Here at Blogussion, we encourage as many bloggers to utilize WordPress on self-hosted servers – because the possibilities are just unlimited. Most of these possibilities lay within the use of WP-Plugins.
Almost every blog uses at least one or two plug-ins or scripts that add more functionality — and extend beyond just the standard CMS. Yet, not many bloggers want to actively share their useful scripts.
Don’t take it the wrong way, some bloggers give with warm thoughts — but most of these “Top WP-Plugins” are more repetitive than anything…
Since our launch, which by the way only seems like yesterday — we’ve had a couple of posts on WordPress Plugins.The two posts; 6 Plugins to Get More Comments and 10 WP-Plugins, that will rock your world both received some heavily positive feedback, so I’ve decided to add another addition to the Unofficial WP-Plugin Series.
7 WordPress Plugins
Admin Notes
Do you run your blog with a partner? Or even a group of people? Well if you do, this is just plugin for you and your fellow admins. It’s simplicity is it’s feature.
A small box on the Dashboard is available for short-notes, and Administrators can actively leave messages to the other administrators without much hassle.
Alex and I use it quite extensively because our Time-Zone sucks and we don’t get to talk much directly. This is exactly what we needed — and has served us well.
MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
WordPress comes with a feature; that automatically pings servers periodically. This is one of blogging’s most extraordinary features — but repetitive pings can actually get you banned from pinging Services. If this happens, you will get back-listed and loose of the biggest advantages you have over a static website.
It’s absolutely critical that you ping, conservatively and during the right times. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer limits the number of times you blog can send out pings and this eliminates the possibility of being banned for “over-pinging”
Optimize DB
As you know, WordPress runs on a SQL database that keeps your content beautifully encrypted yet still easily accessed by the CMS and yourself. SQL Databases can easily branch out and “grow” both in storage-space and content.
This is natural, because the more content you add, the more features you add and the more scripts you install — you are editing the structure of the Database. This can easily get out of hand and your database might suffer considerably. It might loose it’s optimized settings and might get bogged-down by the unwanted strings left behind by inactive plugins/previous themes. So, clean up your act!
WP Greet Box
We’ve actually had a couple of readers contact us — regarding this plugin. When you are being referred to our site from either one of the several pre-selected sources; we can send you an automatic Greeting. For example, if you arrive on our blog from a Tweet link — a pop-up will appear (on the page, so it’s not annoying) and it asks you to either subscribe to our RSS or follow us on Twitter.
I personally think it’s an outstanding plugin that ALL blogs should have. That quick and simple reminder might be just the thing we need to subscribe to your blog 
Yoast Breadcrumbs
SEO Fanatic? Even if your not, Breadcrumbs is a must have. In fact, this is a pretty old plugin by Yoast. However, it still serves a very valuable purpose. From a SEO point of view; it helps with inter-linking your pages and content. From a user-friendliness perspective; it helps us keep track of where we are on your blog.
It’s one of those win-win situations.
Smart Archives Reloaded
Visited our Archive page lately? It is OFF THE HOOK. I’m not saying that because it’s our archive page — but more and more blogs are moving away from the “static” archive pages that just list content. By treating your archive-page like any other page, that users need to interactive with you — you can make it one of the highlights of your blog.
This plugin allows you to add several key components to your archive page such as — Search Functions, Posts by Authors, Post by Months, Tag Clouds and many, many more!
Tweet This
Ever seen the “5 — ReTweet” below a post on a blog? You can see it below our latest post on our homepage, or even over at ThouShallBlog. As Twitter is one of the main-stream Social Media Networks, more and more blogs are incorporating it into their blogs/websites.
This nifty plugin allows your readers to quickly and most importantly; easily ReTweet any of your posts they might be interested in. With just 2 – 3 clicks, they can Tweet about your post.
Pow. Pow. Pwoahhh.
