Top List of the Best and Must Use WordPress Plugins

List of the Best and Must Use WordPress Plugins

Categories: Blog Setup, Blogging Tips, Featured, Wordpress Plugin

This page has a list of some of the best WordPress Plugins out there. Check out this list of top WordPress plugins and find out which plugins you should be using to improve your blogging efficiency.

Must Use Plugins

Akismet – best guard against comment spam for WordPress blog!
WordPress Database Backup – This plugin is a life saver when things go wrong! It allows on-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress SEO by Yoast – Yoast’s all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. If you are using the “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin then don’t install this one.
Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Blog Statistics Related

Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.
WordPress.com Stats – Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. This plugin requires a WordPress.com API key to function.

Blog Security

LoginLockdown – Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed WordPress login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery

E-commerce, Paypal Donation and Payment

WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart – is a very easy to use plugin that allows you to sell products or services online in one click from your WordPress blog. Very useful when you want to sell eBooks or digital products from various posts and pages and need a WordPress Shopping Cart solution.
WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept – This is a very easy to use WordPress plugin to Accept donation or Paypal payment for a service or a product in one click. Handy when you are trying to put a customized donation option in the sidebar of your blog.
WordPress eStore – This plugin provides a complete solution to sell digital products securely from your wordpress blog.

Membership Plugin

WordPress eMember – WordPress eMember is a membership plugin that can turn your existing or new WordPress site into a membership site easily.

Caching Plugin

W3 Total Cache – The fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. After you use the w3 total cache plugin you won’t go back to using WP Super Cache.
WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

RSS Subscription Related

FeedBurner FeedSmith – This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
Add to Any: Subscribe Button – Helps readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader.
Category Specific RSS Menu – A simple WordPress plugin to add category specific RSS subscription menu into your posts, pages, sidebars. Very handy when your blog covers multiple topic from non related subjects. This plugin was developed by me.

Contact Forms Related

cforms – cforms II is the most customizable, flexible & powerful ajax supporting contact form plugin.
WP Contact form – WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you.

Social Networking

Sociable – Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed.
Share This – This is a very useful plugin that allows your visitors to share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.

For Google Adsense

Simple Google Adsense insertion – Easy to use WordPress plugin to insert Google Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar. This plugin was developed by me.
Adsense-Deluxe – Place Google AdSense ads in your WordPress Posts. Capable of handling complex adsense management.

Affiliate Related

WP Affiliate Platform – WordPress plugin for affiliate recruitment, management and tracking. This plugin lets you run your own affiliate campaign/program and allows you to reward (pay commission) your affiliates for referred sales.
WordPress Affiliate Link Cloaker – Allows you to automatically convert specific keywords from your blog posts and pages into your affiliate links. It also cloaks the affiliate links and gives it a prettier and shorter alias (great for an affiliate marketer).

Other Very Useful Plugins

Simple Tags – This is one of my most favorite plugins. It makes my WordPress Tagging life so much easier. It helps with Auto completion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags.
Executable PHP Widget – Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Very handy for inserting custom ‘php’, ‘html’, ‘javascript’ in the sidebar.
SyntaxHighlighter Plus – A plugin to highlight any code in your posts or pages. very handy if you use example codes in your Blog.
WordPress Newsletter subscription – Creates a simple form to collect subscription requests to newsletter software managed mailing lists.
WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. Allows you to easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page.
No Self Pings – This plugin does exactly what the name suggests.
Exclude Pages – This plugin lets you manually exclude WordPress pages from the navigation menu. Comes in handy when you are trying to create hidden pages.
WP Smush.it – This WordPress plugin reduces image file size and improve performance using the Smush.it API within WordPress. Everytime you upload an image to your media uploader this plugin will automatically compress the image without losing quality!

This page will be regularly updated to keep the plugin list up to date and relevant. Please suggest your favorite plugins through the comment area below so I can check them out and possibly add them to this useful plugins list. Don’t forget to checkout the Plugins to Speed Up Your WordPress Site article too.

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#1 by sudheer on January 23, 2012 - 12:56 am

Thanks for your valuable information.this content useful for my blog.

#2 by Ed Coyne on January 3, 2012 - 2:52 pm

Excellent list! Some are outdated, but some should come standard with every WP install.

#3 by Raj on December 27, 2011 - 1:49 am

what a huge collection of plugins!!!!! very helpful………….. nice to know. i will use some of these plugins on my web blog.

