Great WordPress Plugins I Use
I finally got around to upgrading to WP version 2.31 a week ago and had been installing new plugins in an effort to drive more traffic and encourage more interaction on my blog. Naturally I upgraded to 2.31 exactly two days before version 2.32 came out which is a trend I’ve continued to follow after several years of upgrading forums to the latest version of vBulletin only to find another new version out shortly thereafter. Either way, I took the time to upgrade the blog to 2.32 and throughout the last two wordpress upgrades I’ve been testing out new plugins. Here is the list of new wordpress plugins I’ve recently installed along with the other plugins that I have been using for a while:
All in one SEO pack: This plugin features several different options to improve the SEO optimization of your blog with minimal effort. I’m still playing around with some of the options but I highly recommend testing it out.
Comment Relish: This nifty little plugin provides a way to automatically send an email to someone that has commented on your blog for the first time. In the email I thank the reader for commenting on my blog and encourage them to read my about me page and subscribe to my RSS feed. If you’re interested in seeing it in action and you haven’t commented on my blog before do so now and you’ll receive the email I send out to readers. I really like this new plugin 
Share this: The wordpress plugin avaliable through this site allows your visitors to share a post or page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. You also have an option to configure which sites show up after clicking share this. Again, if you’d like to test this out simply click the “share this” button at the end of this post.
Subscribe to comments: Provides another way to allow users to keep track of the conversation that’s going on for a particular blog post and give them another reason to come back again.
Top Commentators: This plugin displays the top 10 posters (or whatever you set) for a predetermined length of time. It’s a great way to recognize readers who comment frequently by sending them a free link.
NoFollow Free: This plugin removes the “nofollow” attribute from commentors posts which gives even more incentive for readers to comment on my blog. You get a free link out of it 
. I think it’s only fair to give a free link back to someone that comments on your blog. It’s cool because you can also set various limits on when the links will lose the nofollow attribute to help deter people that make a single comment with links to several posts on their blog just to get the link back. I added this plugin after the top commentators plugin listed above, so I’ll probably get rid of my top commentators plugin sometime as this plugin comes with a top commentators widget as well.
Related posts: This plugin was one of the more harder ones to install properly on the site. But it does just as it describes, provide links to related posts elsewhere on your blog. It helps to generate more page views and is an easy way to refer readers to material that is related to the post they just read.
Feedburner Feedsmith: This plugin makes sure all your RSS feeds are forwarded to your feedburner RSS feed. So if I tell people to subscribe to my RSS feed by clicking this link. Even though it’s a URL on my blog it forwards onto feedburner so you can keep track of your RSS subscribers.
WP-ContactForm: This plugin allows you to put in a human logic question like the one I’m using “What planet are you on?” and requires the reader to answer it before they can contact you. This helps to cut down on the spam and I haven’t received too many spam emails yet actually.
Several of these plugins are probably pretty common and ones that most everyone uses like feedburner feedsmith, or the WP-ContactForm plugin. However, I wanted to give some details surrounding even the common plugins for readers that may be new to blogging or looking to start a blog. I love using cool wordpress plugins like the ones I’ve posted above. It reminds me of vBulletin 
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Which plugins are you using? Any good ones you don’t see here that you suggest?
Tagged: Wordpress Plugins
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Really useful, thanks for posting!
I personally use Akismet for spammers and its really good.
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I use that one as well. I suppose I just didn’t add it to the list because I’m pretty sure that’s the one plugin everyone uses
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I’m still thinking whether it’s a good idea to make the links on my comment ‘DoFollow’. How was it? Did you have an increase in your comment?
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Well, actually after I installed it for whatever reason I couldn’t edit any of my widgets. I think it’s a problem with version 2.3 so I am going to email the plugin author soon.
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Really great list you have here, I already use most of them. Glad I do.
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Thanks for the list. I’m commenting to check out the Comment Relish plug-in!
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Thanks for a very useful post. I like to hear that the plugins are working for someone else before I go ahead and install them : )
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That’s a nice list of plugins
Thanks for sharing friend
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I have most of these installed already but great list nonetheless, thank you.
AF´s last blog post..Anime Series Quicklist
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