Following is a complete list of all the WordPress plugins that work behind the scenes to add new functionality to these sites that’s otherwise not available in the vanilla version of WordPress.org.
Must-Have WordPress Plugins for your Site
1. Google XML Sitemaps – Since you want Google and other search engines to know about each and every page of your WordPress website, you should have an XML sitemap and this plug-in makes it a one-click process.2. All in One SEO Pack – While WordPress software now includes the rel=canonical directive by default, if you wish to write search friendly titles that are different from the heading of the page, get this plug-in.
3. Automatic WordPress Backup – I host the static JS and CSS files of this blog on Amazon S3 and this plug-in helps me create a backup of all the essential WordPress files (like themes and plugins) and the MySQL databases to the same S3 account.
4. Hyper Cache – This is a nice caching plug-in for WordPress that helps in reducing the load on your web server. I was initially on the more popular WP Super Cache plug-in but had to switch to Hyper Cache as the former was not quite compatible with my web host.
5. Redirection – If an external site is linking to a non-existent or a 404 page on my site, I use the redirection plug-in to forward all the incoming traffic to the right pages.
6. Bing 404 – If someone lands on a 404 page on my site for which redirection is not yet enabled, this plug-in will display links to relevant article on the error page. For example, a 404 pages like wordinvestor.com/flickr has links to my Flickr related stories.
7. WordPress.com Stats – Google Analytics is obviously the best solution for tracking visitors but if you want something quick and simple, WP Stats is something nice-to-have alongside Google Analytics. The advantage – it will display the traffic charts right inside your WordPress dashboard.
8. Akismet – I generally close comments on my stories after a couple of days while Akismet helps me filter out spam comments on fresh posts.
9. SlideShare – This helps me easily embed SlideShare presentations in any of my stories using short codes. It saves time and the embedded presentation automatically fits the width of the site – .
10. WordPress PDA – If you ever had a chance to visit @wordinvestor on your mobile phone, you may have noticed that the layout is completely different. Earlier, the mobile version of the site was done through Google Reader but now its the PDA plug-in that handles the mobile traffic based on the browser’s user agent.
11. WP-Paginate – If you scroll to the bottom of any archives page , you may see some numbered boxes – they are done through the Paginate plug-in.
12. Debug Queries – This is another awesome plug-in that helps me debug which of the MySQL queries are taking time to execute and thus slowing down the blog.
13. YARRP – The related posts plug-in adds links to old stories that may be contextually related to the content of the current story. It also helps you expose your archived content to search bots.
14. Smart YouTube – Like the SlideShare plug-in, Smart YouTube helps me easily embed videos from YouTube into my site. Here, I just have to copy-paste the URL of a YouTube video and the plug-in will automatically convert it into an embed code.
15. WP-Associatizer – This plug-in will automatically rewrite any Amazon URLs in your posts to use your Amazon Associates ID.
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