Wordpress Must Haves

[stender]

Do you have a list of things you use or do on all your Wordpress sites?
e.g. Always install Akismet, All in one seo, etc... certain security things you do?, plugins you always use?

 

[dta]

good idea for a thread - i'll start it off...

highly recommend WP Socializer for all your social bookmarking buttons on posts, etc

 

[Blossom]

Yep...

1. Change the permalinks
2. Change RSS feed settings to show a 'summary' rather than whole post
3. Change the date to a numerical format
4. Delete Hello Dolly and all the other respawning crap
5. Add a PHP date and copyright line to the footer
6. Add a tag cloud to the sidebar
7. Remove archives or put them in a drop down menu
8. Remove 'Edit' links from the admin view of pages
9. Remove 'Meta' links from the sidebar

Plugins:

All in One SEO Pack
Dofollow [if Adsense site]
KeywordLuv [if Adsense site]
CommentLuv
Top Contributors
Broken Link Checker
Link Juice Keeper
Fast Secure Contact Form [used to use Contact Form 7 but got sick of idiots resubmitting junk repeatedly]
Newsletter [for Adsense sites]
Better WordPress Minify
Easy Adsense
Efficient Related Posts
Google XML Sitemaps
Search Meter
Spam Free WordPress
WP Super Cache [love/hate relationship with this one so I don't always use it]
Breadcrumb NavXT
Block Bad Queries
BulletProof Security
Maintenance Mode
MindValley Super Page Mash
TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner
Ultimate Security Checker
WordPress Database Backup

I've left out a few for security reasons, and I don't install all the above on all sites

 

[fish]

Am a recent convert to Yoast WP SEO in place of allinoneseo

for adsense et al - ad-injection
mailchimp for user sign ups
nrelate for 'similar articles/posts' suggestion
share and follow for social media sharing
tinymce-advanced for post editing options
wordpress colourful tag cloud

also use several of those that blossom does

 

[boxfish]

No Category Base - get rid of /category/ before your categories from URL
Google Analyticator - Show traffic on WP dashboard
WordTwit - Automatically post each post to twitter (by far the easiest to set up then zero ongoing maintenance)

 

[stender]

Thanks all Keep them coming, Could be a good thread for everyone.
I'll have to browse them all!. I've just stuck the facebbok like plugin in the sidebar but may take off and have just the like button on each page. Looking for a decent newsletter plugin and anything funky.

 

[stender]

Blossom, Is there a reason for
3. Change the date to a numerical format?

 

[Blossom]

Looking for a decent newsletter plugin

Newsletter is great if it's for a lowish number of subscribers (I think 500 is the limit, not sure if there's a premium version available).

Blossom, Is there a reason for
3. Change the date to a numerical format?

I noticed that Google Webmaster Tools tends to see months of the year as some of the top keywords for your WordPress site (just based on frequency), and that eliminates the problem.

 

[dta]

regarding numerical date - i've always prefered the non numeric version as having lived in the states for a number of years, I've experienced first hand the numeric date issue... is that month first or second???

 

[Blossom]

regarding numerical date - i've always prefered the non numeric version as having lived in the states for a number of years, I've experienced first hand the numeric date issue... is that month first or second???

It's one of those unfortunate decisions - visitors vs. SEO - that you just have to make a call on. For any dates after the 12th of the month you can see it pretty easily.

 

[stender]

I've always set it as alpha as i find it more aesthetically pleasing, but seo comes first! so will start chaniging.

 

[boxfish]

good idea for a thread - i'll start it off...

highly recommend WP Socializer for all your social bookmarking buttons on posts, etc

Thanks for that. Been trying this out and it's the best social plugin I've used on WP

 

[namdas]

I've been using Drupal for years but with so many better themes and designers for Wordpress I'm thinking of switching. What would people recommend for handling feeds etc in Wordpress (ie updating prices, and displaying and formatting data - ideally with the flexibility to make them unique in one way or another) I'm not really looking to dump 1,000 products into 1,000 posts on my homepage, but something a little more nuanced. Any ideas?

 

[viceroy]

I use these among others:
Easy Privacy Policy (but remove the spam links)
Meta Tag Manager

 

[stender]

Has anyone used a link cloaking plugin for affiliate links? i've previously done redirects in htaccess but wonder if any plugins are quicker?

 

[viceroy]

Try 'redirection' seems like a popular choice...

 

[rodeboy]

Cloaking links

Pretty Link Lite works fine for me ....

 

[Admin]

I use the "Clean Up" plugin which gets rid of crap left in the database if you have been messing around with importing affiliate datafeeds, keeps things in good order.

Another tip, get all your fav plugins into a Windows folder and upload them via FTP in one hit to your PlugIns folder on the web server, then just update the ones that need updating - this will save you loads of time searching and adding each one in turn from within WP Admin.

Admin

 

[djbw]

Has anyone used a link cloaking plugin for affiliate links? i've previously done redirects in htaccess but wonder if any plugins are quicker?

I use this:
Link cloaking plugin for Wordpress
and it seems to do the job just fine for my purposes.

 

[viceroy]

Found a pretty good/ simple alternative to wp socializer this afternoon >
slick social buttons.