Tested and Useful WordPress Plugins

  1. Akismet -- Prevents spam in visitors comments.
  2. AntiVirus -- Protects your site from melicious plugins and themes.
  3. Black Studio TinyMCE Widget -- Adds a WYSIWYG text editor widget.
  4. Broken Link Checker -- Automatically validates all links on your site and notifies you by email if any are broken.
  5. Cleverness To-Do List -- Keep track of what needs to be done on your site or in your life.
  6. Contact Form 7 -- One of the best form managers available for WordPress. Even allows you to send out more than one email upon submission. Can also be used as an upload form for visitors to send you files however be aware of php's limit on file upload size and the limits of your available disk space. You can also add Contact Form 7 Select Box Editor Button if you need to let the visitor select from a list of recipients without revealing email addresses.
  7. Disable Canonical URL Redirection
  8. Duplicate Post -- This will allow you to quickly duplicate a page on your website. Not only is this useful when you’ve put a lot of work into creating a first version of a page and want to use it as a template for other pages, but it can also be useful when trying to track the results of your ad campaigns.
  9. Exclude Pages from Navigation -- Don't show specific pages in the navigation menus. Example, "Thank You" page.
  10. File Uploader -- Allow visitors to upload a file to your website and automatically notify you by email. Limitations: 1) php's limit on file upload size (often 2 MB) and 2) your available disk space on your website.
  11. Simple Dropbox Upload Form -- If you prefer to have visitors uploaded files to your Dropbox.
  12. Global Content Blocks -- Allows you to centrally manage content appearing in any number of page, post and widgets.
  13. Google Analytics for WordPress -- Enables Google Analytics to track traffic on your site.
  14. Google Analytics Dashboard -- Allows you to see how pages are doing right from within WordPress.
  15. Social Metrics -- Track Likes and Shares on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.
  16. LanguageBack -- Allows you to have the website and the WordPress back-end in different languages.
  17. Limit Login Attempts -- Helps prevent people from trying to guess your username and password for the WordPress site.
  18. MCE Accessible Language Change -- Allows you to properly tag text as being in other languages.
  19. NextGEN Gallery -- Advanced photo gallery for your website.
  20. P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) -- Helps you determine what is slowing down your site.
  21. Page Comments Off Please -- Sets Enable Comments to off for pages by default. Will change the setting for new pages, not existing pages.
  22. Page Links To -- Allows you to create menu links that go to a file or external site instead of just pages and posts.
  23. PayPal Donations -- Accept donations through PayPal
  24. qTranslate -- Enable you to create a multilingual website.
  25. Redirection -- Prevent dead-links, which have a negative effect on SEO, by redirecting old URL's to new page locations automaticaly. Especially useful after migrating your site or just moving things around.
  26. Relevanssi -- Enhanced search engine for WordPress.  Installs transparently and returns search results sorted by relevance to search terms. Don't want to include specific pages in the search results? Add the Relevanssi Exclude Page Search plugin.
  27. Root Relative URLs -- Will make all local links relative to the root of your website thereby enabling it to be portable to other domains or for use locally.
  28. s2Member Framework -- Create multi-level Membership and Subscription areas and Shopping Carts
  29. Schedule your content -- Allows you to schedule when content will appear and disappear from your site. Be sure to read the README.TXT file for details.
  30. Search & Replace -- Extremely powerful search and replace for WordPress database. You can seriously mess up your site if you are not 200% sure about what you are doing. For very Advanced Users Only!!!
  31. Simple MailChimp Email List Subscriber -- Add a MailChip sign-up form on your site.
  32. Simple Page Ordering -- Allows you to re-order pages on your site without having to create and manage menus.
  33. SlideDeck for WordPress -- Content slider widget. Alternative: TheThe Image Slider.
  34. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved -- Will add colour to your source code listings as well as line numbers. Only useful if you regularly post source code on your site (HTML, Javascript, PHP, etc)
  35. Ultimate Coming Soon Page -- Enables you to work on the website while displaying a message for people who are not logged in such as a coming soon. Once the site is running, set it up with a useful "Under Maintenance" type page that offers visitors contact information, links to your social media sites and perhaps even a form so that you can notify them when the site will be working again. Then just keep this ready for those scheduled or unforseen periods when site maintenance is required.
  36. Ultimate TinyMCE -- Adds the features you've always wanted into the WordPress editor. Alternative: TinyMCE Advanced. Also check out TinyMCE Templates which gives you the ability to create reusable content templates that you can design and use in pages and posts and TinyMCE Signature if you tend to always sign your blog posts the same way.
  37. W3 Total Cache -- Performance optimization for your WordPress site.
  38. Weaver II Theme Extras -- Adds the ability to backup, copy and restore settings in Weaver II theme framework.
  39. WordPress Importer -- Import pages and posts from another WordPress site (WordPress.com for example)
  40. WordPress Social Ring -- Enable people to like and share your page/post. Alternative: ShareThis. Note: Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share is also very popular but its integration with Facebook doesn't always work.
  41. WordPress SEO by Yoast -- Optimizes your site for search engines. Alternative: All in one SEO Pack. I prefer WordPress SEO because it integrates links to other useful SEO tools. Not only will it generate XML site maps but it will notify the major search engines when you make a change to your site. If you end up going with All in one SEO pack, be sure to add the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to create the sitemap and notify search engines when you make changes. If you use qTranslate, use Google XML Sitemaps v3 for qTranslate instead.
  42. WP File Manager -- Enables you to upload, download and edit files on your site. Especially if you don’t have FTP access. Note that php upload limitations are in effect (typically 2 MB maximum).
  43. WP Autoresponder and WP Autoresponder to s2member Integration -- Add an autoresponder to your site.
  44. WP Help -- Add documentation to your Dashboard.
  45. WP SlimStat -- A light alternative to Google Analytics for sites with light traffic.
  46. WP jQuery Lightbox -- Replacement lightbox for NextGen Gallery which allows visitors to download images.
  47. WooCommerce -- Add a shopping cart and payment processing to your site. Alternative: WP Simple Paypal Shopping Cart / UI for WP Simple Paypal Shopping Cart
  48. WPTouch, Wapple Architect or WordPress Mobile Pack -- For those of you not lucky enough to have a responsive theme, these plugins will add support for mobile devices to your site.
  49. XCloner -- Backs-up whole website including database and files.
  50. Zopim Widget -- Live Chat for your Blog/Website.

Recommended by others but not yet tested

  • Revisionary -- Improved revision control for your posts and pages which enables you to re-work a page or posts while the current version is displayed to visitors.
  • WP Clear Fix -- Gets you out of trouble when your site starts to give you a hard time.
  • ELI’s Related Posts Footer links and Widget
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith Extended -- Enables you to easily make use of Google’s FeedBurner service to manage RSS subscriptions to your site.

Think you found something better? Leave a comment below.

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