Posted on
May 29th, 2007 by Jon - SmartWealthyRich
Add to : Del.Icio.Us / Reddit / Digg / Stumble Upon
Blogging is not only about writing and reading, even though those 2 are the most important in my opinion, it’s also about designing, coding and understanding (a lot of things). It is really easy to loose focus and do things that are totally counter-productive (and I like it when I feel I’m
productive), but fortunately technology is there to help us! woohoo! I got many e-mails from visitors, readers and bloggers asking me what wordpress plugins i use and why. So i thought i could answer those questions in a post! :)
Just a quick note before we go into the plugins world, I run wordpress and use the cutline theme (so those plugins will work on wordpress), and customized the layout/design to fit my taste and my needs for this blog, and I found the cutline theme quite easy to customize, plus the archives and sitemap system works like a charm!
On to the list of plugins I use:
Admin Theme Preview: Really useful if you want to know what your blog would look like using another theme, or want to work on something, without letting the world know about it.
Adsense-Deluxe: The name says it! But you can also put any code in there (i use it to display my text-link-ads banners), not just Adsense code.
Akismet: Ultimate spam killer plugin, just have to go through the spam comments from time to time to make sure no good comment was marked as spam.
All in One SEO Pack: Adding keywords to individual posts and pages is real easy with this plugin. I still have a lot of posts to modify and add keywords (meta).
Dagon Design Form Mailer: A simple contact form script, easy to customize! No need to create a contact form from scratch, this plugin does all the work for you.
Dean’s Permalinks Migration: When i started this blog i had the permalink structure set to /%post_id%/, but i changed that to /%postname%/, so instead of having a URL that looks like “.com/?p=174“, now it looks more “friendly” as you can see in the adress bar. This plugin redirects traffic going to a post with the old permalink structure, and displays the new permalink structure, so you don’t loose traffic, and people can find your posts even if they were indexed using the old permalink structure.
DoFollow: To me, this is a no-brainer! The dofollow plugin removes the “nofollow” attribute to the URL people put in the comment section of a post, so that when someone leaves a comment on a post, that person is rewarded with a link back! Sharing the link love!
Feedburner Feed Replacement: Default RSS Feed URL is usually something like “http://example.com/feed/”, but if you run your RSS feed through Feedburner, you probably want people to know about this, so this plugin helps making it easy by fowarding the basic “.com/feed/” to your feedburner URL. I noticed a huge increase in my RSS numbers when i turned this one on, which is normal, since a lot of people had my old feed URL.
Full Text Feed: I use the “read more” function in my posts (more page views!), but when you use that, it cuts your RSS Feed also, but this plugin solves that, and sets your RSS Feed to “full text” even if you use the “read more” thingy.
Gregarious: The ultimate social networking/bookmarking plugin. At the bottom of every single post it adds this “Help Spread The Word And Share This Post With Others!” (you can change the text to whatever you want), click on this link, and a lil window will open and let you submit the post to stumbleupon, digg, newsvine, reddit, del.icio.us and others. And it also has this “send to a friend” thing.
Kill Preview 2: In the wordpress admin, when you write a new post, Wordpress will display a preview of that post on the same page, but it’s kinda slow loading, so this plugin removes the preview, and adds a “preview this post” link instead.
Optimal Title: Wordpress will usually put the blog title before the post title, but search engines like it the other way around, so this plugin flips that order, and display the post title followed by the name of the blog.
RSS Feed Signature: A nice little plugin that lets you write something only for your RSS Feed subscribers to see! :)
Subscribe To Comments: When you write a comment on a blog, do you usually return the next day to see if someone replied? I usually don’t, so this plugin send an e-mail to the people that subscribed to the post when a new comment is posted.
Text Link Ads: The text-link-ads plugin used to display TLA links in my sidebar!
Top Posts By Category: You see that “Most Popular Posts” section in my sidebar? Yep that’s the top posts plugin, i also added that on my popular posts page.
WordPress.com Stats: A really nifty plugin powered by wordpress. Activating this plugin will provide you will blog stats such as the number of views, most visited posts, top referers, what people searched for in the search engines that led them to your blog.
WordPress Database Backup: If you’re not using this plugin i really really wonder why! Back-up your blog or risk loosing it all. It’s easy to use and works like a charm.
WP-Footnotes: Useful if you want to add footnotes to a posts, like a reference or credits or something.
Show Top Commentators: Since I have my “blogroll” on a page and not in my sidebar, I installed the top commentators plugin, a really nice way to reward the people that comment often and add value to the discussions and conversations.
