Top Ten Wordpress Plugins (plus three more) for Wordpress 2.6

I recently met with another local blogger(s) and one of the things I realized was that there are a lot of great plugins I’ve found out about and implemented that some know nothing about.  So I decided I would put together a quick list of the Top Ten Wordpress Plugins for Wordpress 2.6 (plus three more).

Note: I am going to start with the best plugin that I have ever found for installing themes, other plugins and well, pretty much anything I need uploaded to my wordpress installation.  The reason is this, this First plugin allows you to install plugins directly from a url as opposed to the age old process of dowloading the plugin, unzipping the plugin and uploading the plugin to the plugins directory.  For the rest of the plugins, I am going to include the url of the download so you can get started using these great plugins right away.

1. WP Easy Uploader - If you are looking at trying to download a theme, unzip it and then upload it to the themes directory before you can even use it, and that process seems a bit tiresome (especially after you’ve done it 23 times in the last month on 6 different wordpress installations), then this plugin is for you.  You can specify a url to pull the zip file from.  The plugin grabs the file, unzips it into the directory you need it to (ie themes, plugins, etc) and you are ready to go.  Just activate the theme and you are set.  Installing a new theme is now as easy as a two step process.  Oh, and if you still want to upload your files the old fashioned way, you can also upload a zip file from your local computer and install it into the directory as well using the handy upload feature.  This is one plugin that should be included in the next version of wordpress from the get go. - Download
2. Akismet - One word that makes my happy face turn upside down is spam.  That includes the meat byproduct canned food as well.  Akismet deals with the spam by filtering it, allowing you to mark it as such and overall, saves you a ton of time dealing with it.  Ocassionally something gets through the filters, but for the most part, it just works.  Akismet comes with wordpress already, but make sure you get your api key through registering with wordpress.com - Download
3. Google XML Sitemaps - If you want to be seen by Google, then this plugin helps you do that.  Providing an XML sitemap that will help you get noticed and better placement in search engines, will not just help you get better search engine rankings, but send you lots of cash as well.  Well maybe not the cash bit, but even if you don’t notice it’s working, it makes you feel better just knowing it’s there. - Download
4. CForms II - If you want to increase the effectiveness of collecting any kind of information from your readers, then CForms is the way to go.  You can build custom forms that can let readers upload files to you directly from your blog.  This is great when you want people to be able to contact you and interact directly.  Great for art sites for readers to submit images. - Download
5. Subscribe to Comments - A reader stumbles onto your site, likes what they read, then comments on a post.  Then before they realize what they are doing they stumble off somwhere else.  Either they are lost forever and never come back to your site, or… you have Subscribe to Comments installed on your blog.  You then reply to their comment, they get a notification and think… “wow, someone actually cared enough to respond to my comment”  The reader now comes back to your site to read your reply (and those of others) and now decides, “This blog might just be worth subscribing to in my feedreader”  Now, you have a new subscriber… and maybe a whole lot more. - Download
6. Related Posts - In your feed, you have a chance at capturing more than just a reader for that selected post, after reading the post, this plugin adds a little section at the bottom that displays either five posts that are tagged the same as the post just read, or even five other random posts from your blog.  This is a great way to drive people deep into your blog to see what you really have to say about a particular topic.  - Download
7. aLinks - This is a newer plugin that I can’t find on the wordpress Plugins directory, but I think it’s well worth mentioning.  If you have particular posts, pages, or even affiliate programs that you really want to drive traffic to whenever you use a certain phrase or word, this plugin will automate that for you.  Let me demonstrate.  If I use the word hosting, it will link you externally, if I use the word “dog” it will link you to a page where you can have your pet portrait drawn by my lovely wife.  These links and phrases can be automatically configured in the plugin settings.  No need to find that url to link to everytime you want to tell someone about your webhost. - Download
8. Ad Rotator - I like this plugin because it adds a bit of randomness to your widgets.  Say I would like to measure text ads verses image ads in a widget spot to see which one performs better.  If you do it by just installing one and then the other at different times, you are faced with the dilemna “did one perform better because it was a different time of the day?”  This plugin allows you to have a certain widget rotate between as many ads as you want to put in it just by using a more tag in the widget between ads.  It’s handy also for just doing random quotes everytime someone comes to your blog.  Drop in anything you want and surprise your readers with making it look like you update your blog a lot more than you really do. - Download
9. Wordpress Flickr Manager - If you use flickr and hate the fact that you have to upload to flickr first, then use the “post to blog” function in flickr to get your image to diplay, it has all changed.  You now can upload to flickr directly from within wordpress and post to your blog all in one step.  It also allows you to pull any image (even other people’s images) from flickr using a convienient image browser. - Download
10. NextGEN Gallery - If you just want a really nice gallery for your blog that incorporates captions, albums, etc and still is pretty simple to use and configure, NextGEN has it.  There are also some great plugins that interface with NextGEN gallery to do a lot more then just display your images too. - Download
11. WP-DB Backup - A backup never hurts anything.  If your webhost crashes and tells you that all is gone, then this plugin will save you a ton of grief.  (knock on wood) This plugin will make that an easy task to perform once a week or so.  It will even email it to you so all you have to do is search your archives for that backup. - Download
12. FancyZoom - If I post an image, and I want a reader to see a larger version of that image, I don’t want them to have to leave the page to see it.  This plugin makes that happen.  It’s fast, and will usually pleasantly surprise the reader (cause it makes it look like you have your act together).  Basically it will use an overlay to show the image directly on the post that the image is linked from and animates it to make it a little more… Fancy. - Download
13. Buy me a Beer - or coffee…  I drink coffee.  This adds a little link at the bottom of your post that allows people to show that they love what you have written in a really nice way… by buying you a drink.  A cool feature I like about this is that it is post specific.  It will link to your paypal account where they can send you money, but also tell you the writer, what post in particular they liked.  Tip me and I’ll write more posts like such, eh?  You do get what you ask for… - Download

There it is.  I hope you enjoyed the list.  As always, there is a “Buy me a coffee” link around here somewhere, but if you don’t have the paypal balance for that right now, a little stumble and a digg can go a long way too.