The Only WordPress Plugins You’ll Need – Year 2012 Edition #01
WordPress isn’t loved by millions of users only because it being a beautifully crafted, user-friendly and an extremely powerful platform, it’s loved by the platform’s capability of massive customization & optimization. One can easily enrich and optimize their blog with plugins alone. And the best part…it’s not confined with the walls of performance. WordPress plugins go from optimization to advanced site backups to complete theme customization to user management, social network integration and SEO.
No matter what type of a site you have with WordPress, you can most definitely find something that will help you with enhancing your site. Many plugins are specifically made for taking out certain tasks whereas others are simply “one-size-fits-all”.
Bored of your default comment system? Want to change those dull fonts to something richer? Is spam your concern? This article has something for everyone. Read through and find the plugin that suits your needs best. Enjoy!
Forms
1. Contact Form 7
This plugin has the feature of managing multiple forms throughout a site, you can also customize all the forms and the content. It supports ajax-based submitting, Akismet spam filtering and much more – visit site
2. Fast Secure Contact Form
This is an amazingly user-friendly contact form that lets the site’s visitors send you email, you can customize it to the max and block all spams – visit site
3. Gravity Forms (Premium – $39)
Gravity Forms is no doubt the best form plugin for WordPress, build your WordPress forms and publish it just a matter of a few minutes – visit site
4. AJAX Contact Forms (Premium – $10)
The name says it all, a powerful jQuery based AJAX HTML / PHP contact form with built in Twitter Direct Marketing which you can easily integrate into any WordPress site – visit site
Optimization
1. WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is an extremely fast caching engine for the WordPress platform that generates static HTML files and once it generates the HTML, your webserver will load that file instead of loading up the heavier WordPress PHP scripts – visit site
2. WP-Optimize
This is a great database cleanup tool, and along the way a pretty neat optimization tool, doesn’t require the access to PhpMyAdmin in order to optimize plus it lets you remove all the stored revisions you have for all your posts, the spam comments that have been piling up in just a few easy steps – visit site
3. W3 Total Cache
This plugin will does a good job improving the user experience for your WordPress site by caching every element of your site, making download fasters and provides a very simple and transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration – visit site
Comments
1. Disqus Comment System
Pronounced “discuss”, is a simple yet amazin service and tool for comments and discussions over the web. Disqus makes the whole deal with commenting extremely easy and much more interactive – visit site
2. GD Star Rating
This plugin lets you set up an advanced rating system with a built-in review system for post types & comments in your WordPress sites – visit site
3. Wizzart – Recent Comments
Wizzart – Recent Comments offers a highly customizable widget which lets you show recent comments of all your visitors in your sidebar, quite handy for some – visit site
4. Facebook Comments
Complete Facebook comment system integration to your WordPress site with moderation & management. A very easy to set up plugin, insert automatically or by using a shortcode – visit site
5. Thank Me Later
This plugin will help you by sending a “thank you” email to the visitor who comments on any of your posts automatically – visit site
6. Disable Comments
Disable Comments will allow the administrators to globally disable comments on their WordPress site which can be disabled according to post type – visit site
7. WP Customer Reviews
WP Customer Reviews will allow all your visitors to leave reviews to your posts / services and all reviews are Microformat enabled (hReview) – visit site
Site Backup
1. WP-DBManager
WP-DBManager allows you to repair, backup, restore, optimize your databases, even drop / empty tables and run selected queries. It also supports automatic scheduling – visit site
2. BackUpWordPress
This is a nifty tool, it allows you to backup the entire WordPress site including the database and all the files once a day – visit site
Posts
1. Editorial Calendar
This plugin helps you see and drag n drop all of your posts to a better management of the blog – visit site
2. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site – visit site
3. SimpleReach Slide
SimpleReach Slide recommends you all the related posts from within your own WordPress site on a widget which “slides” in at the bottom of the page – visit site
4. WordPress Popular Posts
