Website Managers

Using these WordPress plugins can make your blog more interactive, sticky to keep visitors coming back for more and used by novices and power bloggers alike. Not all of these plugins need to be used on a single blog, depending on the focus of your site.

Where there are multiple options to perform a single task, I like to spread them out across several blogs to see which ones work best, or fit the look and feel of that site. I use every one of these plugins on various sites, except the eCommerce plugins. Those will come later as those sites are built. The ones listed are the best I found and tested in the WordPress Plugin category. Since this was originally posted on Feb 14, 2009, the list has continued to grow.

µAudio Player
Micro Audio Player converts links to mp3 files to a small flash player and a link to the raw file. Player by 1 Pixel Out. By Christopher O’Connell.

Adsense-Deluxe
Place Google AdSense ads and other dynamic content in your WordPress Posts. By Acme Technologies.

AdSense Injection takes a random paragraph (or br tag) break in your article and inserts AdSense code. It does one per story on multi-post pages (home, archive, category) and lets you pick how many to show on single post pages. AdSense Injection lets you pick how many total ads to show at any time as well (0-3) and it lets you set the formats and colors from which you want it to randomly select.

Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. By Matt Mullenweg.

BDP RSS Aggregator
New and Improved RSS Aggregator – collate RSS feeds and summarise to a page – updates regularly without the need for cron. By Bryan Palmer.

CommentLuv
Show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html. By Andy Bailey.

Contact Form 7
When this plugin was introduced to me by Amy at Tux Technologies http://tuxtechnologies.com, I wondered if it would be just another one of those contact forms that either had too little control, or not enough options to be usable. Once she installed it I looked through it and saw that you not only had total control over the elements, but the extra fields are neatly tucked into a collapsing menu.
Get more info or go straight to Download

NEW ADDITION
Contextual Partnership
This is a free plugin for WordPress allows you to exchange contextual text links with thousands of other quality WordPress bloggers automatically. When your link is displayed on other sites, you get traffic from them. Likewise, you could be sending traffic to other sites. With that in mind, there may be some pages which you may want to keep off the exchange network. That option is in your post editing screen, towards the bottom.

NOTE: One drawback to this plugin is if you use SEO Smart Links or another plugin to automatically link certain words or phrases. If they match the Contextual Partnership words, Contextual Partnership will win the battle and link to the other site. So when setting up the partnership, choose different words to link other than those you are using for your own links.

FeedWordPress
Simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication for WordPress By Charles Johnson.

Inline Javascript Plugin
Inserts inline javascript in Posts/Pages By Volcano.

Inline MP3 Player
Inline mp3 player replacing any link directly to a mp3 file into a special link. Clicking it will turn the link into a small media player with a dhtml slider interface. By Joep Vermaat.

Max Banner Ads
Easily rotate banners and ads in almost anywhere in your wordpress blog without editing the theme. Adjust your settings here. By MaxBlogPress.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
Saves your wordpress blog from getting tagged as ping spammer by installing this plugin. Adjust your settings here. By MaxBlogPress.

MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad
A new non-obtrusive way of displaying a single line of advertising message, a special note or other information right at the top of your blog. By MaxBlogPress.

MyAdManager
Manages 125×125 ads automatically. Also allows the ability to add new ads and make them live on the confirmation of payment from PayPal. By Michael.

Platinum SEO  Pack
Platinum SEO Plugin offers a complete on-site SEO solution for your WordPress blog. The Platinum SEO Plugin offers all the functions of All In One SEO plus more on-site SEO options. It also imports all your current settings from the All in one SEO Plugin. You need to disable All In One SEO before enabling the Platinum SEO Pack or they will conflict with each other. Once activated, there will be SEO options at the bottom of your editing screen.

podPress
Gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting. By Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r).

