At the end of 2011, it was estimated that around 20%-25% of all new websites published were built using the WordPress platform. Why wouldn’t you try to get the best out of it?
The following plugins are which I use myself and wouldn’t want to do without.
Add link to Facebook: Facebook is hot, people look at it every day and it helps to have exposure there. There’s even an option so that it creates a “share” link. Posting will be a lot slower with this plugin but it is worth it.
Contact Form 7: An easy contact form builder. While a lot of you won’t see the need for a contact form, it is very good to have because people might want to contact you about typos, job openings, etc.
Disqus Comment System: Disqus is a popular comment system. It is free and has a lot of features like signing in on Disqus, your Google ID, twitter and more. Disqus has a great spam filtering system and it shows. I’ve not seen spam on my site.
Easy AdSense: I use adsense on my site and through this plugin I can have them in my sidebar, have them at the beginning of the post and the end of the post. It has more options like showing a maximum of 3 ads per page (a limit Google wants enforced) and more.
Google Plus Author Information in Search Result (GPAISR): Well that actually explains it all. It gives you this in the search result:
SEO Ultimate: A great tool to optimize the SEO of your website. Also gives extra’s like webmaster verification tools, a 404 monitor, slug optimization and more.
Web Ninja Auto Tagging System: I hate finding correct tags for my posts. I use this auto tagging system which scans my page and retrieves the best tags for it. It is usually right although I sometimes remove some tags that I do not like.
WP to Twitter: Self explains, it automatically sends a tweet when you post something. Has a lot of options like URL shortening, default tweet text, etc.
Lazy Load: Lazy Load only loads an image on your website when it is visible. It saves resources and it makes the viewing experience more pleasant be showing the image through a fade-in.
WP-Piwik: Piwik is a great analytics tool. You can read more about Piwik here.
If you start a new wordpress site it might be nice to check out these plugins. They are all free.
Anything that you use that I should look at? Leave it in the comments.
Last update: 1-7-2012