This is a highly customizable sidebar widget which displays the most popular posts on your WordPress blog – visit site
5. Raw HTML
Raw HTML will let you use raw HTML code in your posts where you can also disable smart quotes and other default formatting on pre-post basis – visit site
6. Auto Post Thumbnail
This plugin will automatically generate the Post Thumbnail from the first you’ve used in the post or if any custom post type has been used – visit site
Design & Theme Customization
1. Widget Context
Widget Context allows you to specify widget visibility settings – you can choose to display them only on certain posts, front page, category or tag pages etc – visit site
2. WP Google Fonts
The name says it all. This plugin helps you to easily use fonts from the Google Font Directory to your WordPress site – visit site
3. WP Maintenance Mode
WP Maintenance Mode adds a splash page to your WordPress site to let the visitors know the site is under maintenance – visit site
4. Genesis Simple Sidebars
Genesis Simple Sidebards helps you add multiple, dynamic widget areas and you can then assign to any sidebar locations – visit site
5. Shortcodes Ultimate
This plugin helps you create buttons, different sliders, boxes and much more – visit site
6. All In One Favicon
This plugin allows you to easily add a Favicon to your WordPress site (front and backend) and supports all ICO, PNG and GIF formats – visit site
7. Font Uploader (Premium – $10)
Font Uploader allows you to upload any font files and use them across your WordPress site – visit site
8. WPtouch
A simple yet powerful mobile theme WordPress. WPtouch will automatically convert your WordPress theme into an application-like theme – visit site
9. Widget Logic
Widget Logic lets you control on which pages widgets appear using WP’s conditional tags. It also adds a ‘widget_content’ filter – visit site
10. WP Content Slideshow
This plugin is hands down the perfect Slideshow for WordPress. It allows you to display up to 5 posts / pages with Title, description and custom image for each – visit site
Security
1. Akismet
Akismet checks all of your comments against it’s web service to see if they resemble spam or not and lets you review them – visit site
2. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam
This plugin adds CAPTCHA methods to your WordPress site on the forms throughout your site – visit site
3. Secure WordPress
Secure WordPress beefs up the security of your WordPress installation by removing error information on login pages, adds index.html to plugin directories, hides the WordPress version and much more – visit site
4. BulletProof Security
This plugin protects your WordPress site against XSS, CRLF, RFI, CSRF, Code Injection, Base64 and SQL Injfection hacking – visit site
Media
1. Easing Slider
The Easing Slider allows you to use difference sources to have images loaded with quite a few styling options so you can have your own unique slider – visit site
2. NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with dozens of options and features – visit site
3. WordPress Video Plugin
A very nifty plugin for WordPress allowing you to embed 65 different video sites – visit site
4. oQey Gallery
A premium plugin for WordPress. oQey Gallery helps you create photo slideshows with the capability to add music, manage your images & videos and photo & video galleries that is absolutely superb – visit site
5. uBillboard (Premium – $20)
uBillboard is one of the finest Premium Slider for WordPress. It’s a jQuery based slider with massive options for transitions and others so you can have a fully customized slider for your WordPress site – visit site
6. WP Lightbox 2
This plugin used to add the lightbox (overlay) effect to the current page images on your WordPress blog – visit site
Commerce
1. WP e-Commerce
A free WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that allows your customers to buy your products and services – visit site
2. Jigoshop
An eCommerce plugin for WordPress developed by professionals with years of experience delivering online shops for global brands – visit site
3. WooCommerce
A pluging that helps you transform your WordPress site into a full fledge online store delivering industry standard quality – visit site
4. uPricing (Premium – $15)
The perfect choice of solution for your WordPress related pricing page. With an easy to use jQuery powered admin interface, it lets you create and manage all of your pricing tables – visit site
5. PayPal Donations
Easy, simple setup to add a PayPal Donation button as a Widget or with a shortcode – visit site
SEO
1. All in One SEO Pack
The most famous SEO plugin for WordPress. It will automatically optimize your WordPress site for all the search engine – visit site
2. WordPress SEO by Yoast