NEW ADDITION
Post Expirator
Allows you to add an expiration date and time to posts and configure them to either be deleted or changed to a draft. This is a great plugin for limited time offers and announcements. Once activated, you will see a column in your posts list showing you when the posts expire. (Download Plugin)

Post Notification
Has many more options than other post notification plugins to send notices of new posts. You can send a short notice or the entire post. Plain text and HTML templates are configured for you and nicely done. You can manage email addresses, test the emails that are sent, choose sending rates and many other options. After installing, add the subscription form to your sidebar as a widget. They can choose to be notified on specific categories too! By Moritz Strübe

Psychic Search
Secretly discover what your visitors want to read on your blog by showing them post related to the one they are currently reading. By MaxBlogPress.

Related Posts (modified)
Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. By Alexander Malov, Mike Lu & Peter Bowyer.

RSS Power Plus
When a new post is published, this plugin will submit the RSS feed for this post only (not the entire domains feed) to the configured RSS Aggregators websites, including any tags used in the post. By Tim Buchalka.

SEO Smart Links
Provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow, limit how many links per post or page and much more. Frequently updated with requested features. By Vladimir Prelovac.

SH-Autolink
In posts and comments, it transforms predefined words automatically into hyperlinks. By Stevie. It was one of my favorites, but replaced it with SEO Smart Links on all my blogs.

ShareThis
Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. By ShareThis and Crowd Favorite (crowdfavorite.com).

SimpleTags
Allows you to create a list of Technorati tags at the bottom of your post by providing a comma separated list of tags between the [tags] tags. Supports multiple words within tags. Works with the WYSIWYG editor. By Broobles.

Smart YouTube
Embed YouTube videos in WordPress blog articles and RSS feeds simply by changing one letter in the link. by Vladimir Prelovac

Sociable
Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites. By Joost de Valk.

SRG Clean Archives
This plugin is designed to display your archive listings in a clean, uniform, single-query fashion that is Search Engine friendly on a dedicated page or in your sidebar. By Sean R..

Subscribe me
Displays a tile with RSS subscribe buttons. By Denis de Bernardy.

Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. By Mark Jaquith.

Tell-a-Friend Widget
Give your visitors various methods of sharing your site with others without leaving the site. They can choose from Email, Instant Messaging, Social Networks and popular blogs.  By socialtwist.

Twitter for Wordpress
Displays your public Twitter messages for all to read. Based on Pownce for Wordpress by Cavemonkey50. By Ricardo González.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
Allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. By Keith Dsouza.
TIP: Deactivate all your plugins before using. Then remember to reactivate them.

WordPress Database Backup
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Austin Matzko.

WordTwit is a plugin that uses the Twitter API to automatically push a published post to your Twitter account as a tweet.

WP Super Cache generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog.  After an HTML file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts, also saving you from doing more database lookups, which slow your site.

Facebook Plugins

CR Post to Ping.fm
If you do not yet have a Ping.fm account, get one! Then install this plugin, get the API key from Ping.fm (in the Application Keys section) and put it into the CR Post to Ping.fm options page. Go back to Ping.fm and add your favorite site to post updates, such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plurk, Skype, etc. Once you have thos configured, all you need is Ping.fm to update ALL the sites you added. When CR Post to Ping.fm updates Ping.fm, all your sites will be updated too. SWEET!

Add To Facebook
This plugin adds a footer link to add the current post or page to a Facebook Mini-Feed.
Clicking this link will bring the user to the Facebook site so post will be added to the Mini-Feed of their account.

Facebook Posted Items
This plugin fetches posted items from Facebook and displays them in an unordered list with proper links and comments. This would be a good plugin to gain more Facebook followers because it will show what you and/or your Facebook friends are writing about.

WordPress eCommerce Plugins

eShop for Wordpress
QuickShop

WordPress e-Commerce Plugin
Interview with Dan Milward who is the man in charge of the WP E-Commerce plugin.

What Are Your Favorite WordPress Plugins?

Leave a comment to let us know what plugins you like most and help make your WordPress blog more interactive and used by your visitors, your writing easier or any that you use which enhances your blog in some way.

Tags: ad manager, audio player, autolinks, automatic upgrades, Banner Ads, contact form, extend WordPress, Google AdSense, interactive blogging, JavaScript, MP3 player, ping optimizer, post email, post notification, power blogging, related posts, RSS, smart lnks, social media, Social Networking, Tell-A-Friend, Twitter for WordPress, WordPress plugins, YouTube

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