5 WordPress Plugins You’ll Love

May 31, 2010 by

5 WordPress Plugins You’ll Love

I absolutely love WordPress. One of the things I like most about this sensational blogger’s platform are the plugins! The first time I discovered what plugins were and what they could do, I spent hours installing new ones to see what I liked best. (C’mon, you’ve been there too, I’m sure! Plugins are just too much fun not to test out…)

Anyway, that said, I’ve compiled a short list of 5 of my favorite WordPress plugins. Enjoy!

  1. WordPress Editorial Calendar: This plugin is ever so handy for anyone who doesn’t have time to blog as often as they’d like. While WP offers a scheduling option when you submit a new blog post, the WordPress Editorial Calendar enables you to view your posts in a regular calendar setting to see when your posts are scheduled to go live. You can even drag and drop if you decide to change a date!
  2. All in One SEO Pack: Is your Alexa ranking not where it ought to be? This is a great tool to improve your SEO performance and drive additional traffic to your blog. Once installed, just scroll to the very bottom of your post draft and enter the appropriate title, description and keywords. I swear, this plugin starts improving your rating instantly!
  3. SexyBookmarks: I just happened upon this one today. It installs nifty little pop-up sharing buttons at the bottom of each post. You can change the little captions to say “Sharing is Sexy!” or if you prefer something a little less, I don’t know, sensual (as I did, haha) then you can go with “Share the Knowledge!”, “Share and enjoy!” or “Share the wealth!”. There are also several bookmarking options to choose from and you can edit them to feature only what you want.
  4. FriendConnect Login: Are you using Google Friend Connect and want to give your site visitors a way to join your site? This is the plugin to do so. You’ll want to have a Gmail account if you’re going to use this plugin (and I highly recommend that you get one if you don’t already!).
  5. Digg Digg: Have you ever seen those floating share options on the side of a blog post and wondered how you could get one? (I first spotted this plugin on Mashable.com.) This is a fantastic way to promote sharing. NOTE: This plugin works best with Elegant themes. If you’re using something different, you’re likely going to need to change your internal settings to get buttons in the proper position…it can be tricky, so just let me know if you need help and I’ll do my best to guide you.

The above plugins have thus far proved to be my favorites and have been very helpful in my blogging venture. Having managed a few other WP blogs before, I had some basic knowledge of the platform but never spent as much time using it as I have these past two weeks. (This is really my first self hosted blog, truth be told! With the exception of Horse Family, that is…)

Being fairly new to the world of WordPress plugins, I’d love to hear what everyone else is using and how the plugins have helped you increase brand awareness and generate traffic to your blogs!

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  • http://www.pulptone.com Anthony Schiavino

    I would also suggest the mobile site plugin called WP Touch. I actually found it through my wordpress.com site when I brought it up on my iPod Touch. So it’s a plugin WP uses. You also have the option with Sexy Bookmarks to turn them off for the mobile browsers.

    WP Touch has a good number of options including pages up in the menu, a place to put your twitter account info, and individual icons, etc. Try my site and you’ll see what I mean.

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  • http://youcanbuild.it Chuck Bartok

    Great Choices Mandee and I am glad the suggestion to use All-inOne SEO is working for you. We also are having great results on You Can Build.It with AdRotate
    This Plug-in allows tracking and choice of sizes and the ability to have Paid ads Rotate based on amount paid..
    Quarterly Monthly etc.
    Give a call with questions.
    Also go to Gravatar.com and post a picture..
    You will then show up on our posts with your smiling Face!

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  • Pingback: 5 WordPress Plugins You'll Love | Mandee Widrick | Wordpress Blog Hosting

  • http://the247entrepreneur.com Cory

    Maandee – Add disqus. It makes commenting on your blog and other people’s blogs MUCH easier.

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    mandeewidrick Reply:
    June 1st, 2010 at 8:37 am

    Thanks Cory, I added it!

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  • http://www.zackgrossbart.com Zack Grossbart

    Thanks for the great list Mandee and a big thanks for including the WordPress Editorial Calendar. It is always nice to see good feedback. I’m so glad it helps.

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  • http://www.automarker.net/blog social bookmarking

    Thanks for sharing Mandee. This is very useful information. I learned something also. I had never heard of the editorial calendar plugin. The one plugin that I cannot do without anymore is WordPress Cleanup. WordPress stores every post and page revision you make. As a result your site loads slower and slower. This plugin deletes your old revisions and keeps your site as fast as can be.
    Karin.

