WordPress is, by far, the best thing that has happened to blogging. I would even go as far to say that it could become the best thing to happen to web development and website creation, in general. For the web novice, it’s everything you could want and more. It’s easy to setup, easy to maintain, and best yet, it’s easy to optimize.
The optimizing component is thanks to all of WordPress’s plugins. There are now so many to choose from. Each one offers its own advantages. I have provided a list of the top 50 in order to save you time when setting up your WordPress site or blog.
50. Addtoany Button
Help readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing and usage history.
49. Sociable
Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites! WordPress 2.6 or above is required, if you use an older version, please download this version, please keep in mind that version is not maintained.
48. Permalinks Moved Permanently
If you just migrated your WordPress blog from one permalink structure to another, and you don’t want to lose Pagerank or traffic that accesses your blog through the old permalinks, this is for you.
47. WpPageNavi
Lets you customize your navigational options.
46. Thank Me Later
Thank Me Later (TML) will automatically send an e-mail to those who leave a comment at your blog. Use this plugin to say ‘Thanks’ to your visitors, and prompt them to further engage with your blog.
Gives your commenters link love. How cool is that?
Enables you to quickly add and modify your use of Chitika | Premium within WordPress! Edit your Chitika | Premium configuration settings.
Adds FireFox Download Button to WordPress for IE users.
42. CubePoints
CubePoints is a point management system designed for WordPress blogs. Users can earn points by posting comments on your site. To display user’s points, just put in your template or activate the sidebar widget.
41. GoCodes
Create shortcut URLs to anywhere on the internet, right from your WordPress Admin. When upgrading, be sure to read the upgrade notes.
40. Meebo for Sites
Integrates the Meebo Bar into a WordPress Site.
39. WP_Submission
A tool to help with the collection of user submitted content.
38. WP Security Scan
Perform security scan of WordPress installation.
37. WP-Polls
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.
The WordPress Wii Edition Plugin displays a Wii optimized view of your blog’s posts and pages for readers visiting your blog on a Nintendo Wii.
The WordPress PSP Edition Plugin displays a PSP optimized view of your blog’s posts and pages for readers visiting your blog on a Sony PSP.
The WordPress Nintendo DS-Lite Edition Plugin displays a DS-Lite optimized view of your blog’s posts and pages for readers visiting your blog on a Nintendo DS-Lite.
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Tools → Backup to get started.
32. WordPress Automatic Upgrade
WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. Go to WordPress Automatic Upgrade to upgrade your installation Thanks to Ronald Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode.
Insert Adsense code in your pages without modifying the template. Show different ads for articles older than 7 days (or as old as you wish).
Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site. Check http://www.oratransplant.nl/uga/#versions for version updates.
29. Twitter Tools
A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.
28. RSS Footer
Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles.
27. pageMash
Manage your multitude of pages with pageMash’s slick drag-and-drop style, ajax interface. Allows quick sorting, hiding and organising of parenting.
26. Role Manager
Role Management for WordPress 2.0.x, up to 2.6.x..
25. No Self Pings
Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.
24. WP-EMail
Allows people to recommand/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.
23. Max Banner Ads
Easily rotate banners and ads in almost anywhere in your wordpress blog without editing the theme. Adjust your settings here.
22. 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! Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins.
21. Recommended Tags
Creates a list of recommended and existing tags (JavaScript must be enabled). Visit Settings -> Recommended Tags to change some of the options available. This version is only designed to work with WordPress 2.7.
20. Author Exposed
Simple and elegant way to get more information about author.
Just check out my plugin url ;), dont forget to check this update, i’ll make more feature later.
Encourage more feedback and discussion from readers, by rewarding them every time they post a comment! Readers with the most comments are displayed on your WordPress blog, with their names (linked to their website if they provided one).
17. KeywordLuv
Reward your commentators by separating their name from their keywords, in the link to their website, giving them improved anchor text. For example, leaving “Stephen @ Custom WordPress Plugins” in the name field, will result in the following: Stephen from Custom WordPress Plugins. Requires a DoFollow plugin to be effective.
16. CommentLuv
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
This is not just another video embed tool – it includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including playing, uploading and editing.
Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
The DISQUS comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by DISQUS. Head over to the Comments admin page to set up your DISQUS Comment System.
12. TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filter
A plugin that does a simple sanity check to stop really obvious comment spam before it is processed.
11. Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service 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.” To show off your Akismet stats just put in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
Create summary posts with the Best of Month, Week, or Day content. Based on number of comments or popularity (visits).
Automatically add the ad code, related post, optional custom paragraph or technorati tags to the end of every posts. All options can be fully customized though Add Post Footer tab in the option panel within wordpress admin. It’s also possible overide the setting for specific post by adding custom field key and value. Please refer to the tips and addtional info provided at the Add Post Footer Page.
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android and other touch-based smartphones.
Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.
SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
4. Redirection
Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors.
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.
Set custom permalinks on a per-post basis
Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.