My Top 10 WordPress Plugins

A month and a half ago Beautifully Invisible wrote a great post for Independent Fashion Bloggers regarding ten WordPress plugins all bloggers must have.  She then followed up on her personal blog with eight more that she can’t live without.  That got me thinking about my favorite plugins.  So after checking with her that I wouldn’t be stepping on her toes, here’s my list of plugins that without, I would be lost (some are the same as B’s, while some are new ones).

• CommentLuv – I originally saw this on one of my favorite blogs and had to track it down for my own. This plugin offers the opportunity for you to give your devoted readers, and those who leave comments, a little extra love.  If they leave a blog address (or website) in the comment then this plugin will pull their latest post and link it in their comment.  It is a great way to give back to those who give to you.  I still love when I visit a blog and they have this plugin!

• Comment Reply Notification – Have you ever left a comment with a question where you were hoping for an answer, but never seemed to get it.  Then a month later you visit the blog to find your question answered.  And you wish, more than anything, that you had gotten an email notifying you it had been answered.  This plugin does just that.  It gives readers the option to choose to be notified when their comment receives a response.  You would think WP.org blogs would have this automatically, but alas, not the case.  So definitely get this, so your users can be notified of replies.

• Growmap Anti-Spambot Plugin – We have all been there, the ridiculous spam comments that seem to be never ending.  Akismet catches most spam comments, but it still requires you to be more proactive and actually monitor comments.  GASP takes your spam protection a step further and adds a tiny little check box that players need to check to indicate that they are not spammers. Since installing it a couple months ago I have only received one or two spam comments.  I would be drowning in a sea of spam (and not the salty yet delicious food) without this little plugin.

• Hikari Unicornified Gravatars – WordPress uses “Gravatars” as your icon when leaving comments.  If you have created a customized Gravatar, it will use that, if not, it will use the default image.  After awhile this can get a little boring looking.  This little plugin substitutes the default image with one of a handful of unicorn gravatars.  Not a life changing plugin, but it certainly does make your comments more colorful and fun.  Plus, who doesn’t love unicorns (if you don’t like them, please don’t tell me as it will break my heart)?

• SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic) – I am torn on this plugin, but I like to keep it on the list because I do think it has use, if your community and readers are active enough.  This plugin gives you the option to add shortlinks to your post for users to automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc.  They have over 50 sites that you can choose to add.  You can customize where the thumbnails sit.  I personally choose to have mine at the bottom of the post as a kind of divider between each post.  On my site it doesn’t get used frequently, but I still like to keep it around.  For those blogs that have an extremely active community, I think this plugin would be amazing.

• Smart Archives Reloaded – I am always looking for a good way to organize my archives and have tried out a few different plugins.  While Beautifully Invisible prefers the calendar archives (as she is a more visual person), I decided upon Smart Archives.  I particularly like the “Fancy” setting, which includes collapsible menus and keeps everything organized and succinct. However it does not work with my custom layout, so I use one of the standard options which organizes my archives by year and then month.  Easy to navigate and find just what you are looking for!

• Thank Me Later – Have you ever visited a new blog that you quickly fall in love with and left a comment, only to forget a day later which blog you left it on because you follow a gazillion different blogs?  I do this on a fairly frequent basis and it drives me mad.  With this plugin this concern is a thing of the past!  This neat little plugin will automatically send new commenters an email.  You can customize the email to say anything.  Mine is very simple and thanks the user for their visit and comment, and then provides a link to both my blog and Twitter.  Voila!  An easy way to remember that amazing blog you visited the other day.

• W3 Total Cache – There is almost nothing worse than visiting a beautifully constructed site filled with amazing posts only to have it take FOREVER to load, or worse, lock your browser.  This handy little plugin helps to improve the overall experience when a user visits your site.  For those who love the technical side of things, basically this plugin caches every little aspect of your site, which will significantly improve download/load times, which your visitors will greatly appreciate.

• WP to Twitter - One of the things I loved about having a WordPress.com blog is that you could set it up to automatically share any new posts across the various social networks (Twitter and Facebook).  As simple as you might think it would be to implement this on WordPress.org hosted blogs, this is not the case, and this functionality does not come native to the .Org software.  This plugin, however, fills that gap, at least when it comes to Twitter.  It is quite easy to download and install, though you do need a little work to get your Twitter API key to connect your account (just follow the instructions and it will be easy as pie). Setup your settings as you see fit using your URL shortener of choice (I use StumbleUpon’s) and bam!, you are ready to go.  Anytime you publish a new post, it will be automatically posted to your Twitter.  Now they just need to make one that works well with Facebook.

• WPtouch – I do a lot of my blog reading on my smartphone (Motorola Droid X), and I know I am not the only one.  While pretty much all blogs I read will load on my phone’s browser, those that have a mobile theme installed load significantly faster, and make the user experience that much easier.  Sure, the mobile themes don’t look as fancy and beautiful as that custom theme you put hours and hours of work into, but when your screen is less than 5 inches in size, the more simple and quick loading, the better.  This plugin does just that for your WordPress blog.  With this plugin, when someone loads your site on a mobile device, it will load with a more simple and sleek theme.

These are just a few of the amazing plugins out there.  The WordPress.Org community is known for it’s extensive plugin catalog.  If there is something you wish you could do on your blog, there is probably a plugin that will do it for you.  Just spend a little time looking around and I am sure you will find what you are looking for (or at least someone who will make it for you).  Are there any plugins you absolutely love and can’t live without?