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    Mandee Widrick Reply:
    June 3rd, 2010 at 2:37 am

    Thanks for the tip, Karin! I'll definitely check that one out.

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  • http://katanaville.com/ katana barnett

    What a great list! I help artists and friends build wordpress websites (for a fee, of course!) and the ones I use on Katanaville.com are definitely the SEO pack you recommended, as well as TweetMeme,
    CommentLuv (especially because I like to comment on bloggers' blogs who comment on my blog!)

    Google Analytics for WordPress (helps me see what other people think of what I'm doing)

    Link Within (you see it at the bottom of every post related articles),

    Subscription Options (these are my social media icons in the sidebar, way easier than trying to copy and paste the code into a text widget which is what I was doing before)

    Sharecount for Facebook

    plus five or six other ones that are very specific to what I need to do- those are the ones I reccommend.

    [Reply]

    Mandee Widrick Reply:
    June 16th, 2010 at 5:05 am

    I also use the Google Analytics plugin on all of my blogs. Haven't heard of Subscription Options before…sounds like a good one! Thanks Katana!

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  • http://www.nicolerushin.com Nmrushin

    Amazing. Thanks so much. I did not know that all of these things were plugins. I thought it was something in the code. Thank-you so much for sharing this. Sometimes you think things are obvious, but there are people out there who do not know what you know!

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  • http://MatthewNeer.com MatthewNeer

    Sexy Bookmarks is a total MUST have for any bloggers out there today. Another one you should have listed up there is the Disqus comment system cause this puppy is an awesome way to keep the conversation going via Social Media like Twitter and Facebook and let others know what you are doing while your doing it.

    Keep it buzzin cuzin' ;)

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    Mandee Widrick Reply:
    June 16th, 2010 at 2:37 am

    Yeah Matthew, Disqus is GREAT. I heard of it after I posted this and installed it right away. I'm now using it on all of my blogs. I think there might be an updated version of this post in the near future… :)

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  • http://MatthewNeer.com MatthewNeer

    Oh, I almost forgot, the OnlyWire Plugin is DEFINITELY an essential plugin you gotta have going on for bloggers and syndication tribes. Get em!

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    Mandee Widrick Reply:
    June 16th, 2010 at 2:37 am

    Never heard of it, I'll check it out right now!

    [Reply]

  • Leisurescape

    Mandy, can you tell me where to pick up a wordpress theme such as the one you’re using?

    [Reply]

    Mandee Widrick Reply:
    June 22nd, 2010 at 3:41 am

    Sure! It's a free theme made by SkinPress: http://www.skinpress.com :)

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    Leisurescape Reply:
    June 22nd, 2010 at 3:51 am

    Thanks! Mandee, sorry I spelled your name wrong! Got it!

    [Reply]

  • drericagoodstone

    Mandee, Thanks for a wonderful post. I will check out these plugins.

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  • http://twitter.com/2GetSales Mark Hultgren

    Hi Mandee,
    There are literally hundreds of great plugins out there for WordPress. In order to keep up, you would almost have to embed the WP plugin RSS feed :-)
    That wouldn't help determine which ones were good or not, but if you add a plugin to rate each plugin feed post it would!

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  • http://2gsm.biz/tools/ Mark ‘MKWeb’ Hultgren

    I see you have installed commentluv since I last visited too! excellent choice. One more that I would suggest (but it is not free) is SEOPressor. Takes the All-in-one plugin to a whole ‘nother level!

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  • http://blog.prosperyourmind.com Mr. Personal Development Michael Berry

    Hey Mandee I did not know about the All in One SEO Pack. Well I did but thought it was just a gimmick. Thanks for sharing this. I have one you may want to take a look at W3 Total Cache – The fastest and most complete WordPress performance plugin. (or so they say) Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site.

    Michael

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  • http://rebeccarussell.net rebecca russell

    Thanks for the tip on plugins…I will try to upload the Alexa rating one.
    rebecca

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  • http://www.avela.com Gary Young China Sourcing

    Got all the plugins except “All in one pack SEO” Can’t wait to try that one. Thanks for the advise.

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  • http://playingbiz.com Internet Marketing Kris

    Hey Mandee,

    Great post! May I suggest anothe plugin: I recommend Akismet to help keep your spam down. Keep up the great worK!

    [Reply]

  • http://linneakline.com Linnea

    Hi Mandee,
    I just love articles like this…always learning something new. I didn’t know about editorial calendar so will check that one out and a few others your readers have suggested. Thanks for this post.

    [Reply]