Shanghai Tech Writer

Updated (6/13/08): Added OneClick, CommentLuv, and Custom Query Strings WordPress plugins.

I’m a big fan of WordPress. I started using WordPress three years ago when I setup my first WordPress blog to give family and friends updates about our (my husband and I) wedding here in Shanghai. I signed up for BlueHost and used the Fantastico script installer on the cPanel to install my first Wordpress blog. I believe it was version 2.1 or 2.2.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about WordPress other than reading a lot of good reviews about the blogging software. I gave WordPress a try and fell in love with it immediately! It was relatively easy to use with flexibility to customize it the way I want my blog to look like. However, the customizing part (themes and plugins) took a while to figure out. I didn’t know anything about CSS stylesheet or PHP, so I learned by trial-and-error. I looked at examples of coding, searched WordPress forum, checked out a bunch of blogs, tried (and broke) many themes, downloaded and installed a bunch of plugins, and even wrote one plugin!

Now I can say with confidence that I know quite a lot about using WordPress. Enough to setup a blog in less than five minutes, but not quite enough to give a WordPress course like Tom at I’d Rather Be Writing.

Anyway, I’ve setup several WordPress blogs already, all hosted on my BlueHost account. I’ve created a folder to store my favorite themes and plugins that I could easily copy over to new blogs for quick installation/setup.

Here’s a list of my favorite WordPress plugins, not in any particular order:

1. Akismet—Akismet checks your comments for spam. There are many people who have nothing better to do than spamming blogs with obscene comments. Akismet filters out 99% of spam.
2. All in One SEO Pack—This plugin optimizes your blog’s and posts’ search engine optimization (SEO). The plugin also modifies the way your blog/post appears in search results.
3. Audio Player—This plugin allows you to add a slick music player to your posts. Check out this post for an example.
4. Extended Live Archive—This is probably my favorite plugin. Visit my archives page for an example. You’ll need this patch for WordPress 2.3+.
5. Ext Js Admin Menu—This plugin turns the Dashboard navigation menu into pull-down menus that are easier to navigate. There’s less clicking involved in navigating the Dashboard menu.
6. FeedBurner Feedsmith—This plugin redirects all RSS feeds to your Feedburner feed so that you have better control and stat of your feed and subscribers.
7. FireStats—This plugin provides an awesome stat of the visitors to your blog. You can learn a lot about who your readers are, where they live, what keywords they are looking for, which posts are popular, etc… Beware, this plugin can become an addiction.
8. Get Recent Comments—This plugin allows you to customize how your latest comments are displayed on your sidebar.
9. Inline Tag Thing—This plugin allows you to add and delete tags directly on the post without going into the ‘edit’ mode. This is useful when you want to make quick edits to tags.
10. Math Comment Spam Protection—This plugin adds a simple mathematical question to the post comment template. This plugin works together with Akismet to protect your blog against spam and bots.
11. Organize Series—This plugin helps you organize posts that are part of a series so that users can easily navigate to other posts that are part of the same series. Check out this series for an example.
12. PXS Mail Form—This plugin allows you to add a contact page without giving out your email. This is useful if you want your readers to contact you directly from your blog. Check out my contact page for an example.
13. Subscribe to Comments—This plugin is extremely helpful for readers who comment on your blog and want to read other comments without revisiting the blog/website. Often times, a reader comments on a post and the author comments on that comment. Unfortunately, the person who commented first has no way of knowing the author replied to his/her comment unless he/she revisis the blog, which is unlikely. With this plugin, readers can check the box and he/she will be notified of new comments of that particular post.
14. Twitter Tool—Do you tweet? This plugin adds your latest tweets to your blog sidebar. You can customize the plugin to tweet whenever you add/modify a post. You also can add tweets directly from your sidebar without having to visit your Twitter page.
15. Ultimate Tag Warrior—This was an excellent plugin that allows you to add tags to your posts. However, Wordpress 2.3 and later versions now include the tagging feature, so this plugin has become obsolete. Thank you Christine for all your hard work with UTW over the years!
16. WordPress Automatic Upgrade—Thanks to Tom for recommending this plugin. This amazing plugin upgrades your WordPress to the latest version with just a single click!
17. WordPress Related Posts—This plugin adds related posts to your post based on the tags. Adding related posts to the bottom of your post increases visibility to other posts.
18. WP-Tabs and Slides—This plugin adds tabs to a post so that you can have multiple or lots of content on a page without a really long (length-wise) post. Check out this post for an example.
19. OneClick Installer—This plugin allows you to upload WordPress themes and plugins directly from the Dashboard. You can upload the zip file or directly from URL. This is a must have plugin!
    
20. CommentLuv—This plugin allows people who comment your posts to include the latest post from their blog.
    
21. Custom Query String—This plugin allows you to customize the number of results that appear when you search by keywords, tags, categories, dates, authors, and so on.
    

This is quite a lengthy list! I have all these plugins installed on all my blogs and there are a few more that I have installed, but I’m not completely satisfied with them. I’m always on the lookout for good plugins.

What are some of your favorite WordPress plugins?

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