One of the things that separates WordPress from other blogging software out there is the fact that it is open source, and the benefits that go along with being open source. If you aren’t very good at coding, or good with PHP in particular, then the WordPress community has come to the rescue with WordPress plugins, which will allow just about anyone to easily add additional functionality to their blog. With the free WordPress plugins that various authors write and contribute from around the globe, WordPress has gained a lot of flexibility, causing it to be more attractive to potential bloggers.
As this site is dedicated to WordPress, I thought it would be a good idea to have a featured post dedicated to the best WordPress plugins available. This post is a constant work in progress, and will continue to be updated as I feature more plugins on this website. After each plugin, you should find a quick description, as well as a link to the full review. I have also broken the plugins down into categories for easy reference.
Premium WordPress Plugins
- Advertising -
- OIO Publisher - Complete plugin that removes all hassle for bloggers who manage advertising. Automates banners, text links, paid reviews, and collects the money for you. [Full Review]
- Affiliates -
- Auction Thumbs - Plugin that allows you to easily integrate eBay Partner Network ads into your WordPress Blog. [Full Review]
- PHP Bay Pro - Premium plugin that integrates eBay auction ads into your WordPress blog. [Full Review]
- WP Affiliate Pro - Allows you to manage your affiliate links from within your WordPress dashboard. Also allows you to mask links and a number of other features. [Full Review]
- WP Ninja Affiliate - Similar to WP Affiliate Pro plugin, but provides some additional features including multiple keywords and caching. [Full Review]
- SEO -
- WP SEO Sniper - Extreme SEO plugin designed to give people conscious of SEO full control over their blogs from the WordPress dashboard. Significant upgrade to the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin. [Full Review]
- Websites -
- WP Review Site - Simply activate theme and plugin to create a full-featured review website. No additional work needed, allowing you to make a number of these sites quickly! [Full Review]
Free WordPress Plugins
- Admin Tools -
- Gamer’s Pack - Makes your blog viewable using the Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, and PSP gaming systems. [Full Review]
- GoCodes - Easily create redirects from your WordPress Dashboard that point anywhere. Great for hiding affiliate links. [Full Review]
- Google Sitemap - Creates a fully-compliant sitemap for search engines. [Full Review]
- Greet Box - Identifies where traffic is being referred from and displays the appropriate welcome message to them, encouraging to subscribe to your feed, Digg or Stumble your posts, etc. [Full Review]
- In Series - Allows you to easily group a series of posts into a series. [Full Review]
- MobilePress - Optimizes your WordPress blog for mobile phones including the popular iPhone. [Full Review]
- No Self Ping - Prevents your blog from sending pingbacks internally to your other posts. [Full Review]
- WP-o-Matic - Allows users to collect feeds and auto-generate posts on your blog. [Full Review]
- WordPress Backup - Plugin that backups up your WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, images, and other non-database stuff. Works with WP-DB Manager. [Full Review]
- WP-DB Manager - Plugin that gives you full control over your WordPress database backups. Works with the WordPress Backup plugin. [Full Review]
- WP Sticky - Allows users to feature a post at the top of their homepage for a day or permanently. [Full Review]
- WP-Super Cache - Creates a cache of your posts to avoid server load. Great for surviving a Digg. [Full Review]
- Advertising -
- Chitika Premium Ads - Plugin that allows you to easily integrate Chitika premium ads into your WordPress blog. [Full Review]
- Got Banners - Plugin allows you to randomize your advertising banners. Ideal for 125×125 banners. [Full Review]
- Max Banner Ads - Plugin that lets you control your advertising from the WordPress dashboard. Also allows you to rotate multiple advertisements in a single spot. [Full Review]
- Show125 - Plugin that specializes in managing your 125×125 block advertisements. [Full Review]
- Shylock AdSense - Allows you to easily insert Google AdSense code into your WordPress blog. [Full Review]
- Authors -
- Author Exposed - Adds a full featured display of the authors profile. Great for multi-author blogs. [Full Review]
- Role Manager Plugin - Allows you to control the various WordPress user roles can and cannot do. [Full Review]
