Any Google search for “WordPress plugins” will return millions of hits on the subject. Most will be lists and tips in some way, “Top ten Wordpress plugins”, and generally speaking, they do tend to feature some of the best plugins available to Wordpress. They do however, tend to feature the same, and the old saying of once you’ve read one “Top ten Wordpress plugins” article, you’ve read them all, is kind of true.
This is now no longer the case, as this “Wordpress plugin” list, lists the ones that are not called Askimet, or Adsense Deluxe, but features little known but extremely useful plugins, not often featured on these lists.
Head Meta description
This plugin is easy to install and will place a meta description tag on every page of your Wordpress blog. This will be based on the first few words of the page, or it will be based on post excerpts. Search engines still give credence to meta description tags, which makes this underrated plugin, a good one to have.
Exec-PHP
As Wordpress utilises PHP code, this plugin ensures that PHP code inside static pages or posts is recognised by Wordpress. This is extremely useful as plugins and other Wordpress features wont run in static pages or posts, without it. Though there are a few plugins that claim to the same job, this one is by far the most reliable.
Custom Query String
It can be frustrating if you want to list a certain number of posts on the homepage, or some on a different page, or some on another, and as you well know, from the control panel, this cannot be done. Enter Custom Query String plugin to save the day, and allow you to do what you always wanted to do, but could not.
Clean Archives
Nearly every Wordpress blog has an archive where blogs are stored by month. This wastes precious space, and in general is a complete waste of time. This plugin lists them on a dedicated page, on a month by month basis. This structure is far more efficient, and presentable. You may need Exec-PHP to get it working properly.
Chunk URLs
Well we’ve all had URLs that are made up of endless letters and symbols, posted on our blogs. Not only do they look unsightly, they also could break how your website is displayed on certain browsers. Chunk URL simply condenses the string to a manageable length, and you can dictate how long the length will be.
Sig2feed
This plugin simply puts a copyright symbol on your feeds, with a link to your site. A very good method of stopping feed stealers.
Feedsmith
This plugin is used to track accurately how many feed subscribers your blog has. This is one of the many indicators of success for your blog, and so could prove highly useful.
Jerome’s Keywords
By installing this plugin, you will be able to create tag clouds, tag individual posts and create an internal tag system. You can also generate a dynamic meta keyword tag. So this is a good one.
WP Cache
This plugin’s role, is to lighten the load on the server. This is especially useful for a sudden influx of traffic from social networking sights. The plugin also increases the responsiveness of your website, and is very road bust. It works by creating static versions of your pages and uses them instead of querying mySQL database.
We hope these not so well known plugins prove useful to you, and that you can use them to their full potential, as they will help your blog in many different, useful ways.
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August 19th, 2009 at 1:32 am
I just installed the WP-Cache plugin and activated it on one of my site, but I have to admit that I don’t really understand what it does. I’m not noticing any difference in load time or anything.