WordPress is God.  Except better… as it is real :)

I run a lot of websites and frequently use wordpress as the basis of these sites.  It is often quicker and easier to install WordPress than to fire up Dreamweaver.  The power in WordPress is the ability of 3rd party plugins to transform the humble blogging platform in a tool for every occasion.  Here are some of my favourite Plugins

  • AdSense Integrator
    • This powerful plugin represents a complete solution to add and manage AdSense ads into your blog, it follows the last Google AdSense rules and updates.
    • After trying several Adsence insertion tools this was by far the easiest and gave enough options to ensure I will not bother to look at any others for a while.  It does what it says on the tin.  It allows you to place your ads where you want them using a simple and intuitive interface.
  • Google Analyticator
    • Keeping track of your visitors is important for you and your clients.  I have found this plugin to be the easiest of the Analytics integration tools.  There are a wide range of options if you want to dig in but you only really have to supply your analytics id for the site you wish to track.  There is the option to authorise the plugin with Google to give access to all your tracking codes from a drop down list which is a powerful.
  • Google XML Sitemaps
    • This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page
    • Your site is no good if no one can find it and your customers will want to see there vanity search appearing in Google asap.  This plugin automatically generates a Google XML site map and notified various search engine of updates and locations.  Very easy to setup.
  • 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.
    • The new automatic upgrade facility in WordPress has made it one of my favourite tools. After years of trying to keep up with patches and upgrades at last we can see how it can be done (PHPBB take heed!!!)  However, if you have a pre 2.7 WordPress installation upgrades can be a drag which is where this plugin come in.  Install it and follow the prompts and it will backup your site and database and proceed to bring your installation up to the latest. Magic
  • WP-Footnotes
    • Allows a user to easily add footnotes to a post.
    • This is a very clever little plugin which automatically creates footnotes as you go along.  All you need to do is to place the note in the text where it belongs and place double brackets around the ((note)).  The plugin will detect this and move the note to the bottom of the page and reference it accordingly.  If you add another footnote higher in the page it will automatically renumber the footnote.  Very useful. You can see this in action here on this local history site.
  • Advanced Category Excluder
    • This plugin helps you to manage your content, RSS feeds, sidebar widgets, and fine tune where you want to display your posts, pages, links, link categories, or hide.
    • This gem of a plugin allows you to control what categories do or do not appear on your home page or any other page for that matter. This is great if you need to use categories to control the layout of sections of your site. You can see this in action on this Silk Wedding Flowers Site. Note the home page shows only posts from certain categories and not posts from categories which have their own Page link in the Nav bar. Very handy.
  • cforms
    • cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more.
    • I have been known to install WordPress only to host this plugin.  It is a very easy to use and powerful form managements system that is highly configurable and allows easy insertion of as many forms as you care to create with full control over the css of that form.  The 1st thing I do when rolling out sites is to replace the contact form with a CFORM powered alternative.
  • kPicasa Gallery
    • Display your Picasa Web Galleries in a post or in a page.
    • Picasa / Picasaweb are amazing tools that cost nothing and achieve a lot.  Despite having access to very expensive software for managing the thousands of images on my PCs it is this humble freebie from Google that I use 99% of the time.  The export, email and upload to picasawebs features are simplicity itself.  There is no point in setting up elaborate gallery systems for your customers when this free offering is very fast and reliable.  It will also offer reassurance to clients that you are not the sole custodian of their images.  So once your client has uploaded thousands of images to hundreds of galleries how to do you integrate them into WordPress and keep the audience on site? This is where kPicasa comes in.  Once installed simple tell it your picasaweb username and which of the javascript effects you wish to use and then use the simple codes to insert the albums or all the albums into your pages.  Note that the latter option only works on an empty page which seems an unnecessary restriction. However, you can get around this by simply listing all the albums you want to show.  The user will see an image which represents the album and clicking on this will take them to a gallery of images all embedded in your site.  This can be seen used in this wedding flower design gallery.
  • Picasa Image Express
    • Browse, search and select photos from any publicly available Picasa Web Album and add them to your post/pages.
    • While kPicasa takes care of displaying albums any user of Picasaweb will have the need to display an individual image from a specific album now and then.  This is where Picasa Image Express comes in.. This plugin adds a new icon to the media icons and gives immediate direct access to your picasa account and allows simple insertion of thumbnails into your posts.  Compatible with kPicasas lightbox feature. Together these two plugins offer the perfect gallery management solution.
  • Multi-level Navigation Plugin
    • A WordPress plugin which adds a multi-level CSS based dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog. Visit the WP Multi-level Navigation Plugin page for more information about the plugin, or our navigation support board for help with adding the menu to your theme.
    • This is a very useful nav bar creator which is highly configurable and easy to style.  It is possible to use pages and categories in the bar and is very easy to insert into your theme.  The home page for the plugin has a theme creation tool which allows you to use a number of pre-made styles.  However, if you comfortable with CSS you can create any style you like.
  • Page Links To
    • Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.
    • A neat little plugin that allows you to redirect a click on any page to any other URL. Ideal for redirecting menu items to categories or for integrating out-of-wordpress sections of your site.
  • Special Text Box
    • is very simple, very little and very usefull WordPress plugin (for me and, I hope, for you). It adds little style sheet file and short code to blog for highlighting some portion of text in post as coloured boxes. That may be warning, alert, info and download portion of post’s text.
    • this is a very cool plugin that allows you to add a quickly syled text box to any post or page and even float to the left or right.  very powerful, effective and easy to use.
  • Easily Navigate Pages
    • Display a folder tree of your pages that is easy to expand and contract on your Dashboard. Designed for people that use WordPress as a content management system.
    • This is a very handy widget for your dashboard that gives one click access to your pages.  Very good idea and nicely implemented. You can find more info on the authors blog