10 Must Have Wordpress Plugins to Kick-Start 2010

January 18, 2010 in Wordpress | View Comments

In this post I will show you the plugins I use on my blogs. These are the must have in my opinion. Keep in mind there are alternative plugins for almost every plugin, but I’ll list only what I use to keep the list shorter. I will not link every plugin to its homepage, because with Wordpress you can install plugins from your Admin panel.

To install a plugin, simply go to your Admin panel, choose the menu Plugins and click on Add New. Then just type in the name of the plugin and click Install.

10 Wordpress Plugins I Use on My Blog

  1. Akismet – Checks your comments to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”
  2. Contact Form 7 – Contact form, obviously. Very easy to set up, very easy to use.
  3. DISQUS Comment System – The DISQUS comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by DISQUS. Read more in my Disqus comment system review.
  4. FeedBurner FeedSmith – Detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
  5. GoCodes – Create shortcut URLs to anywhere on the internet, right from your Wordpress Admin. Also useful for hiding long and ugly affiliate links.
  6. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
  7. ShareThis – Let your visitors share a post with others. Supports almost all social bookmarking and sharing sites.
  8. Top Commentators Widget – Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators. Reward commenters with a link to their website.
  9. WP Greet Box – Show a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, and more.
  10. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Shows a list of related posts below the article.

Since I’m using Thesis theme on my blog, I don’t need any additional SEO plugins. If you’re using some other theme, then you may need All in One SEO Pack plugin too.

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  • I had installed DISQUS on my Blog . But I want to Know whether it updated automatically or we have to do something
  • What about recent comments plugin?, its not in the Top10?
  • Great article, found the information really useful, thanks for posting.
  • I made a gaming site with Wordpress, but I feel that it still just looks like a simple Wordpress blog. I want it to look like most popular sites, like Engadget. I'd like to know if there are plugins I can use to change the basic Wordpress look, so it won't look like your basic blog.
  • Try searching for some wordpress themes, i'm sure there is one that will make your blog look the way you want it.
  • Marko,
    I think Akismet is one of the most loved plugins by everyone. I'd like to try the contact form, and the Google XML Sitemaps. Thanks for the list.
    @Ileane
  • Contact form is really good. You should try it out. Allows people to contact you, without you revealing your email to spammers.
  • Nice list, I use all of those!
  • mkakan
    I use 6 out of the 10 plug ins ....will check out the rest ...disqus seems to slow things down
  • i personally do no like using disqus or any other such system for comments, it reduced the amount of comments and can turn off potential readers... however nice list of plugins and am using most of them, for spam akismet is great and i also use bad-behavior along with it,
  • Thanks for your imput on Disqus. So far I haven't had any problems with it. *knocks on wood*
  • I used the Top Commentator plug-in before but took it out due to the amount of spam :(
  • So far I didn't have too many problems with spammers *knocks on wood*
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