As fantastic as a base installation of WordPress is, there are still some key points where it falls short. Luckily, the incredible community of plugin writers have filled the gaps. Here are 7 plugins that none of us can do without.
Advanced Excerpt
The default excerpt produced by WordPress is actually quite weak. It strips out any formatting tags, making it very difficult to control what your excerpts look like. Even better, you can use different template tags to create different kinds of excerpts if your design calls for it.
All in One SEO
This will override your <title> settings and produce canonical URLs for Google bots. It also dynamically generates keywords and descriptions for your posts, and it offers extra fields to insert them manually on a per-post basis if you don’t like what it comes up with.
Google XML Sitemaps
Google is the name of the search-engine game, and the best way to keep them sending you traffic is to send them sitemaps. This plugin automatically generates your sitemap and sends it to Google, Yahoo!, Bing (formerly MSN Search) and Ask.Com.
WordPress.Com Stats
A great information tool, it provides real-time information about your visitors, including pageview counts, where they came from and what they’re clicking on in your site. The reason I think it might be a bad choice is that I find myself obsessing over numbers, especially little ones. If you’re a nervous wreck most of the time and require constant validation from complete strangers, you might want to skip this one.
WP Super Cache
WordPress works by interacting with a MySQL database, where all your posts and pages and data are stored. It’s fantastic, but when 1,000 people a minute start accessing your site, it can take a real toll on your server hardware. WP Super Cache fixes this by creating static HTML pages of your site and serving those up, changing them only when you make an update. This way, your server hardware isn’t taxed as much and more people can see your site without it crashing.
BM Custom Login
Just one of those little touches that clients love so much; the custom login field. Instead of seeing a big WordPress logo when a client goes to edit their site, they will be greeted with a beautiful piece of their own branding, thus making themselves feel important and happy. They will attribute this feeling to having hired you, which will make them want to do so again in the future.
WordPress Mobile Pack
Ready.mobi offers a free tool that will check your site’s preparedness for those who visit it on a mobile device. If you’ve installed the WordPress Mobile Pack, your site will receive very high marks. The installation isn’t as simple as “click to install,” but it shouldn’t be beyond the means of most WordPress users.
