Andrea Cima Serniotti - A brilliant blog about web design and development

You are in this section: Blog

I’ve been using Wordpress for a few years in very different projects. Madeincima, CSSGlance, Stock2Clear, Edelman, Arekibo Blog are all powered by this excellent publishing system.

Born as freely distributed, standards-compliant and easy-to-use blog platform, Wordpress has soon become something more. Matt Mullenweg, its creator, and the extensive Wordpress community have kept enhancing it, developing plugins, testing new features and offering support to both developers and users.

Other than a simple blog platform, Wordpress can now be considered as a real CMS, thank to its latest features and some cool plugins. This article shows a list of 12 plugins for Wordpress that I’ve either used or tested throughout my projects and that you cannot miss!

Before installing any of the following plugins please make sure that you double-check on the specific plugin site (or on the Wordpress site) if they are compatible with the Wordpress version you’re using. Some of them will work with the latest version of Wordpress even if not specified, but make sure that you test them thoroughly before adopting them on your site.

1. Atropos

Atropos plugin lets you set an expiration date for your posts. This is done in a new Advanced Options section of the post edit page. Pick your month and put in the date and year and your post will automatically be deleted or moved to draft, depending on your settings, at the end of that day. I’ve used this plugin in Stock2Clear to set an expiration date on product offers.

2. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker plugin monitors every link in your posts and pages, detects those that do not work and allows you to quickly edit or remove them. You can even schedule link checking and apply a class to broken links. It will save you loads of time and improve your website’s quality and accessibility. I’ve installed this plugin in most of my Wordpress sites.

3. Improved Include Page

Improved Include Page plugin provides an include_page() function that allows you to include the content of a page into a template. A shortcode is also available to include the same page into a post or another page. You can easily use it to create editable content areas on the homepage or inside pages. Each of these areas will be a page in your admin view. For instance, I’m using this plugin on Edelman to manage the Welcome text on the homepage. This bit of content is actually a page in the admin view, which is included in the homepage template using this plugin.

4. WP-Syntax

WP-Syntax plugin provides clean syntax highlighting using GeSHi, supporting a wide range of popular languages such as HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, JavaScript, Ruby, XML, etc. It supports highlighting with or without line numbers and maintains formatting while copying snippets of code from the browser. That’s very handy for all those bloggers that want to show code samples to their users in a nice and tidy way. I’ve been using this plugin throughout this website. Take a peek at the Pure CSS Tooltip article to see it in action!

5. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin creates a highly customizable sitemap on a Wordpress page. It offers support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more. Edelman’s sitemap was built using this plugin.

6. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack plugin automatically optimizes your titles for search engines, generating also META tags and descriptions. You always have the ability to override any title, META description or keywords if you want to. I’ve been using this plugin in different projects to allow my clients to manage META descriptions and keywords themselves, setting them straight away from the post edit page.

7. Secure Form Mailer

Secure Form Mailer plugin was designed to be easy to use, while still being extremely flexible. If you just want a simple contact form, you can set one up with just a few clicks. For those who need something a bit more advanced, you can highly customize the plugin to fit your needs. ReCaptcha support is now available. I used this plugin to manage the submission form on CSSGlance.

8. Cforms II

Cforms II plugin is a powerful and feature rich form plugin. This plugin is a bit more difficult to customize but way more powerful than Secure Form Mailer. I’ve used it on Stock2Clear to generate the “Get in touch with the supplier” form on the product pages. You can even use it to replace the default “Leave a comment” form.

9. PhotoXhibit

PhotoXhibit plugin uses photos from your Flickr, Picasa, and/or SmugMug accounts as well as allows you to upload and build albums to help you create impressive Photo Galleries on your website. Its author, Benjamin Sterling, is currently developing a new version for WordPress 2.7+. I thoroughly tested it but never used it on a live site.

10. Sociable

With a simple interface Sociable plugin offers the most important articles sharing services. Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites. I’ve used this plugin on the Arekibo Blog at the end of each post.

11. Twitter For Wordpress

Twitter for WordPress plugin displays yours latest tweets in your WordPress blog. You can choose the number of tweets and the format. You can see a live sample on the Arekibo Blog.

12. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

This plugin allows you to automatically upgrade your Wordpress installation to the latest one provided by Wordpress.org, using the 5 steps described in the Wordpress upgrade instructions. It also creates backups of the DB and site folders. I’ve been using it anytime I need to upgrade a Wordpress installation.