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Earlier today I was visiting DiTesco’s site, iBlogZone, and I came across one his articles about a list of his must have WordPress Plugins. If you do get the chance, check out his article, he has some good ones on there that look very useful and I plan to test some of them and do a review on them.
That article reminded me that I have been wanted to do an article on some of my favorite new plugins. So today, I thought I would list a few of the ones I recently installed and tested.
Why Do I Need WordPress Plugins?
WordPress by itself is a great blogging tool, but its limited. Plugins are created by developers and WordPress fans that think of ways to do different things in a better or an easier way. I always recommend keeping your plugins to minimum and whenever possible hard code what you can into your theme. The more plugins you have, the slower your page loads can get. Make sure to always remove any plugins you are no longer using.
My latest Plugins
Today, I went through my plugin lists and notes and pulled out five of my favorite plugins. As mentioned before, all of the plugins that I mentioned today, have been installed in the last few months and I have tested and found that they work great and have no issues. When I get some time, I will post an update to my original post of my favorite must have plugins I did earlier this year. I will also be adding individual reviews and setup tutorials if I haven’t already created ones for the listed plugins.
1. Plugin Test Drive
Plugin Test Drive is an important plugin that I use before any new plugin goes live. It was created by Omer of WebTechWise as way to test new plugins without effecting the user experience. What You do is, you install the plugin you want to add to your site. But do not activate it. Then go to Test Drive and select the plugin and start testing. Its only active for your IP address. If you have any problems, then remove the plugin and no one thats on your site while your testing knows what is happing and will not have any issues.
This plugin has saved me several times. It has caught issues where a plugin didn’t work with my theme and I was able to see the signs the that a certain plugin would cause a heavy load on the server resources. Because of those warning signs, I killed off the non working plugins before they anyone knew I had them installed. For information check out Plugin Test Drivewebsite. If you like the plugin , go to the WordPress Directory and vote on it
Print screens from Plugin Test Drive
2. Admin Management Xtended Plugin
Another of my favorite plugins is Admin Management Xtended Plugin. I originally was referred to this plugin by Justin of DragonBlogger.com about a month or so ago when I was trying to do some category and tag clean up. When I was using the category tool to remove old categories and move articles to another category, it did it smoothly and made the whole process a breeze to do. This plugin, gives you more features to the admin panel and makes some of the current tools in the dashboard easier to use. For more info check out the video and check plugin’s site.
Admin Management Xtended Demo from Oliver Schlöbe on Vimeo.
3. Random Ads Rotator
The Datafeedr Random Ads plugin is a free plugin which allows you to simply and easily show random ads anywhere in your template files or using the sidebar widgets. This plugin is so easy to use that, I will be removing the theme’s built ad spots and using the plugin for everything I need. I like this plugin because, I can show less ads but if the reader moves to a different page or refreshes they will see a different ad.
If you know how to modify your theme’s code you can easily go into the code add the strings of php the plugin creates for you and can add it anywhere you want.
Just because you display less adds with this tool doesn’t mean you can have hundreds of ad and use the tool to randomly rotate them as a user navigates your site. If you add to many, Your readers will catch on and it will slow your site’s load time down.
Check out the video on how the plugin works.
4. G.A.S.P. – GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin
G.A.S.P. is an anti-spam plugin that was designed to replace captcha and Akismet anti-spam tools. The reason why this tool was created was because the above mentioned anti-spam tools work so well that they can keep your real commentators from commenting.
But G.A.S.P. works diffrently, it uses a mixture of coding and a check box that a user has to check for the plugin to consider that a user is not a spammer. Most spambots are not designed to find and check this check box. G.A.S.P. also can block trackbacks and pingbacks as well.
I have been using G.A.S.P. almost since its release and I found it works great. However, I am starting to see more real spammers and G.A.S.P. is not designed to block them. Because of the amount of this type of spam I am receiving, I turned Akismet back on and I am not seeing as much now.
Check out my review and walk through of how to setup G.A.S.P.