- Comments -
- CubePoints - CubePoints allows you to choose a certain amount of points for each comment posted by a certain commentator. You can offer premium content, allow readers to purchase merchandise or maybe even an advertisement for your blog with a certain amount of points. [Full Review]
- Keyword Luv - Adds an extra field to your comments where people can enter their website so they don’t add their website’s name in the name field for SEO anchor text purposes. [Full Review]
- Liz Comment Count - Displays a comment count in a similar fashion to the Feedburner feed count widget. [Full Review]
- MyAvatars - Automatically inserts the commentators MyBlogLog avatar next to their comment using the e-mail address provided. If unavailable, it will attempt to pull the bloggers Gravatar. [Full Review]
- Show Top Commentators - Allows you to display your top commentators automatically in a place of your choosing. Great for encouraging comments. [Full Review]
- Smilies Themer - Plugin that offers a variety of smilies styles to place in the comments section of your blog. [Full Review]
- Subscribe to Comments - Allows readers to receive e-mail notifications when a follow up comment is left. [Full Review]
- Domaining -
- Domain Name Portfolio - This plugin automatically creates a page in WordPress that domainers can use to display their domain portfolio. Everything is controlled from the dashboard. [Full Review]
- Downloads -
- Download Manager - Plugin that allows you to manage your downloads from the WordPress dashboard. [Full Review]
- Feeds -
- Add Related Posts To Your Feed - Will automatically add related posts to your blog’s feed. [Full Review]
- FeedCount - Allows you to display a numerical version of your Feedburner feed count without using the Feedburner chicklet. [Full Review]
- Feed Footer - Allows you to use HTML to add a custom footer to your blog’s feed. Plugin also supports randomizing up to 10 different footers. [Full Review]
- RSS Footer - Basic plugin that allows you to easily add copyright notice, etc. [Full Review]
- Forums -
- RS Discuss - Plugin that allows you to easily integrate a forum into your existing WordPress blog. [Full Review]
- Maintenance -
- WordPress Automatic Upgrade - Allows you to easily upgrade your WordPress installation to the latest version. **No longer needed in WordPress 2.7+**[Full Review]
- Miscellaneous -
- Best Posts Summary - Automatically generates a daily, weekly, or monthly review post. Includes both post titles and brief descriptions. [Full Review]
- BreadCrumb Navigation XT - Allows you to provide your readers with additional blog navigation. [Full Review]
- Get Firefox Banner - Shows a banner to IE6 and IE7 web browser users recommending they switch to Firefox. Great for blogs whose WordPress theme is optimized for Firefox. [Full Review]
- Popularity Contest - Monitors your website traffic and gives you reports on your popular posts. Plugin is fully customizable allowing you to set the values used to calculate your posts popularity. [Full Review]
- WP-eCommerce - Plugin that allows you to create an online shop on your WordPress blog [Full Review]
- WP-Email - Allows you to add an “Email This!” button to your WordPress blog. [Full Review]
- WP-Submission - Creates a submission page then places all submissions into a post draft. Ideal for group writing projects. [Full Review]
- Related Posts -
- Related Posts - Uses keywords in your post URL’s to display a designated number of related posts. [Full Review]
- Related Posts by Category - Uses category to locate and display related posts. [Full Review]
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) - Currently the ultimate/best related posts plugin available for WordPress users. Includes related posts for your feed! [Full Review]
- SEO -
- All-in-One SEO Pack - The Ultimate SEO WordPress plugin. Allows you to set your homepage meta information and automatically generate custom meta information for your individual posts. [Full Review]
- Permalink Redirect - Creates a 301 Redirect to avoid duplicate content penalties with search engines. Also includes a Feedburner redirect. [Full Review]
- Tags -
- Better Tags Manager - Allows you to better manage your tags, as well as convert your categories to tags. [Full Review]
- Recommended Tags - Looks at your post’s content and recommends tags. Includes additional features. [Full Review]
- Video -
- All-in-One Video Pack - All-in-One Video Pack includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses, manage and track your video content, create playlists, etc. [Full Review]



Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
wow~~thx!!!
