WP: collection of plugins
There are several wordpress plugins and many more in the wordpress plugin database. It is probably not possible for every one to use all plugins on one WP blog. However, you can download as many as your application requires and make blogging a bit easier. The WP plugin database is in beta right now, but still you can use some plugins.
By the way, a plugin is a computer program that works with a software application to provide a specific function. Wordpress plugins can add specific features to expand a blogs functions.
The database has chapters on plugin management, admin tools, comment plugins, meta data, media, themes, styles and layouts and Wordpress fixes and a whole lot more. Make sure that you read plugin submission instructions as well as documentation that they offer.
In any case, some plugins are not very well written, and when installed, can mess up your blog. So just be careful. Search it through a search engine, read any reviews and if satisfied, install and use it then. One of the better ways to know if a plugin is OK, see if any one else is using it.
Following is a list of plugins that can be ’safely’ used. Some I have used, others I got them through search engines and reviews. They can be useful for your blog. Use your better judgement.
If you have a blog that has excellent traffic on a regular basis, you must save your SQL server resources. WP Cache works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code. This plugin avoids building the page on the server again. This is good for slow servers as well.
WP PageNavi adds a better paging navigation to your WordPress site. It is nice if you have a lot of posts because it allows your visitors to skip from page to page.
Sociable appends a list of the social bookmarking sites (ie. Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit) at the end of your posts and allows your visitors to bookmark. I am using this plugin and it works very well.
WP Post Ratings adds a 5-star Ajax rating system to your posts or pages. It works extremely well. Most CSS gallery sites use this plugin.
Digg this is a WordPress plugin that detects incoming links from Digg.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post, for people to digg your story. When a digg is first recognized, it will send an email to the site’s admin.
This plugin is very functional. It will save a click. For example, on the Dashboard menu, instead of click Write, then click Page; you can mouseover Write and click Page. We all know that, in most cases, a click initiates a page load. This plugin will save one click and one pageload. I was reading reviews in forums, some users had incompatibilty problems with other plugins.
Adsense Deluxe is probably the best Adsense plugin available on the web. Very easy to use: first you define your ad code through the Admin options, then insert a HTML snippet (”<!–adsense–>”) into anywhere of your post content, and it will automatically repace it with your ad code.
One of the popular WordPress plugins, Sideblog is the best way to post short notes on the sidebar. It gives you options to define the sideblog category, how many entries to display, and whether to exclude from RSS feeds.
If you need to generate a XML compliant sitemap for search engines, Google Sitemap Generator is the best choice (supported by most popular search engines: Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and MSN).
Besides the plugins mentioned above, like I stated in the beginning of this post, there are a bunch of them in wordpress.org plugins. Just go through the listings and pick the ones that are suitable for your blog. Some plugins, by the way, seem to be superficial and has no significant value to a blog.
Tags: Admin Drop Down Menu, Adsense Deluxe, Ajax Post Rating, Digg This, Google Sitemap Generator, Sideblog, Sociable, wordpress plugins, WP Cache, WP PageNavi
