My 10 Favorite Free WordPress Plugins

September 1st, 2010 · No Comments

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on how to install WordPress manually. WordPress is a great blogging software by itself but you can extend its capabilities way further by using plugins.

Below is a list of my top 10 WordPress plugins I use on most of my blogs (in no particular order):

1. Google XML Sitemaps

This is a very useful plugin that generates an XML sitemap of your blog. To cut a long story short, an XML sitemap is a file which contain the list of all the pages on your website. The sitemap is then used by search engine crawlers to index content more efficiently.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

2. Platinum SEO Pack

Where I once used All in One SEO Pack, I now use Platinum SEO Pack which is almost the same plugin but on steroids. This awesome plugin allows you to rewrite post and page titles, write meta tags, set PSP meta index and nofollow tags and much more. Truly the most powerful SEO plugin for WordPress I’ve tried so far.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

3. Login Lockdown

This plugin protects your WordPress blog from brute force attacks by locking out remote IP addresses after a defined number of unsuccessful login attempts.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

4. TinyMCE Advanced

Enable advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE, the visual editor in WordPress.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

5. WP-Cache

WP-Cache is a caching module that creates static files from your blog pages for faster load time and lower resource usage.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

6. Subscribe to Comments

Allow readers to receive email notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry by adding a checkbox to the comment form.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

7. Get Recent Comments

Display the latest comments or trackbacks in the sidebar.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

8. Feedburner Feedsmith

Redirect your blog feed to Feedburner so you can track subscribers.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

9. Popularity Contest

Display a list of the most popular posts in your sidebar. Highly customizable.

Plugin website | WordPress.org plugin page

10. Show Top Commentators

Encourage readers to comment on your post by listing the top commentators in your sidebar or homepage and giving them a backlink to their site in the process.

Plugin website