Getting good WordPress plugins can be trial and error since there are so many available which offer so many different options. I’ve put together a quick list of my current favourite plugins, in a rough descending order from essential to nice-to-have:
- BackUpWordPress
This is the only backup plugin I’ve found which works when wp-cron has been disabled by a hosting provider. It does a daily mySQL backup and a full backup once a week. You can test the scheduling works and it provides a real time countdown so you know it is working properly. Absolutely essential for ensuring you don’t lose any data. - Google XML Sitemaps
For anyone familiar with Google’s Webmaster tools this plugin is a must. It automatically generates a dynamic xml sitemap for your website which updates as you add / delete posts and pages. Once installed, you no longer have to worry about whether it is up to date – easy! - WP-CMS
I’ve tried many Content Management System (CMS) plugins recently and with the advent of WordPress 3.0, this is my favourite. The plugin removes the ‘comments’ and ‘post’ links in the wp-admin area and combines ‘plugins’, ‘tools’ and ‘settings’ sections. So if you are using WordPress to build a website without a blog, all the clutter is removed. Hopefully WordPress will continue to become more CMS-friendly in future versions – I look forward to it. - Quick Page/Post Redirect
I build a lot of websites where a top navigation menu item may not have it’s own page, but instead will need to display the first sub-page within the section. I’ve had to do this using a hard-coded menu in the past, but WordPress 3.0 introducing more menu functionality made me revisit the problem. I found the above plugin which enables me to create a redirect for the top navigation menu item to the first sub-page extremely easily, although this is currently via a hard-coded page slug. Perhaps future versions will enable me to redirect to a dynamic variable (i.e. first-page-in-section) – we shall see. - TinyMCE Advanced
A brilliant tool for limiting what your wp-admin users can format within pages and posts. For instance, it allows you to remove indent, quotations, styles, format, text colour and the dreaded underline! I also found it extremely useful when a client needed to be able to add and format tables. TinyMCE can do this with ease. - Disable WordPress Updates
This plugin is handy for websites where you do not want your wp-admin users to see the ‘Upgrade WordPress Now’ message. - Add Logo to Admin
More of a cosmetic plugin than functional, this plugin allows you to upload a logo to replace the WordPress logo on the wp-admin login page and on the top left of the wp-admin area. It gives your website back-end a more polished look.
So there you have it. As far as I’m aware, all work in WordPress 3.0 (released last week). If you have any recommendations, do let me know – word of mouth is the best form of marketing afterall!