#4 by Jupiter Jim on December 17, 2011 - 1:31 am

Very solid list! Lot of work on this list. Thanks. I like GASP plugin for anti-spam and “Better WordPress Google XML Sitemap” plugin for sitemaps although the one you listed is def solid1

Thanks,

jupiter jim

#5 by Chris Alexander on December 15, 2011 - 4:10 pm

Thank you for listing the best Word Press plugins. Most of them I use and enjoy. There are times when the odd plugin ceases to either function or it stops another plugin from operating properly. For instance most recently I was not able to post the html for links within my articles. Come to find out it was a testimonial plugin which was the problem. I deactivated the plugin and voila my links were restored.

Thanks again.

Chris

#6 by bursa psikolog on December 4, 2011 - 12:04 pm

great list, i heard some of them but all of them are perfect

#7 by SgBizness on November 19, 2011 - 12:45 am

Executable PHP Widget – The one that I’m looking for. Perfect.
Many thanks for this

#8 by Rex on November 11, 2011 - 9:03 am

Thank you for the list.

Recommendations are one of the best ways to find plugins. The WordPress repository search is not good at finding results. With 17,000 plugins I’ve wondered why they didn’t do a better search.

Fortunately, there is a better search for the wordpress plugin repository at http://searchwordpressplugins.com There you can filter you results by rating and numbers of ratings and numbers of downloads as well as excluding broken plugins. It is a really good quick tool to make short lists of plugins.
Ciao,
Rex

#9 by harini on October 14, 2011 - 4:47 am

Wow, I find all these plugins a little mind boggling. I will have to go through the list again. At the moment I use Askinet and all in one SEO and find them very helpful

#10 by Cursus Photoshop on October 12, 2011 - 10:09 am

I would also defenately add: “Tweetblender” the perfect plugin for displaying tweets and constantly refreshing content!

#11 by LuckyFM on September 30, 2011 - 5:12 pm

that’s a nice list i seen about wp plug ins
thanks anyway

#12 by Pamela on September 25, 2011 - 4:31 am

Thanks so much for this article! It saves me tons of time and heartache to know what plugins are useful and trusted.

#13 by Odaso on September 22, 2011 - 1:28 pm

Im using a lot of these but some of them i didn’t know existed. thanks ill be sure to check them out!

#14 by Cursus Photoshop on September 20, 2011 - 8:57 am

Don’t forget a really powerful plugin called: incoming search terms. It dynamically adds the terms people used to get to your page through Google. Let others do the finetuning for you! Thanks!

#15 by WordPress Plugins on September 4, 2011 - 5:46 pm

Here are some more free plugin resources that are useful.

WP Hide Post By Robert Mahfoud
Revision Control By Dion Hulse
Platinum SEO Pack By Rajesh – Techblissonline Dot Com
No Follower By de77.com
SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam By Mike Challis
Redirection By John Godley

#16 by Louis G on August 26, 2011 - 2:24 am

Amin is the MAN. 2 years later he is still rocking hard with some high quality products!

#17 by 10 Backlink building techniks on August 5, 2011 - 6:36 am

and add these ones:
1) Ultimate SEO Plugin
2) Exploit Scanner for WP
3) contact form 7
4) yet another related posts plugin
5) Social Dropdown + Facebook Likes U

They are epic

#18 by Stephen Frasier on August 2, 2011 - 11:39 pm

Thanks for this list of top WordPress plugins – a fine list, indeed. I must echo a previous comment and strongly recommend using the SEO Ultimate plugin – it’s fantastic!

WordPress is an incredible piece of work. Powerful and intuitive years ago, new versions are beyond what I ever would have desired. WordPress plus plugins can do just about anything you need it to. I strongly recommend WordPress not only for blogs but for standard websites, too. The price is right!

Stephen Frasier, Nashville SEO & Web Content

#19 by Daniel Lum on July 28, 2011 - 3:06 am

This is a great list of resources for wordpress users! I was thinking of migrating my blog to the wordpress platform and this wonderful list will definitely help me when I design and build my site!

#20 by CoolestGeek on July 15, 2011 - 3:11 am

Great list of plugins here, found a few that i’d not seen before, great recommendations! Thanks!

