My Wordpress Plugin Package
I finally stopped being lazy and put together a custom install package for Wordpress so I don’t have to go back and upload a million plugins that I decide I need later. While some of these are quite specialized, there’s a few that pretty much every Wordpress install needs (or should have a similar version of).
Here’s the list of my must have plugins and themes, feel free to add your favorites. :)
Ad Rotator: Ad rotation plugin (although I’m intending on checking out PHPAdsNew soon).
Akismet: Comes with your standard Wordpress install, kill the spammm!
aLinks: This will add links that you specify on keywords and phrases. Great for adding in link codes. It can get a little bit tetchy around different plugins though (for no apparent reason). So if you have problems, you might be having some issues with a plugin aLinks doesn’t like.
Another Wordpress Meta Plugin: There’s a ton of meta plugins out there, and you are definitely going to want to get one of them. Some are completely automatic, and some, like this one, require your input. This adds a meta keyword and descriptions field on your post, as well as letting you input a general description that is used if you don’t have anything specfied. I like having control over it rather than it just pulling the excerpt.
Google Sitemaps: If you don’t want to make a sitemap by hand or generator, this plugin will make and ping google with your sitemap. This helps in getting all of your pages indexed in Google.
InlineRSS: I like to include random feeds from my blogs on other sites in my network, so this works out really well for this application. There are better plugins out there if you just want to pull sponsor feeds or some such, but for what I want it to do it’s nice. :)
Lazyblog: This is one of several great plugins from the people at Zipped Sites. It will auto rotate your posts starting with your oldest. So if you want to let it look like you’re updating when you’re just sitting back and relaxing, this is for you. This could possibly have some problems with Google, depending on your permalink structure. I just use post name, no month or date based permas, along with plain category based archives.
Links Page: Lots of great plugins on this site. This one in particular gives you a links page template that shows all links, or links by category with a drop down list. Also shows descriptions.
Post Schedule Ping Optimizer: I hate the fact that future dated posts only get pinged when they are first put in. I found this plugin (you have to give them an email, but don’t have to buy their stuff) and it seems to do the trick for me. It sends a ping when the post is actually made public, as well as suppressing edit pings.
Post Thumbs (can’t find the URL currently, sleepy :p): This looks through your post for an image and associates the thumbnail with your post. This will give you a graphical output of your recent posts, which can be pretty useful in a number of situations.
Related Posts: This will help your visitors find more information that will interest them, as well as making your landing pages more sticky to search engine visitors.
Review Stuff: This lets you add a link to what is being reviewed, as well as allowing you to set a star rating (and add spoiler alerts, if need be). It’s been a godsend for my review sites, that’s for sure. :)
Search Reloaded: This will allow you to enhance your site’s search.
Ultimate Tag Warrior: You need to have this or all the rabid Web 2.0 people will eat your brains out. Seriously, tagging is useful.
WP-Cache 2: This will help Wordpress (known for being a resource hog) much easier on your servers, especially at high loads.
X-Valid: Yeah, I’m a complete nerd. This will let you check your post and fix it so that it is in valid xhtml.
Well, that’s the list for now. :) I’m always testing and trying out next stuff, so I’m sure I’ll have some new goodies to play around with.
