreee that maybe there should be an SEO plugin on there!
Thanks for sharing.
November 26th, 2011at 2:00 pm(#)
Excellent list. Broken Link Checker and Contact Form 7 works for me. I’ll be checking out some of the mentioned plugins.