Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Martin's WordPress plugins

I think my microblogging experiments will likely end with WordPress. It's a complex world to learn however. For one thing, there are hundreds of "plugins" available for WordPress, and no obvious way to tell the useful from the disastrous.

So I'm grateful to Martin Steiger for sharing the ones he uses on different sites ...

Essential:

- Chunk Urls for WordPress
- Germanix URL (probably not necessary for you)
- WordPress Database Backup
- WP Super Cache

Essential for sites with comments on:

- Akismet (default WordPress plugin)
- Antispam Bee (in addition to Akismet)
- Subscribe To 'Double-Opt-In' Comments (if you provide comment subscriptions)

Useful / additional features:

- Better Delete Revision
- Better WordPress Recent Comments
- Comment Form Quicktags
- Comment Whitelist
- Contact Form 7
- Country Filter
- Exclude Pages from Navigation
- Get Recent Comments (depreciated)
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Intypo
- Limit Login Attempts
- No Self Pings (maybe no longer necessary)
- Optimize DB
- Posts By Tag
- WP Minify
- WordPress Popular Posts
- Yet Another Related Post Plugin

On the way out:

- AbsoluteRSS (no longer necessary)
- AntiVirus (too many false positives)
- Flattr
- Google Analyticator
- Google News Sitemap
- PubSubHubbub
- Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons (sharing buttons slow down any site)
- Save Post. Check Links.
- RSS Cloud
- WP SUP

On my latest WordPress-based site, steigerlegal.ch, I use as few plugins as possible. Some are essential and some are needed if you wish certain features. In any case, I carefully read the reviews on WordPress.org and I try to use only plugins in active development. I have trust in some reputable developers such as Sergej Müller. I cannot review each plugin from A to Z but I never get plugins from dubious sources. Up to now, I have never had a security problem with any of my WordPress-based sites (although being careful cannot rule such problems out but it's a start).

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