I know there are many of you who are setting up blogs, and a large portion of you will choose WordPress as your blogging platform. I decided to compile a list of plugins I have used here on my blog to extend the functionality of WordPress. They are listed in alphabetical order.

Adsense Deluxe

This is a very powerful plugin designed specifically for serving Google AdSense ads. Instead of having to edit your templates to insert your google ads around your blog, this plugin will manage everything for you. When I say everything, I mean it. It will ensure your blog does not violate Google’s Terms of Use by automatically limiting the number of ads displayed to three. You can control where ads are shown (only on front page, only on post views, both, or even completely shut down ad delivery with a simple master on/off switch.

In fact, on my blog here, I have inserted Google Ads into all of my posts since the beginning, but I have them disabled for now as I am not looking to monetize the blog just yet. When I do plan on making money from the traffic here, I don’t have to spend hours inserting ads or mess with any templates. I will simply flick the switch to ON and my ads will be up automatically :)

Download the Adsense Deluxe Plugin by Acme Technologies

Akismet

The Akismet WordPress Plugin checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” You can even show off how many comments were filtered by the Akismet plugin by putting <?php akismet_counter(); ?> into your template files. To help reduce false positives in the filtering system, the Akismet plugin provides a “de-spam” function for you to de-spam comments that were incorrectly marked as spam. Doing so will also send information back to Akismet so it can learn what is spam and what is not spam. Over time, this will improve the accuracy of its spam detection. There is no need to download Akismet as it comes packaged with WordPress, however you will need to activate Akismet with a WordPress API key. If you are a pro-blogger and make over $500/month (thats it??) you will need to get a Commercial Use API Key.

Executable PHP Widget

This plugin is pretty cool, it allows you to add PHP code into your sidebar, via a widget. I use this for my popular posts listing on the sidebar. Another popular usage of this plugin is to include the text-link-ads code for bloggers that want to sell text links. It works just like the text widget, but unlike the text widget, this plugin will also execute php code. If you have plans to monetize your blog, then be sure to grab the Executable PHP Widget because I am sure you will need it.

Popularity Contest

The Popularity Contest Plugin by Alex King will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or you can use the default values) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values. Once you have activated the plugin, you can configure the Popularity Values and View Reports. You can also use the included Template Tags to display post popularity and lists of popular posts on your blog.

I have chosen to disable it, but by default the plugin displays the popularity value of each post so users can see how the post they are reading ranks amongst all your other posts. As you can see on my sidebar, I have also added the list of the most popular posts on my blog based on the scores of each activity. This plugin makes use of the Executable PHP plugin I mentioned earlier.

Related Posts

The Related Posts plugin by Alexander Malov, Mike Lu & Jon Bourne will return a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. This plugin is an effective tool to keep your visitors reading. After reading an article, if they found it interesting, visitors to your blog will click through to other similar articles. More eyes on your blog, for longer time will mean more money for you while you are monetizing your traffic. I highly recommend this plugin, its extremely easy to setup and provides a very useful function for your readers.

Sidebar Widgets

The Sidebar Widget Plugin is one of the most powerful and useful plugins for WordPress. For someone like me who doesn’t like messing with php files, this plugin can perform some miracles! I can change up and customize my entire sidebar, without having to edit a single file. All I need to do is drag and drop elements into the sidebar, click save, and the plugin does the rest. However, in order to use this plugin, you must ensure that the theme you use is widget ready. When searching for themes on the WordPress Theme Viewer, be sure to check off the “widget ready” box to only display widget compatible themes.

Sociable

The Sociable Plugin by Peter Harkins adds the social bookmark quick link icons underneath each of my blog posts. By providing this feature, readers such as yourself are easily able to add a post to your favorite bookmarking website. Alternatively, if you find an article extremely interesting and think others may find value in it you can submit it to news sites such as Digg, Reddit and Netscape. Configuration of this plugin is extremely easy using a drag and drop interface. I have selected only a handful of the 61 social networking sites that are included with the plugin.

Whenever I add new plugins to my blog, I will be sure to update this post. If you’re looking to keep your plugin count to a bare minimum to ensure you have a fast loading blog then these are the plugins to install!

Did you like this post? If so share with others: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Netscape
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  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg


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