Favourite Wordpress plugins?

March 6, 2006 6:33 PM

What are your favourite Wordpress plugins?

I'm overwhelmed by the selection of plugins available. Which ones would you unabashedly recommend?

posted by furtive to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Markdown.
posted by S.C. at 7:05 PM on March 6, 2006

I'm a minimalist in all aspects, so I try to keep as few plugins on my site as possible. Some I use to get the site to work the way I want it, and some are just for fun. These are the ones I have:

exec-php — allows you to run php in posts and Pages, which I use for link lists on Pages instead of in the sidebar

sideblog — allows a second mini blog with posts from a certain category

random words — you create a list of random words, comments, whatever, and then insert the list wherever you want in your template. I use this for a random tagline

Custom query string — allows you to set how many posts appear on the front page for a variety of queries. For example, you can display 10 posts on the first page for one category and 1 post on the first page for another

search pages — extends the search function so it searched text in the Pages as well as posts

Akismet — spam catcher

I also have adhesive (which allows you to mark a post so it is always the first on the page) and wordpress database backup, both of which I leave deactivated until I actually need them
posted by Brittanie at 7:09 PM on March 6, 2006

Spam Karma!
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:39 PM on March 6, 2006

Mine:
WP-Addquicktag - Adds simple quicktag functionality for anything, I use it for custom CSS classes
WP-Cache - saves on server load by serving up static pages
Ultimate Tag Warrior - Great name, also does tags
WP-ContactForm - Add a simple contact form to your site
Sociable - Adds a series of icons to facilitate easy social bookmarking [shameless self link]

That should get you started. Favourite plugins vary depending on the nature of your site, traffic, and bandwidth.
posted by maxpower at 9:28 PM on March 6, 2006

A rather minimal list for me...

speed: wp-cache
antispam: akismet (replaced SK2 for me)
db mangling: WP-DBManager
meta: My Tags
SEO: Google Sitemaps Generator
HTML: WP-Unformatted
other: Execution of All Things
posted by mrbill at 11:36 PM on March 6, 2006

I think with the latest release of WP (v 2.0.1) WP-cache and Akismet are included with the stock install. So is WP database backup
posted by Brittanie at 11:49 PM on March 6, 2006

ChenPress is some good stuff.
posted by The Monkey at 3:33 AM on March 7, 2006

Wordpress Flash Audio Player plugin
posted by blag at 5:10 AM on March 7, 2006

LiveCalendar.

And I second the vote for Markdown .
posted by chuma at 6:35 AM on March 7, 2006

The latest version of wordpress only uses a bit of caching, WP-cache is still needed.
posted by maxpower at 6:42 AM on March 7, 2006

I have miniblog to make small entries in the sidebar that don't need their own big post. It was something I was actually looking for at the time, and this plugin did exactly what I wanted.
posted by easternblot at 7:55 AM on March 7, 2006

I highly recommend Enclosure Flex if you're interested in podcasting/video-podcasting
posted by soplerfo at 8:00 AM on March 7, 2006

Spam Karma!

And for curiosity, wp-shortstat.
posted by XiBe at 8:09 AM on March 7, 2006