I’ve decided to recommend 5 universal, essential plugins for WordPress so that you can start the year of 2009 on the right foot with your WordPress websites. If you haven’t tried these, go ahead and put them on your WordPress website!
5 Essential WordPress Plugins for 2009
Ohz’ Admin Drop Down Menu
Have you ever felt that you spend too much unnecessary time in the WordPress dashboard? It could be because of the fact that there is a large number of menus, mostly with sub-menus. This plugin will save you loads of time as you browse through the WordPress administration panel, directly going to the specific sections you need to from drop down menus. Of course, this plugin will most likely not be needed anymore once WordPress 2.7 has been officially released.
Simple Tags
Easily and seamlessly manage your WordPress tags to drastically improve your search engine optimization (SEO). You can manage all your tags and mass edit your tags as needed. This tool has helped me to organize the tags on my site better and easily tag multiple posts with specific target keywords/phrases.
Banner Rotator Plugin
Do you have a WordPress website that provides rich content to users on a frequent basis which drives a good amount of traffic? If you do, it probably won’t hurt to make a little extra revenue from the website through advertisement publishing, correct? This WordPress banner ads plugin will give you the ability to rotate image, Flash and code (HTML, JavaScript) banner ads on your website in different sizes and spots.
Contact Form 7
Surely all website owners have the need to allow their users/visitors to contact them with questions, requests and suggestions about both the site and the content/products the site has to offer. The best way to allow customers to contact you is to construct a WordPress contact page with a contact form where they can submit their details. This plugin will allow you to do that and has an amazing level of flexibility, allowing you to create custom fields to put on your contact form.
Admin Management xTended
I really love the simplicity and power of this plugin. Today, I wrote a WordPress post on a rather busy blog and accidently clicked “Publish” when it wasn’t ready yet. This plugin helped me to quickly set the status to “Draft” before it got read, from the “Manage” > “Posts” section. So this plugin puts several buttons in the WordPress management section so that you can change a post/page publish status, publish date, post slug, etc.
May 21st, 2009 at 9:18 am
You can get Banner rotator plugin version 2.5 (latest release) from here:
http://tribulant.com/items/download/3366
Compliments of Antoine for a job well done
June 4th, 2009 at 5:58 am
Hi Alex,
You are not allowed to distribute this commercial software.
The link you posted for the download requires a user to be logged in and no one can access it.
I reported the MegaUpload link you posted as abuse and it has been removed.
I have disabled your download on Tribulant Software for violating the CC license of the software.
All the best,
Antonie
June 6th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Thanks for taking the time to put this list together.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I strongly recommend that you turn the No Follow off in your comment section. I’ll watch Google Webmaster Tools, and if the links don’t show up after a couple of weeks — I won’t go back to that blog again. Another suggestion: you should have a Top Commentator widget installed. Do Follow and Top Commentator will ensure that you have a successful blog with lots of readers!
June 9th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
great list there
June 18th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
An interesting plugin list there for wordpress. But, you ahould probably add a realted post plugin to it too. There are a number of them available and it helps to re-direct your readers to do something when they are finished reading over the post.
It sorts itself out automatically too, so it is really pretty simple to use after you’ve installed, and my comment and reader length ratios went up too.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Thanks for the information. I found it useful to apply on my own wp blog sites. Have you a got a good web content management system for your blog site?
July 1st, 2009 at 12:36 am
Is it ok to use these themes or not? I read that comment of snitch Antonie, and I am not sure now?
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:42 am
@CMS Website Joomla
Yes, you may use them. Rogue posted a download link to a commercial package by Tribulant Software which may not be redistributed (see the very first comment).
July 26th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Thank you for these plugins!
July 29th, 2009 at 3:11 am
I think lots of wordpress users use Contact Form 7. I will start it using too. Thanks for telling more about it!
August 2nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Thanks for this post, help so much to stay tunned our wordpress sites, my parter wants to migrate to drupal, but i deny, i think WordPress is fantastic, more with useful thing like this. I like a lot the “Admin Management xTended” Im using using WordPress as a CMS, and when it comes to editing posts or pages quickly without having to open each post or page in a new tab or window, thats make it able to manage contents easily and quickly.
Thank You.
August 7th, 2009 at 4:18 am
Thanks for the list. I found the Simple Tags tool most useful…but aren’t they all.
August 8th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Please provide some plugins for facebook integrator
August 22nd, 2009 at 9:08 pm
I would add to this list WP-Cache for a faster page load,All-In SEO for a easy seach engine optimization of your blog and XML-Sitemap Generator.
August 29th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
There is a small book that could be written on good wordpress plugins, but breadcumbs and robot meta are my favorite/simplest.
August 30th, 2009 at 12:09 am
Any word on those plugins to integrate facebook?
September 4th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
great list , we want more plz , you are great . i`m waitining
September 4th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
so so so thanx
great list
September 5th, 2009 at 2:27 am
wordpress big blogs and have high pagerank.
thanx for post.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Cool software tips.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Great list, went looking for it and I found it here, Thanks
September 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Nice Work!
September 27th, 2009 at 8:37 am
This is one really useful, handy little list! Thanks for sharing this quality advice.
September 28th, 2009 at 8:26 am
thanks for the great list. will surely use them in my blog!
October 1st, 2009 at 5:48 am
Hey, great post I enjoyed it very much! Thanks!
October 5th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Nice work. I will use Simple Tags.
October 9th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
The only plugin i use is a Contact Form plugin. I have been using it for a long time and very satisfied with the way it works…
October 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Great post.
That’s a great list of pluigns, will surely use some of those as it will make the process easier.
October 31st, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Is the Simple Tags plugin compatible with WPmu?
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:27 am
I think that Banner Rotator Plugin is the best from this list. Very useful if you sell ads on a blog with some trafic .
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:28 am
Should be, yes. Did you experience any problems with Simple Tags on WPMU?
December 20th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I come like from a moon or something. I am using only contact form plugin for my sites.
But thanks for suggestions. I will give a try.
January 8th, 2010 at 3:22 am
Do you have updated list for plugins 2010? I used your search option but couldn’t find one.
January 20th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Great info. Found a plug-in or two that I’ll be adding to my site now. Woof Woof!