What makes WordPress even better is the great variety of high-quality plugins that add all sorts of increased functionality to your website.  WordPress.org hosts a great database of thousands of plugins you can install with one click on your own site.  Most plugins are created for free by awesome coders helping make the world a better place.  They deserve serious thanks.  (So if you are a coder who has created a free WordPress plugin – THANKS!)

In my use of WordPress to create websites that connect my clients and their markets I’ve come across a few that are indispensable.  These plugins can be added to your site whether you are a professional developer or hobby blogger.  These plugins stand out to me because they:

• Are easy to add to the site
• Have customizable options
• Integrate seamlessly with the WP admin panel
• Are easy to add custom design to
• Are easy for clients to understand and use (when needed)

(see this article about what makes a good plugin in general)

So, while not an exhaustive list, here are some of my favorite plugins:

Akismet

Somehow the evil spam robots of the universe have even figured out how to leave spam comments on blogs.  This can get annoying if you are constantly being bombarded with comments that aren’t real.  Akismet is the fastest way to shut off the spam-flow.  After installation I’ve never seen a spam comment get into the system.  Nice!

Google Analytics

Okay, I honestly don’t use a plugin to add Google Analytics to my sites, I do it by adding code by hand.  The point is that you need Google Analytics on your site no matter how you get it there.  Analytics gives you an incredible amount of information about visitors to your site – where in the galaxy world they came from, what they were looking for, what they looked at while on your site, and much, much more.  If you aren’t getting in-depth reports on your website traffic you need to reconsider what you are even doing with your website.

Google XML Sitemaps

One key to ranking well in search engines is to make your website easy for them to crawl and index.  This plugin creates a sitemap for search engines to see what content you have on your site, then submits it to the search engines for you! How much easier can that get?

WP sIFR

The bane of website typography for designers is the fact that we’re limited to using a very small number of fonts for editable text.  sIFR is a solution that uses Flash-based fonts to dynamically replace certain text.  This increases the number of fonts you can use like, a hundred-fold.  Looks way better and stays indexable by search engines.  This plugin makes the process of adding this great functionality to your site painless.

Lightbox 2

Images opening in their own lightbox window on top of the current page is way cooler than them opening on their own blank page.  Now adding this feature is a three step process: add the Lightbox 2 plugin, add your images, tell them to open (individually or as a group) with Lightbox.

Sociable

One of the best ways to spread the word about your blog or website is to let other people do it for you.  Sociable automatically includes a widget at the bottom of your chosen posts and pages for people to share your site via social media.  You can choose from over 99 different media sites – add as many or as few as you’d like and make sharing easy on your readers.

Twitter for WP

Everyone from movie stars to soccer moms is using Twitter these days, and if you’re using it it should be included on your site.  Some Twitter widgets and plugins are big bulky things that look ugly and take up too much space.  Enter Twitter for WP – super clean, simple and small.  You can easily style your tweets to match the rest of your site and then everyone can know what you are doing!

WP List Cal

Lots of people want calendars on their site to list upcoming events, shows, or sales.  However, it can be frustrating for users to see a big blank monthly calendar staring them in the face, where they then must click on each day to see what’s happening.  WP List Cal just displays a beautiful list of your upcoming events, and adding new events is as easy as pie.  Which I think means its really easy.

WP Polls

Adding polls to your site is a great way to get visitors to start interacting with your site – and to find out what they think!  WP Polls makes adding polls to your site a snap. You can insert the polls into your blog posts, onto pages, or have the newest ones show up in the sidebar.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Keep visitors on your site longer by referring them to other posts that they might enjoy.  YARPP uses an algorithm developed by Martians that displays a list of recommended similar posts to the one your visitor is currently reading.  Giving readers more of what they want, and giving you more reads – everybody wins!

So, there you go – my favorite WordPress plugins.  Are you a WordPress user?  What’s your favorite WordPress plugin?

Or, read one of these:

1. WordPress Training
2. Uploading and Linking to a PDF in WordPress 2.8
3. 18 Beautiful Websites built with WordPress

You can get your own Gravatar really easily at www.Gravatar.com.  Just enter your email address, confirm it when you get the welcome email, and upload your photo!  It will then begin appearing when you enter your email address (usually required anyways) on a Gravatar-enabled website.

Here’s a video that does a good job explaining Gravatars:

Gravatars are easy to implement in WordPress.  Many new WordPress themes have them included, and you can definitely ask for them if you get a custom designed WordPress theme created for you.  Gravatars can be used to show the author of a blog post (especially helpful in you have multiple authors), display who left comments, show regular community members and more.

Designers and developers using WordPress can drop Gravatar functionality anywhere in their code with this line:

  <?php
   echo get_avatar( 'email@address.com', 80 );
   ?>

but there are also plenty of WordPress Plugins for implementing Gravatars in WordPress.  Don’t use WordPress?  Don’t worry – you can get Gravatar code and plugins for a range of other CMS platforms.

I implemented Gravatars in a variety of ways on the Wenatchee Valley Fitness Blog:

And here are some other examples of Gravatars being used nicely:

Most people just use profile pictures for their avatars, but here are some examples of a few really cool Gravatar images:

Need a WordPress blog to connect with your current and potential customers?  I can help!  See examples here or get in contact with me to get started!

Or, read one of these:

1. 10 Excellent WordPress Plugins to Make Your Site Better
2. 18 Beautiful Websites built with WordPress