This is hands down the most complete SEO plugin for the WordPress.org sites. It incorporates everything from a snippet preview and page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between – visit site
3. Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps will generate a special XML sitemap of your WordPress site which help the search engines better index your site. It makes it easier for the crawlers to go through a complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently – visit site
Social
1. Add Link to Facebook
This plugin will automatically add links to post and pages that are published to your Facebook wall, groups or pages. Very easy one time setup and you can customize the way links appear on Facebook – visit site
2. WP to Twitter
This plugin automatically tweets an update when you update your WordPress site or post to your blogroll. It lets you choose a URL shortening service and requires PHP 5 and cURL – visit site
3. Digg Digg
Digg Digg allows you to integrate popular social buttons into WordPress easily – visit site
4. ShareThis
The ShareThis plugin seamlessly enables users to share your content through Email,Facebook,Twitter, Google +1, Like, Send and many more – visit site
5. BuddyPress
This plugin will let users register on your WordPress site and create profiles, posting messages, creating and interacting in groups and much more. BuddyPress is a social network in a box letting you build a social network for a niche community – visit site
6. bbPress
bbPress is forum software with a twist from the creators of WordPress – visit site
7. The Google+ plugin
The Google + Plugin integrates WordPress with your G+ Profile and Page – now with BuddyPress and Post Format support – visit site
8. Twitter Widget Pro
A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including parsing @username, #hashtags, and URLs into links – visit site
Marketing
1. Newsletter
Newsletter lets you have subcribers register on your WordPress site with a single or double opt-in process. The double opt-in is law compliant and it means that the user will have to confirm the subscription following a simple standard instructions sent to him via email – visit site
2. WP125
A very easy to use management plugin for the 125.125 ads on your WordPress blog. It lets you run ads for a specified number of days and will take them down automatically – visit site
3. s2Member
This plugin offers very powerful membership capabilities. It protects members only content on your WordPress site. It’s framework easily integrates with PayPal and supports recurring billing for all the services – visit site
4. MailPress
The WordPress mailing platform. – visit site
5. Subscribe2
This plugin gives you a complete subscription management with email notifications system for all your WordPress sites. It will send out email notifications to the list of subscribers you have whenever you publish new content – visit site
6. MailChimp Widget
Adds a widget that allows your users to sign up for your MailChimp mailing list – visit site
7. Simple PopUp
A simple, attractive, extremely fast and non annoying pop up box for your WordPress Blog. It’s power lies in its ease of use – visit site
Miscellaneous
1. WP-PageNavi
Bored of the old ← Older posts | Newer posts → links with some page links? This plugin lets your replace those by giving you the wp_pagenavi() template tag that will generate fancy pagination for your WordPress site – visit site
2. Jetpack by WordPress.com
WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com – visit site
3. Exclude Pages
Exclude Pages will allow you hide the page you want to be private, it provides a checkbox “include this page in menus” which is checked by default and once unchecked, the page will not appear in the listings of pages – visit site
4. Broken Link Checker
This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found – visit site
5. ManageWP Worker
This plugin gives you the capability to manage all your WordPress sites from one dashboard remotely – visit site
6. Google Analytics for WordPress
Track your WordPress site easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and page views – visit site
7. WP-Polls
WP-Polls will add an AJAX based poll system to your WordPress site which you can with ease add and manage your polls from – visit site
8. Pretty Link Lite
Shrink, beautify, track, manage and share any URL on or off of your WordPress website. Create links that look however you want using your own domain name – visit site
9. 5sec Google Maps (Premium – $8)
Easily integrate Google Maps into your WordPress site without using the API or any other code – visit site
10. Advanced Access Manager
This plugin has it’s a brand new way of controlling access to your single or multi-site WordPress setup – visit site
Conclusion
If you think we have missed out any plugin in this post, we will appreciate your feedback.
thanks for the link, it was a good help to me.