#21 by Mark Sim on July 13, 2011 - 3:42 am

Even though most of it’s collective tools are available separately I’ve always used the All-in-one SEO pack of tools for every one of my Word Press installations. Other plugins may have all the features of this pack, and in some cases are more flexible or robust but I just prefer having the single control panel for my various SEO functions and I really like how the tools work seamlessly together.

#22 by admin on June 28, 2011 - 9:08 pm

@karan, it really depends on your preference and what you want to do. I personally use cForms.

#23 by Karan Lugani on June 28, 2011 - 12:11 am

I am still confused between cforms and wp contact form . Which according to you is the best?

#24 by moviefreak on June 15, 2011 - 1:24 am

A nice roundup of useful feeds. I didn’t know about FeedSmith before – just installed it and it seems very good. Hopefully soon I’ll find out how many RSS readers I have!

#25 by Best WordPress Plugins on June 2, 2011 - 1:38 pm

Thanks for sharing this list!

I’d recommend you take a look at SEO Ultimate, it beats all in one SEO hands down in terms of features.

#26 by xeon on May 15, 2011 - 1:14 am

hey thanks for the list! i am already using some of the plugins, and will try the others you listed here.

#27 by watch online on May 14, 2011 - 9:39 am

please add all in one seo to your list of best wordpress plugins i really love that plugin so much.

#28 by Fotógrafos BH on May 12, 2011 - 9:01 am

Another useful plugin you “must install” is the GT Translator, which translate the blog/ site by selecting the language on a menu or flame.

#29 by Sandeep Singh on May 6, 2011 - 10:13 pm

Thanks for the share mate. Loved all the plugins that you have mentioned, very useful ones .

#30 by Adam on May 1, 2011 - 7:40 pm

I have to say that everytime I see a top wordpress plugin post, Akisment, Wp Cache, and the WP Database back up are always on that list, and I use them on every blog, great must haves.

#31 by hd movies online on April 23, 2011 - 7:35 am

#32 by ankit on April 8, 2011 - 6:18 am

g8 effort and ya this list is really helpful..

#33 by Portland SEO on February 21, 2011 - 11:43 am

Great Share. Thanks for the list, Will use few of them. Keep sharing stuff like this.

#34 by Tim on February 16, 2011 - 4:21 am

All in One SEO Pack and Akismet are the best plugins ever. Nowadays most of the blogs can not live without them.

#35 by Barbara on February 13, 2011 - 12:23 am

I have now changed to WordPress SEO by Yoast You Should Review that plug-in
More control over on page SEO and many more benefits

Latest site using Yoast SEO Removing Cat Urine

#36 by Flowers on February 7, 2011 - 2:00 pm

Awesome post. Loved it.

#37 by admin on January 3, 2011 - 9:24 am

As long as you are keeping a backup of your DB you should be fine. No need to switch.

#38 by Claude Needham on January 2, 2011 - 11:52 pm

I use the wp-dbmanager database plugin. Was wondering if you could comment on your choice of WP-DB-Backup. Just wondering if they were about the same, or perhaps I should consider switching.

#39 by John Gamings on January 2, 2011 - 5:01 am

Nice list. One suggestion I would make is replacing the WP Database Backup with the plugin BackupBuddy, which is a really amazing plugin that can make an entire copy of a wordpress site in 30 seconds

#40 by classifieds on December 21, 2010 - 2:35 am

Great list of plugins. I think headspace is better than all in one seo. Thanks
.-= classifieds´s last blog ..Work at Home- No signup fees- Unlimited Income =-.

#41 by Robin on December 4, 2010 - 8:14 pm

I do agree with Mr. Quik.
That’s very cool, can record IP address that failed login.

#42 by DUB on December 4, 2010 - 6:23 am

Wow, I find all these plugins a little mind boggling. I will have to go through the list again. At the moment I use Askinet and all in one SEO and find them very helpful. I can also recommend Word press database backup as it works perfectly.
.-= DUB´s last blog ..The Best Beat Making Software =-.

#43 by Mr. Quik on November 30, 2010 - 12:24 pm

I had never heard of LoginLockdown and after doing a bit of Googling it seems to be a pretty great tool. Did you know that you can use it to record every IP address that has a failed login? It’s kinda cool. I’m new to the WordPress scene so I’m not sure why IP logging is needed, but it’s a great tool nonetheless.

#44 by admin on November 18, 2010 - 1:00 am

@Jim, glad to hear that