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Thanks for the good article!!
Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I’m bookmarked your plugins informations.
Thanks
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Thank you
Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 7:17 pm
You forgot one that I use on my site: TreeMagic Cypress by AmbientWebs. Basically it allows you to double-click any word on your site and get a drop-down list. From the list, you can select the definition for the word, search it on Google, or any other query that you can possibly think of.
Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Thanks for these plugins
Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Great list of plugin.
Here is another list that I have found extremely useful
http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/what-wordpress-plugins-do-i-use/
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Hi,
I just write a new plugin WP Widget Cache, which can cache the output of your blog widgets. You can treat it as a plus to WP Super cache, especially when Google is crawling your site. As your site has a lot of widgets, so I think it will significantly reduce the server usage.
Will you please have a try, and add it to this list. Thanks very much.
Here’s the plugin url:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-widget-cache/
Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Wow. Its a cool information. Thanks for this.
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 3:52 am
Great resource! Thought you might also like Kaltura’s All in One Video Pack. This is not just another video embed tool - it includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses, manage and track your video content, create playlists and much more… Check it out and download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-video-pack/ Showcase your blog, see examples and pictures of the plugin and get support in our forum: http://community.kaltura.org/viewforum.php?f=4
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I just added this post to my delicious account. I love it!
Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 5:13 am
this is fantastic list.
i will have to install some of them as I haven’t tried before.
thank you very much
Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
My I recommend my own plugin to this list? I might be a bit biased, but I think it could be very useful to people. I’d love to hear your opinion of it or even a review…
http://www.warkensoft.com/products/amazonfeed-wordpress-plugin/
Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 3:45 am
I have my own list of plugins:
The Best Wordpress Plugins for Blogging Newbies
http://loymeetsworld.com/2008/12/18/the-best-wordpress-plugins-for-blogging-newbies/
Check it out!
Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 1:47 am
I use Headspace2 for SEO. Is it All-in-One SEO Pack plugin or WP SEO Sniper better than Headspace2. I have read many opinions that Headspace2 is the best for SEO in Wordpress.
Regards,
Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Nice list. I have also just released my first WordPress plugin. It is the Addmarx Dropdown and can be found at http://www.addmarx.com/wordpress_plugin.php . It combines 4 features into one button to place on your blog. It allows readers to share, bookmark, email or link to a post or page. Hope you find it helpful.
Thanks!
Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 4:07 am
thats a very great list of wp plugins every wp blogger should bookmark, l thanks for u to post it.
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Thanks for the great wordpress plugins! This is a great collection of plugins.
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 10:58 am
thanks a lot! the info is so useful!
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 3:09 am
Hi awesome post! But where are the spam filters?
Maybe you should make another list. Would really like to hear which plugins would be the best plugins now, since there are many new and interesting ones out there.
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 8:52 am
great list , nice variety of plug ins for everyone ! thnx =)
Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Nice work collecting this list. Very helpful.
Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 6:27 am
hey - good job
thanks for sharing
Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 3:18 am
This is awesome. I will definitely install several of these packages. Thanks for posting this and saving med the time collecting the information my self.
Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I am using the one-way link building SEO plugin from IBL Builder, its doing wonders for my google rankings. Download link is at the top of the page:
http://www.iblbuilder.com
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Leave A Comment
Become one of our
Featured Sites
Recent Trackbacks
Contributing Authors
Archives
Extras
WordPress Hacks Copyright © 2007-2009 | An Apricot Media Website
Template by StudioPress | Custom Design by Kyle Eslick and Blog Design Studio
RSS Feed Email RSS