The 5 Most Important Wordpress Plugins of 2009
Anyone who uses Wordpress knows there are plugins for almost anything and, in many cases, multiple plugins to do the same thing. These plugins, often created to help with a specific task on a specific site, are all good in their own right, however few of them are usable for anyone outside of the site for which they were created or in their tiny niche. When we look at all Wordpress sites as a whole there are only a handful of plugins that can be usable on nearly every site out there. These plugins, often involving security, SEO, or other similar functions are suitable for everything from the simplest blog to the most complex Wordpress site and in many cases could even qualify for inclusion into the core product. They are stable, well supported, and offer functions that are fundamental to a solid installation of any website. So which plugins are good enough to make the list this year? Here are 5 I don’t think any site should go without:
- Akismet
The one plugin that is now included with a base install of Wordpress, Akismet is the ultimate in Wordpress Spam protection. It creates a “Spam” box in your Wordpress comments and has the unmatched distinction of being the only spam blocker in any app I use to not miss a bad comment. - WP Security Scan
Every new Wordpress installation has it’s problems. Whether it’s weak passwords, file permission problems, or some other glitch it doesn’t take much for an attacker to exploit an insecure Wordpress installation. WP Security Scan will find the most pressing problems and offers instructions and scripts for repairing them before they bring down your site. - Login LockDown
Another security plugin, login lockdown prevents brute-force attacks on your Wordpress administration pages by locking any account after a specified number of bad login attempts. After using Wordpress MU in a public University I can tell you first hand that Login Lockdown not only improves the security of your site, but can also help reduce server load by reducing the number of allowed bad login attempts. - Header and Footer
Header and Footer is a handy little plugin allowing for inclusion of custom code in the header and footer of all your pages. Items such as Google Analytics code, Yahoo Site Explorer meta tags, and numerous others can be added, removed, and changed at ease with this simple little plugin. - Clean Options
I’ve added Clean Options to the list somewhat reluctantly as it may be a little much for some novice users. However it is an incredibly handy tool to have on any blog or site that has been out there for more than a little while. As other plugins are updated, added, or removed many of their options stay in place in your database. Do this enough times and it can start to impact the performance of your MySQL database. Clean Options fixes this by removing unused and obsolete options from the database allowing for a much more streamlined options table.
Of course these aren’t the only good plugins out there, and in fact putting this list together wasn’t as easy as I originally thought. A few of the plugins that didn’t make the cut include: All In One SEO Pack, Wordpress Mobile Pack, and Wordpress.com Stats among others. Have something else that I missed? Let me know so I can give it a try.
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Thank you very much for your positive opinion about header and footer! The author.