Some people asked me if i was using the Sidebar Widgets plugin by Automattic, but i’m not. I put all the php codes where i wanted to in my sidebar, because the sidebar widget wasn’t flexible enough for what i wanted to do. Though i used it before and still use it on other blogs, for SWR i decided not to use it, and go the old-fashioned way and hand-code my sidebar. I know that is a little counter-productive, but it’s not like i have to edit the sidebar code every day, once it’s done, it’s done. :)
So what tools do you use to boost your blogging productivity? Plugins are nice, but there are other things you can use to boost that productivity, like a text editor, or a ftp client (instead of using a web-based upload form).
Add to : Del.Icio.Us / Reddit / Digg / Stumble Upon
Tags: Blogging, Links, Online Business, Optimization //
Jon… excellent list of plug-ins. There’s a couple there that I’m certainly going to check out.
A plugin that I use is the top commentators plugin. I think it’s a great way to reward guests for joining the conversation.
Dave, I checked out the top commentators plugin a while ago, butI’m not using it (and I have no idea why honestly), think I’ll try it out again eventually. :)
I use several of these, but there are several I didn’t know existed. Thanks for the heads-up.
No prob Anthony! Happy you found my *short* list useful. hehe
Nice list, Jonathan.
Might I suggest removing the “<%DIGG%>” tag from the PostBadge code area of the Gregarious plugin as it will get rid of the text that is currently appearing above the Share This link. Or you could turn on and use the Digg button module.
Hi Ankur, thanx a lot for letting me know about this. I view my blog mostly in the Safari browser (mac), and the “< %DIGG%>” thing doesn’t display, so i’ll make sure to correct that. Thanx again!
Seems to be working fine now in Firefox. Thanx Ankur! Please let me know if you run across any other problem like that :)
That’s quite a list!
Enforce www Preference is a good plugin, and I also like wp-pagenavi … I did a little custom work to that one and threw some CSS at it
Shane, yeah enforce www is a nice one, I’m not using it though, no idea why, thanx for reminding me about that one! :)
Nothing wrong with spreading some link love. :)
Voila! link love and helping others!
Great list! I knew some of these and there are some goodies in there that I never knew about. Thanks for this great information and keep up the good work.
Hi Magician, welcome to SWR! :)
thanx for the encouraging words, happy you liked the list!
Jon… now I see another reason I like you… Safari… that means MAC!
Hey Dave, yep I’m a Mac addict! :)
Jonathan,
Ya know, sometimes timing is everything. I actually already have several social networking badges on my posts, but I was just thinking about how crowded it was starting to look.
10 minutes later I’m reading this post and finding out about Gregarious - very cool!
Thanks for the list, Jonathan. I’ve got several plug ins to add, so I’m going to wait and “re-plug-in” my site later today when I can do it all at once.
Aaron, gregarious rocks, seriously, everything you need with one plugin, and it looks cool too :)
You’re right, timing is everything!
Thanks for the list. I’ve used some of these, but was missing others. I’m definitely bookmarking your site.
Hi Shaine, Welcome to SWR, make yourself at home! Happy you liked the post, what plugins do you use?
I personally Love the feedburner replacement feed, plugin, and I’m also a fan of DoFollow, and Akismet.
The feedburner replacement feed plugin really made my feed subscribers count go up! it’s not even funny! well actually it is! :)
Hi, I’ve tried using the Permalink Migration plugin you mention, but when I click a link I get a “Not Found” page. My current set up is /%post_id%/ which I set as old structure, and then I chose custom structure /%postname%/
Am I missing something?
Hi Steve, umm, that’s weird. Once you activate the plugin, go to options-> PermalinksMigration, and write the old permalink structure there, then go to options->permalinks and put the new permalink structure there, it should work just fine. The permalink migration plugin is in fact a 301 redirect. Hope you get it to work, if not, just write back and i’ll try to help you out .
:)
It just doesn’t work, I’ve followed the instructions to the letter. I’m wondering if maybe its a rewrite problem, but I’m not sure how .htaccess really works.
Great list of plugins! I am using most of them, but totally forgot to install the back up plugin! Thanks for mentioning it, I’m downloading it right now!
Hi Sandra, yeah the backup plugin (to me) is the most important one! especially if you don’t trust your hosting provider to do the backups hehe
Jonathan,
Forget my last comment, I finally figured out what wasn’t working.
Thanks for the help.
Hey Steve, nice! So what is it that wasn’t working?
[…] at SmartWealthyRich has compiled this amazing list of tools in “The Tools I Use to Boost My Blogging Productivity.” This is a must-see […]
Great list of plugins. I found a few on the list that I’ll be installing. Thanks.
Hey Erik, welcome to SWR, I’m happy you found the list useful! :)
I’m afraid I wasn’t using the right thred for my new permalink structure. I needed to include index.php before /%postname%/
Thanks for the help anyway. Very much appreciated.
