Plugins that run my site
I recently came across a blog meme that was going around where WordPress bloggers were tagging each other and were asked to list their top three most underrated plugins.
Unfortunately, no one tagged me.
Nevertheless, I probably couldn’t give a decent answer to the question. However, I felt that I should write a post acknowledging some of the plugins used on this site.
Well, here’s a list of the plugins I use to keep JustinTadlock.com running. Yes, it’s a small list. The last three are plugins that I’ve written.
Akismet
I believe their tagline should be: “Spam-blocking so good it could’ve only been created by a god.”
I hear a lot of talk about all these other cool, hip spam blockers, but I’ve never had a problem with Akismet since day one. I’m sure most WordPress bloggers have this one turned on.
Clean Archives
I’m actually using a hacked up version of the old plugin from when Shawn Grimes originally created it. I use it to serve up my archives.
The newer versions of the plugin are a little too fancy for my tastes. I usually like to keep things simple. The plugin is still very good though.
Exec-PHP
I honestly don’t know where I’d be without this useful plugin. It gives you the ability to post PHP code in all sorts of places on your blog. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now.
I only need it for a couple of pages, but it’s really handy when I need to quickly post PHP in WordPress — something I wish was part of the core anyway.
WordPress Download Monitor
If you’ve ever wondered how I serve my theme and plugin downloads, then this is how.
It makes nice URLs, such as justintadlock.com/downloads/something, so I don’t have to worry with messing up an overly-complicated URL. Plus, stat-tracking is built in.
WordPress.com Stats
This one is a fairly new addition. It keeps track of my blog’s stats, but I honestly don’t use it much. I’ve been using Google Analytics for too long. Plus, it adds extra load time to my WordPress dashboard.
It does seem like a good plugin to have, and I’d recommend trying it out if you want your blog stats built into your dashboard.
Cleaner Gallery
This has been one of my favorite plugins that I’ve developed. I’m really picky when it comes to having valid XHTML, but I also wanted to use the new WordPress gallery feature for 2.5. So, I originally created it to use on my own site.
Of course, the added Lightbox support was just a little something extra.
Get the image plugin
After working with magazine themes for a while, I decided to make the image-adding process a little easier. Take a look at any of my archive-type pages or the excerpts on my front page. You’ll see this in action.
Basically, I use it to add thumbnails to spruce up the site a bit.
List SubPages With Descriptions
I created this plugin over a year ago to list subpages to certain parts of the site. It does exactly what the title suggests: list subpages of a page with descriptions of each. I think the plugin is in serious need of an update though.
I’m using a hacked-up version of it on my Writing page. My subpage descriptions were lost when my site went down a few months ago.
That’s the package
While none of these plugins are underrated, they are beneficial to my site. I don’t use too many because I enjoy building whatever code I need right into my theme.
I do enjoy playing around with a lot of different plugins though and add support for them in my themes if they seem to compliment the overall package.
If I had to choose my top plugins, without a doubt, they’d be Akisment and Exec-PHP.
What plugins do you use on your site? Which ones could you not live without?
The ones I can’t live without:
Askimet, Exec-PHP. You’ve pretty much covered why these are must-haves.
The ones that are icing on the cake:
Custom Query String Reloaded - I really wish this plugin worked on subcategories, and/or was supported. I’ve resigned myself to going back through my custom category templates and inserting the appropriate queries so I can dump the plugin.
d13gallery - a no-frills gallery that generates its own thumbnails. I migrated over 1000 image files out of Coppermine into WP posts in just a few hours with this plugin.
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - because my old Joomla driven site had a site map that was visible by viewers, and a magazine mentioned it as a positive feature of the site.
Featured Content Gallery - I love making that prime piece of site real estate rotate content automatically.
flickrRSS - because my site has a Flickr group associated with it, I get a steady stream of new eye candy from readers with this.
Google XML Sitemaps - because all my old Joomla links were indexed at Google, having this sitemap served up regularly seems to be helping move the new page links up, and push those old ones off.
jQuery Lightbox - not my favorite lightbox, but with all the other plugins I’m running, this was the only one that didn’t break other things.
Twitter Tools - because I’m too lazy or too forgetful to Tweet every new article.
WP-Polls - I really like this plugin a lot, and my readers seem to be less shy about answering poll questions than leaving comments.
I use these. The list is autogenerated with one of Lester Chans many great plugins.
I love them all, but one I actually don’t use on this site but love is this folksonomy plugin.
1. Akismet
2. WP Download Manager
3. flickrRSS
Nice compilation and a worth list.
Its giving me a great outlook about the way your website work.
Wonderful.. I like the StatPress plugin for stats. I love the Cleaner gallery plugin that you’ve created.
FlickrRSS, NextGen Gallery plugins are some of the plugins that I can’t live without in terms of images.
SyntaxHighlighter and Download Manager are another set I love.
Thanks again Justin,
Best smile,
Tharique Azeez
Actually the exec plugin can be built into the theme functions file.
I’ve tested it with different versions of the plugin, and all were running smooth.
With the exec built in you might use something like the smartarchives plugin (also built in functions).
I created a list of my WordPress plugins yesterday, it is longer than yours. But I prefer to keep code outside of the themes if possible to make it easier to switch theme.
[...] Plugins that run my site [...]
Lisa
It seems there are quite a few of those Lightbox-type scripts. I support several of them in my Cleaner Gallery plugin and have a few more to support in an upcoming release. There might be some other options out there if you feel like searching around a bit.
trendminders
That’s quite a list.
Do you need the Gravatars widget? I would assume your theme has this packaged in.