We still use those seven plugins to maintain Blogussion and tune it on a daily basis — how do you keep your blog interesting? Which Plugins add the X Factor to your blog?
23 Discussions
Nice list of cool plugins. I think I’m going to incorporate Yoast Breadcrumbs on my blog.
Brian D. Hawkins’s last blog post..Valuable Article Marketing Training by EzineArticles.com – Free!
The Breadcrumbs are really more useful than they look. Give them a try for sure!
wtb the guest post I made about plugins @ http://www.blogussion.com/blog/tools-and-services/6-plugins-comments-blog
Ali Hussain’s last blog post..Please Plugins Make Wordpress Go Fast
Janith mentioned it in the post.
Well I use everything except for the last one. I really don’t see the value of using a tweet plugin on my blog…yet.
Melvin’s last blog post..Driving Traffic With BlogCatalog
Twitter is a fantastic marketing tool, you might as well try it out and see how it goes. Ever since we added it here, tweets have gone way up which helps our traffic a ton.
WP Greet Box sounds really interesting. I have either tried rest of them or they are not useful for me
It works great here. You have to manually insert the code, I recommend right above the first post on your blog.
I have not really begun to add plugins to my new NFL trade rumors Blog. I will make sure to add these once I start to add plugins. Thanks for letting me know what use.
NFL Trade Rumors’s last blog post..Allen: ‘We won without Favre last year’
A lot of the plugins listed will really help you out, definitely keep them in mind!
Nice list, instead of MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer, I use Smart Update Pinger which will only ping the server when publishing a new post, not when updating it.
If you want to check it out, here’s the link:
http://www.daven.se/usefulstuff/wordpress-plugins.html
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Optimizing for Keywords that Get Clicked On
That sounds like a good alternative. I read about a .htaccess trick that pretty much allows you to do the same thing.
Awesome, I only use one of them (Breadcrumbs) but I will certainly thing about using the others if it will help my blogs.
Dean Saliba’s last blog post..Follow Me On Twitter
great list of plugins, I really like the Smart Archive plugin but how do you set it up if that’s not too daft a question. I’ve installed, activated and set up a page and my host has PHP 5. How does the plugin see the page? There’s obviously something I’m missing? Any help!
Mandy’s last blog post..What does Photography mean to you?
There’s different ways to install it. Check out the instructions: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-archives-reloaded/installation/
Thanks Alex got it working now, but how did you create the Search Function, Posts by Authors and the Tag Cloud. Because the only options I see is for posts by month – and that includes the example on the authors homepage?
Mandy’s last blog post..10 Must Have Accessories For My DSLR
Wow! That’s a great list of Wordpress plugins here. However, I had used quite many wordpress plugins in my blogs and I afraid that it will slow down the performance of the blogs. Anyway, I might give a try on some plugins mentioned above.
Maybe you should make a list of what plugins are absolutely essential on your blog, and those that are not. A couple plugins that were listed up there may be those “essentials.”
It’s great to watch this blog evolve over time and you not being selfish and keeping the comments do follow. I’m going to check out that greet box
Stumbled
Site’s looking awesome
thanks
PS sad to see I was the first one to stumble
Bloggers only have each other you got to give to get
Keep up the outstanding work Peace
John Sullivan’s last blog post..I love smoking marijuana
Thanks a lot for the comments and stumble! Appreciate it!
Wp Greet Box is great plugin. I didnt know that breadcrubs are so SEO important. Hmm.. I should use that Yoast plugin. Thanks for advice:)
Zdeno Ceman @ 8bitmagazine.com’s last blog post..How to: Stop Image Hotlinking
A very nice list I must say. I had not heard anything about most of these great Wordpress plugins before I read this post.
Shubh-Regular Blog Tips´s last blog ..Top 22 Wordpress Plugins
Thanks for the informative article. My wife’s calling me for dinner So I require to run off without having reading as much as I’d like. But I set your weblog on my RSS feed so that I can read a lot more.