Short Like A Fox

So you want to install the best WordPress plugins? Browsing the Official WordPress Plugin Directory isn’t the worst place to start. Along with that here is my list of most essential plugins:

• Absolutely Essential
  • Akismet – The pre-installed comment spam filter. You probably won’t need to activate this right away, but you eventually will.
  • Global Translator – Automatically translates your blog into up to 41 different languages for better user and search engine friendliness. This is probably my favorite plugin. I can’t help it, sometimes I just like seeing what I my writing looks like in Galician.
  • WassUp – The best WordPress real time visitors tracking & statistics tool. Even if you use Google Analytics, this is worth installing.
  • Google Analyticator – Google Analytics is simply the best free website analytics software out there. Google Analyticator enables Google Analytics for your WordPress blog in seconds. Google Analyticator 4.0 was just released today. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it, it adds a new front end widget and Google Analytics API support.
  • All in One SEO Pack – The best all-in-one SEO plugin for WordPress. A must have.
• Kinda Essential
  • Comment Approval Notification – Lets a comment author know that their comment was approved, and is now up on your blog. Not totally essential, but still nice to have.
  • Digg Digg – Integrate a “Digg Button”,”Reddit Me Button”,”dzone Button” and “Yahoo Buzz Button” into your posts and pages. Includes lots of options for what buttons you want displayed and where you want them displayed.
• Not Essential, But They Serve A Purpose
  • commentluv – Want to encourage comments on your blog, and don’t mind sifting through a little more spam? commentluv is for you. commentluv displays a link to the last post from the commenter’s blog in their comment.
  • Get Recent Comments – Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar. This plugin could be useful to encourage discussion on your blog.
  • NoFollow Free – Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… This is useful for encouraging comments, but be prepared to start dealing with a lot of ridiculous spam and near-spam.
  • WP-Polls – Not essential, because a lot of people don’t have the need for polls. But if you want to run polls from your site, I have tried a few plugins out and have found that this one is the best.

Did I miss your favorite? Do you hate one of the plugins I mentioned? Let me know in the comments.

Isn’t that cool? I think it’s cool. It’s a very customizable tag cloud available with the plugin titled WP-Cumulus. Getting it is as easy as downloading it from the link provided, installing it like any plugin, customizing it, and adding this line of code where you want it to appear: <?php wp_cumulus_insert(); ?>.

Have fun!

So you run a WordPress blog and want to add a table of contents or sitemap. No Problem. Just download the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator. I use that plugin for this site and it is highly customizable to match your needs. I have personally found that it works better than many of the other sitemap/table of contents generators out there.

So you want to be able to use PHP in your WordPress blog posts and pages. That’s no problem. Just using <?php……..?> is going to make WordPress angry unless you install a plugin first. There are a few plugins out there that claim to offer this capability, but the one that I have found works the best is Exec-PHP.To begin using PHP code, follow these steps:

1. Download Exec-PHP
2. Install it like you would any plugin (The link above and readme file will walk you through this)
3. If you are currently using it, you must turn off the WYSIWYG editor. To do this, go to Users -> Your Profile and uncheck the Use the visual editor when writing checkbox
4. Start writing php code like you normally would: <?php ….code goes here ?>

That’s all there is to it!