One day, I’m going to play around with Subscribe To Comments. A lot of people seem to like it.
I also see you have Woopra. How’s that working?
J Mehmett
Have you tried WordPress Download Monitor? I’m going to have to try out the WP Download Manager. I’m always interested in making downloads as easy as possible to manage.
Thariquee Azeez
SyntaxHighlighter? Is that for posting code? I’m off to look for it in a minute.
milo
I had never thought about adding Exec PHP to the theme functions file. I’ll definitely have to try that out.
Smart Archives is a very useful archives plugin. I’ve considered switching over to it myself.
Bengt
I suppose keeping code out of the theme files is useful if you might change themes quickly. I don’t typically change themes for months, and when I do, I’m recoding the entire thing.
If we ever get the child themes issues fixed with WordPress, then I’ll probably code a parent theme with all my functions in it, so I’ll be able to easily carry over code from one theme to the next.
[...] Plugins that run my site [...]
Justin
I think I made some alteration to my theme at some point, and now I can’t remember how I get back to old days. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because I’m seriously thinking about changing my payed theme with one of yours Justin, as I wrote some other place.
One would think that I didn’t need the Gravatar widget, but no Gravatar show up in my comments if I don’t have it
Regarding Woopra. At first I was baffled with the fact that they’ve opened Pandoras box on personal datamining, meaning, that it’s easy for me to track individual on my site. Then I got scared, and wrote something about that, that got the Woopra folks up from their chairs.
At this moment Woopra is underperforming, it’s still in closed beta, and they’re experiencing a lot of hickups. But the program is great, for the short termed analytical overview, and is lots of fun to play around with.
I think it’s going to be big, and then I think it’s going to sold to evil folks
But try it out, you can register your site at http://www.woopra.com for a site like this and/or Project M, it would be great, because you would be able to tack us, the commenter’s individually with Gravatars and everything.
But all in all a must if your just a bit interested in trafic-analysis.
Plugins like these would be nice, for when we mess up with the tags like I did above: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/edit-comments
Great post, and fun to read everyone’s comments. Justin, which plugins do you use for bbPress?
I’ve never once tried Akismet.
I use Dagon and Google Sitemaps plugins but I won’t say they are mandatory because I don’tinteract with themafter installation.
So, having established my criterion, I will go with:
All in One SEO Pack
WordPress Stats
I am using:
All in One SEO Pack: Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. By Michael Torbert.
Clean Archives Reloaded: A slick, Javascript-enhanced post archive list generator for WordPress 2.5+. By Viper007Bond.
Custom Smilies: Personalize your posts and comments using custom smilies. Previously named Custom Smileys. it (older than version 2.0) maintained by QAD. By Crazy Loong.
Fancy Pullquotes: Creates pullquotes of given text to appear with a magazine-like style By Giorgio Gilestro.
Get Recent Comments: Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar. Visit Options/Recent Comments after activation of the plugin. By Krischan Jodies.
matriphe! KeyCode: Against spammer using human friendly plain-text keycode. Based on Comment KeyCode by Elzan Yahya. By Muhammad Zamroni.
Most Commented: Retrieves a list of the posts with the most comments. Modified for Last X days — by DJ Chuang http://www.djchuang.com By Nick Momrik.
Pagebar2: Adds an advanced page navigation to Wordpress. By Lutz Schröer.
Social Bookmarking RELOADED: Social Bookmarking RELOADED - Add the social bookmarks services’s icons to your articles in your blogs in order to submit them easily. Plugin based on Apostolos Dountsis one. By valent.
Subscribe To Comments: Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.
wp-cache: Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”. By Ricardo Galli Granada.
WP-DBManager: Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
I just wanted to say that I get a 500 Internal Server error when I try checking out your demos.
I like top commentators and all in one seo!
trendminders
I really need to start exploring some of the different comment plugins. It would be useful to be able to edit comments.
You brought up some interesting points in your Woopra discussion. I hadn’t even thought about the security of all that data. I think I’ll want to implement it for Project M though.
edwestin
Support Forum has been working well for me in my forums so far. The bbRatings plugin has been pretty good in testing. I’ll be using it for my “Ideas” forum. I did have to hack it up a bit though to get valid XHTML and to work on my local install.
steupz
I’m an anti-All in One SEO Pack guy. I think that’s probably because my blog is a bit more established than the average blogger though. Plus, whatever I’m doing now seems to be working, so I’m not going to mess it up.
Akismet’s great though. Of course, there are other schools of thought, some of which say you need multiple spam-blockers.
mini
I’ve always wanted to do some pullquotes on my blog. A simple custom field could take care of that. That’s if I ever get around to it.
I’m really interested in Clean Archives Reloaded. According to the site, there’s only one database query.
EmmaB
Some of the older demos are currently down. The only demos that should be up are the Options and Structure theme demos.
Right now, I’m preparing to move a lot of WordPress stuff to a new site. When I get all that done, I’ll try to get the older demos back up.
http://www.cafelamarck.it/fancy-pullquotes/
The fancy pullquotes are in this link. I am using it few lately because but sometimes I use still.
Here there are an example of how work the puglin, you can configure the css
http://www.minimalnet.org/john-lagora-presents-va-tooltimefm-ep-alquimia005/
Justin,
I didn’t download the “WordPress Download Monito”, I’m going to test it soon. There must be a different between WP download manager and WordPress Download Monitor though… I’ll test it.
[...] This is a post by Justin Tadlock on his collectin of wordpress plugins that is installed in his site. I copied it for our references but if you want to read his original post click here. [...]