Top 10 Wordpress Plugins - November 2008
Wed, Nov 12, 2008
Here’s my latest offering of what I view to be the best new (or old!) plugins available for Wordpress. Some plugins are the same as on last month’s list, and this is because they can’t be bettered and so must remain. I would recommend that you try these plugins for yourselves but do emphasise that you read all documentation and that I take no responsibility for any problems caused by the installation or use of these plugins. For more great plugins please see Top 10 Wordpress Plugins - October 2008.
If you think there is a plugin worth a mention here or you have developed a plugin and would like it reviewed please comment or contact admin@enterprisemastermind.com
1. Kaltura Interactive Video Player Plugin
Go to download page
I was asked to review this plugin for my readership by the folks at Kaltura. In a nutshell this plugin allows you to show video on your pages and posts whilst allowing others to add their own videos, comments, annotations and remix and edit existing video. It does lots more besides and is great fun. Read more here.
2. All in One SEO Pack Plugin
Go to download page
I found this plugin so good I just had to write a review. This plugin will optimise your Wordpress blog so that your posts and pages are indexed more efficiently by the search engines. It is fully featured and lets you single out individual pages for optimisation. Great stuff. Read more here.
3. Wordpress Database Backup
Go to download page
This one is a long term survivor on these lists because of its importance. I cannot stress enough just how important it is to backup and as a Web Developer I have learned the hard way in the past of the importance of regular backups, not only of your website data itself but also the database. The plugin itself is easy to use with simple backup options including the ability to schedule an email that includes your database backup as an attachment. Genius.
4. Akismet
Bundled with Wordpress and for good reason. Without a spam blocker such as this your comment queue would be full of trash in no time at all. Requires a Wordpress API key to function. If you haven’t got this plugin activated already, do it now!
5. Feedburner Feedsmith Plugin
Go to download page
The purpose of this wordpress plugin is to redirect clicks to your standard blog feed links to your feedburner RSS feeds enabling all subscribers to subscribe to the same thing. Very useful if you still have the standard wordpress RSS links in your theme but don’t want to mess with the code.
6. Max Blog Press Unblockable Popup
Go to download page
Got a newsletter no-one will subscribe to? No-one noticing your latest product? Ram it down their throats with this unblockable popup plugin. Joking aside, popups are irritating to some but research shows that they increase subscriptions/sales so why not give this free plugin a go?
7. Google XML Sitemaps
Go to download page
If you don’t know how beneficial Google Sitemaps can be to your blog then read my articles on SEO. Once set up this plugin will inform Google of any changes or additions made to your site automatically.
8. Wordpress Auto-Tagger
Go to download page
This nifty little plugin chooses appropriate tags for your posts by looking at whats popular over at Yahoo and comparing search results with your posts content. A big time saver.
9. Redirection
Go to download page
Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.
10. RSS Includes Pages
Go to download page
Still at number 10 because nothing else does this (as far as I’m aware). If like me you use Wordpress as a CMS to build websites as well as blogs you will no doubt have found that Pages are not included in the RSS feed. Well, with this plugin your problems are over. Simply install, activate and voila, your pages will appear within the feed.
Check back next month to see which plugins I’m recommending!
Tags: Database Backup, Interactive Video, search engines, Wordpress Plugins
November 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
As a new blogger, I really appreciated this great list of plug-ins. Thanks!
Sheila
November 14th, 2008 at 6:39 am
The redirection plugin is brilliant, I took over a site for a client recently and re-development the whole thing. The previous site had some pages indexed in google, so I used redirection to map the old incoming links to the new pages.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Thanks for the headsup on the great plugins! Love the SEO Pack plugin.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Great list! I’ve been blogging on WordPress for over a year, and I still found new items worth checking. The RSS Includes Pages is a wonderful solution for those of us looking to build pillar articles on pages.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Good list, I’ve got many of the same top 10 but you have a few I hadn’t heard about. I’ve been using All In One SEO Pack for quite some time, but recently found and tried the WP SEO Master plugin. I’m still getting familiar with it, but it’s so much more powerful than All in One SEO Pack that I plan to use it on all my sites. All In One SEO Pack is still better for people who aren’t so technical and don’t understand a lot about SEO, it’s got good default settings and is pretty much ‘activate and forget’. But if you are a bit more technically inclined and understand SEO give it a go, it’s awesome.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:23 am
Auto Tagger is pretty new to me but a cool thing to have. Nice list!
December 16th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Thanks tons for the list - very helpful. Lot’s of good plugins I was unaware of.
Question - what is the best social bookmarking plugin?
December 17th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Dani, I use ShareThis I find it both the easiest to implement and also the most fully featured. You can find code for normal websites as well as the WP plugin at http://www.sharethis.com