This is a page that I’ll continually update as I do more work with WordPress Plugins. All I can guarantee is I’ll be fair. I’m going to genuinely grade WordPress plugins according to how useful I think they are, and explain why I think they’re useful:
NextGEN Image Gallery
This plugin provides a far superior and separate image management capability from WordPress itself. I tried another plugin but this was so much better. One of the best things about it is that you can embed images anywhere with a simple call and it works. It also provides the capability to manages fairly large numbers of pictures. I have hundreds on this site and it works fine with that number. There is probably a scaling limit somewhere, but not one that would worry a single blogger.
To see what you can do in display terms with this plugin click here or here. Note that the slide show (first link) is slightly marred by the fact that I put borders on the images. The reflection effect at the bottom of every picture is a natural capability of NextGEN, selected by parameter. I was impressed by that.
I started using this before I started using Simple Tags. I regard both as good. All in One SEO would be better if it helped to generate the tags. Aside from that it looks after everything I’m aware of that is vital with Search Engine Optimization; title, alternative titles, description and set of key word meta tags. It also has the virtue of being simple to use.
Personally I vote for Simple Tags and All in One SEO Pack to be merged. Simple Tags seems to do just about everything that needs to be done for tags. I was trying to do tags manually before Simple Tags and it’s pretty much a hopeless endeavor if you like being effective. I now have it pretty well buttoned down via automatic generation. This in turn helps other capabilities such as generating links to related postings, which provides a far better service to the reader. Nice piece of programming.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
I use this plugin even though some of the functionality is provided by Simple Tags (and that may be all that most bloggers need.) This plugin is very impressive in three ways. I use:
- It provides all the necessary ability to exclude posts or pages that, for whatever reason you want to exclude.
- It provides you with very good matching algorithm to identify similar postings and it provides you with every parameter you could think of to tune the behavior of the algorithm that works out the most related posts in you have.
- It allows you to add the HTML you need to get manipulate the way that related post links appear.
Combined with Simple Tags (for tagging) this is a remarkably impressive plugin.
This one really is a no-brainer (as indicated.) You need to cache your pages unless you never get a rush of traffic and even then, you probably could. This does it without you needing to think and, from the technical spec, it appears to be the most comprehensive capability of its kind. Just get it.
Scoring
I don’t use a 1 to 5 range and score everything 4, or above. I use the whole range. Nothing will score below 2.5, if I still use it. Anything below 2.5 should be avoided. For anything 2.5 or above you might consider a donation to the author and anything scoring 5 almost mandates it.
- 2.5 means worth using, if it fits your need – but there may better plugins for this.
- 3 means worth using and a good capability – but it may be bettered in time.
- 3.5 means very good capability
- 4 means definitely best in class, imho
- 4.5 means best in class and highly valuable capability
- 5 means close to perfect, awesome, superlative, etc.
The Have Mac Will Blog graphic depicts the score. If I believe that a plugin is a no-brainer – it can be a no-brainer without necessarily getting a high score because it may do something simple – then I indicate that with: the no-brainer symbol. This means “just get it.” A no-brainer symbol implies almost no learning curve.
Please Provide Feedback
I’d particularly appreciate any comments that recommend other plugins (for me to try) or alternative opinions on anything written here. I’d like to establish a useful resource here for WordPress users. I will be reviewing more plugins in time.
Further WordPress plugin recommendation: Next >>
Other useful plugins:
Admin Management XTended:
http://www.schloebe.de/wordpress/admin-management-xtended-plugin/
It let’s you management categories and tags in the posts listing rather than editing each post individually.
SABRE – Simple Anti Bot Registration Engine
http://didier.lorphelin.free.fr/blog/index.php/wordpress/sabre/
Stops bots from creating user accounts.
WP-Print
http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/
Generates a printable version of your posts.
very useful suggestions, thanks Robin. I have implemented quite a few of these and found your choices helpful.
You might also check out Tabbed Widgets, which I have just used (see website link above), this appears to work well and has tidied up my sidebars a bit.
Thanks for the heads up Colin. I’ll take a look at Tabbed Widgets. Hopefully I’ve not compromised my theme too much to use it.
Fun. Add to your bookmarks. And how long it took to write articles?
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