5. AntiVirus for WordPress
AntiVirus is a plugin designed to Monitor your WordPress installations for malicious injections and warns you of any possible attacks. Its a very simple plugin that scans your system and will email you if its finds anything you might want to be concerned about.
Final Thoughts
I love WordPress Plugins, but at the same time, I try and limit my use. I always test them out and make sure they work before they go live. If I find something I like, I will look for reviews. if I am concerned about the quality and how well the plugin works I try and find trusted bloggers to tell me what you think. Poorly designed plugins can hurt your site, so make sure you look into every plugin download and make sure they are the best at what they do.
Have you used any of these plugins before? If so, what are your thoughts on them?
Image Source: Flickr
About James
Thanks a lot for the mention of Plugin Test Drive, James.
Admin Management is one of my favorites as well
Omer, your plugin has saved me from having several headaches when trying out new plugins. Thanks again for creating it…
That’s a great set of plugins and although I am familiar with some of them (like GASP), I have not yet tried the “test drive” plugin, which I will definitely do, considering that I am a plugin “maniac”. This sounds good to see if everything runs smoothly being deploying it live.
Another plugin in your list that I am quite curious about is the xTended plugin. If I understood this right, you used this plugin to clean up categories and such. A question, what effect if any would it have on your SEO if you remove an old category and give it a new one?
And finally, thanks for the mention my friend. It is an honor..
When I spoke with Justing (dragonblogger) he said that it did not effect SEO or if it did it was very little. After making those changes, my search engine results haven’t changed.
If you do make changes to categories and tags, I wouldn’t do to many at a time. I only removed 5 categories a week and removed ones that I almost never use. I do it this way so, if there is an SEO issue it won’t take to long to recover….
Thanks for the list — especially for plugin test drive. I really need it to see which plugin that consume heavy resources.
Awesome list james. These are awesome plugins.
I’m hearing many good things about Growmap Antispam plugin. I think i should start using it.
Thanks for shairng. Have a great day !!
Hi Devesh,
I like GASP a lot, I would use it if you are getting a lot of spam from the bots.
This is a fairly decent list James. I’ve read a lot about GASP, but I’m not sure that I’m still convinced. I receive about 1300 spam comments a month and maybe have to fish out one a week. It’s not a big deal in my opinion and since WP automatically purges my spam, I couldn’t care less about the number of spam comments I get, so long as none of them go live. Akismet does the trick for me. Is there something that GASP does that I’m missing that makes it worthwhile?
Hi Dave,
GASP is designed, to work in a way that only stops spam bots and will stop humans from commenting on your site. But if you get a lot of hum spammers then those will get through.
Lately I have been getting a lot human spammers. Now I use both plugins. Now that I use both of them, I get one or two spams comments a week.
GASP was designed as for those dislike/hate CAPTCHA and Akismet and its an alternative to those. I can’t stand CAPTCHA and try not comment on sites that have it enabled. But I am ok with Akismet.
A plugin I have been searching for, but cannot find is a slide-in from the bottom right of the screen when the user scrolls to the bottom of the post.
Hi Victor,
I haven’t seen any plugins like you describe, but I will keep my eyes out for one and let you know if I find one…
Found it from another blogger. It’s called upPrev.
Thanks Victor. I saw the plugin in action on Iblogzone. It looks great. I will have to take a closer look at it…
Found it from another blogger. It’s called upPrev.
Interesting test drive plugin. I hadn’t come across that one before. If you turn Akismet back on make sure you check the spam folder and rescue real comments as many bloggers have been flagged by Akismet. Also make sure you don’t have it set to instantly delete comments in older posts. There are in instructions for how to turn off Akismet automatic comment deletion in my post of the same name linked from the regular URL field of this comment.
Nice list. I have not used any of theme.
@James: This helpful plug in called upPrev is great that help you reduce bounce rate effectively. Just vote on Blogengage.
Hi James,
I started using G.A.S.P a couple of weeks ago after reading DiTesco’s post about it. I have hardly any spam coming through at all now, brilliant plug-in.
I will have a look at test drive as I think that could be a very useful tool.
I notice you are using Wibiya, I had a few problems with that, it really slowed my site down.
Pete