Steve, no prob, I’m always willing to help, happy you found what was wrong with the permalink thing. I didn’t have to put the index.php when I installed this plugin though, must be something with the version of wordpress and maybe another plugin running.
I have really started to get into the WordPress preview panel. I now wonder what I done before I started using it!
- Martin Reed
Martin, hehe, yeah I know what you mean! I’m working on a new blog and realize that I put a lot of work on SWR, and wonder how I was doing running this blog when I started.
Can’t believe you code all that sidebar php manually! Wow.
Thanks for mentioning the plugin that flips the post/blog name order: downloading it now :)
Hi Ruby, welcome to SWR, make yourself at home! :)
Yeah I coded the sidebar myself, but honestly wordpress aand the cutline theme makes it easy, hehe
Great list!
Gonna spend the whole day adding these plugins!
Thanks Jonathan!
Erwin
Hey Erwin! hehe, yeah takes some time to download all those, install, activate, configure! But it’s worth the efforts! :)
Thanks for that list! I’m still a newbie, so reading clear descriptions of plugins helps me decide which I should install.
And cool blog, by the way. I’ll definitely be back!
Hi Theda K.! Thanx for stopping by, welcome to SWR!
If you need any help with the plugins or anything, feel free to ask!
[…] Today, I stopped by SmartWealthyRich.com and found a really cool post called…The Tools I Use To Boost My Blogging Productivity. […]
Hi Jonathan………I am probably the newest and greenest blogger to leave you a comment. I have only been doing this a few days and I am finding it to be very confusing. Your site is great! I have it bookmarked and will be back if don’t crash and burn from all this info. lol……Take Care! :)
Hi Elektra! Welcome to SWR, please make yourself at home, I ope to be able to help you out if you need! :)
I think you’re doing great, the very first step is to actually decide you want to blog, and do it, and you did! And it looks good! keep it up! Feel free to ask questions or anything, the community here is very helpful ;)
Hi Jonathan, thanks for your visit! Your articles are very informative, keep up your effort! I will visit often.
Hi Edward, thank you very much for your encouraging words! ;)
Hey Jonathan,
These look great! Just stumbled the article and am now trying to figure out which one to install first…
Thanks,
–Steve
Upload ‘em all, and decide which ones to activate after! ;)
Thanx a lot for the stumble!
I started with the Feedburner replacement…nice and easy to install and hopefully very effective :)
You’ll probably sse your feedburner stats increase in the next couple of days :D Probably many prople are reading your blog using your default feed url, so you should see an increase in your stats
I can’t say no more … Excellent list.
Great job!
Thanx Terence, I’m glad you find it useful!
Wow, outstanding list! I just installed the Top Commentators plugin because of it. I do use sidebar widgets, so I also installed the Samsarin PHP Widget so I can use it.
Thanks for the great resource!
Hi Lyman, glad you liked my list! ;)
I’ll have to check out that plugin you mentionned, you needed it to install the top commentators plugin? Adding the PHP code to the sidebar did the trick for me, maybe cause I’m not using the sidebar widgets.
Hey, Jonathon - yes, php won’t execute by default in sidebar widgets; it needs to be wrapped in something… but if you are hard coding it works just fine.
If your readers are interested, the plugin I used is at http://samsarin.com/samsarin-php-widget
Hi Lyman, oh ok, the sidebar on SWR is hard coded, but still it’s nice to know. Thanx for sharing your findings :)
Wow, wonderful list Jonathan! Thanks for sharing.
Hi Aldian, glad you like it! Feel free to add to the list!
Hi Jonathan,
For some reason I couldn’t get Top Post By Category to work on my blog’s sidebar. Still waiting assistance from Marc :)
Just wonder if it’s not compatible with WP 2.1?
Here’s my plugin list including some other useful stuffs that I use.
Personally I like:
- Live Preview Comment
- Peter’s Custom Anti Spam
- Show Top Commentators
- Subscribe To Comment
Hi Aldian, thanx for sharing your list.
I’m running 2.1 on SWR, and the top post by category plugin works real fine, maybe it’s because of the sidebar widgets, I hard coded my sidebar.
Will have to check for the wp ajax plugin, will probably add that eventually :)
Hi Jonathan,
The Top Posts By Category already works. I think it needs time to get the top posts :)
hehe, I could also change it back to monthly (or yearly), but then you’d have to make something like 70 comments to get to the top of the list! :)
I set it to reset every week I think
[…] start a blog on any platform other than wordpress. With the hundreds (or thousands) of plugins available and the awesome support from the wordpress community, to me, it’s a […]
I really like the PostPost plugin. It allows you to add content to the beginning or end of your RSS feed. It’s great for monetizing your feed or giving a special message or link to your subscribers.