Recommended WordPress Plugins & Widgets
Sitemaps
Google Sitemap – Creates a fully-compliant sitemap for search engines.
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – This plugin creates a sitemap for your WordPress powered site. This is not just another XML sitemap plugin, but rather a true sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. Some of its features include: 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.
Backup and Archiving
XCloner – Backup and Restore – XCloner is a Backup and Restore component designed for PHP/Mysql websites, it can work as a native plugin for WordPress and Joomla!. XCloner design was specifically created to Generate custom backups of any LAMP website through custom admin inputs, and to be able to Restore the clone on any other location with the help of the automatic Restore script we provide, independent from the main package! XCloner Backup tool uses Open Source standards like TAR and Mysql formats so you can rest assured your backups can be restored in a variety of ways, giving you more flexibility and full control.
Social Media
Social Media Widget – The Social Media Widget is a simple sidebar widget that allows users to input their social media website profile URLs and other subscription options to show an icon on the sidebar to that social media site and more that open up in a separate browser window.
Skype Online Status – Add multiple, highly customizable and accessible Skype buttons to post/page content (quick-tags), sidebar (unlimited number of widgets) or anywhere else (template code).
Facebook Fan Box – Displays a Facebook Fan Box
Advertising
Max Banner Ads – Control and arrange your Advertising and Referral blocks on your WordPress blog. With Widget and inline post support, integration with all major ad networks.
Advertising Manager – Easily add and rotate banners in your wordpress blog anywhere you like without editing any themes or touching any codes.
Photo Galleries
NextGEN Gallery – Create slideshows, galleries and single elements with Nextgen Gallery.
GRAND Flash Album Gallery – provides a comprehensive interface for managing photos and images through a set of admin pages, and it displays photos in a way that makes your web site look very professional. There are many skins to choose from on the plugin homepage.
Analytics
Ultimate Google Analytics – Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.
Google Analyticator – Enable Google Analytics on your blog. An alternate to Ultimate Google Analytics.
Navigation
Simple Sidebar Navigation – Easy way to create custom navigation in sidebars or other pre-defined areas. Conditional tags are included to specify pages where widgets appear. Supports horizontal/top navigation, hierarchical navigation including dropdown menus like Suckerfish.
Simple Section Navigation Widget – Adds a widget for section (or top level page) based navigation… essential for CMS implementations! The title of the widget is the top level page within the current page hierarchy. Shows all page siblings (except on the top level page), all parents and grandparents (and higher), the siblings of all parents and grandparents (up to top level page), and any immediate children of the current page. Can also be called by a function inside template files. May exclude any pages or sections. Uses standard WordPress navigation classes for easy styling.
Search Engine Optimization
Platinum SEO Pack – Complete SEO solution for your WordPress blog. This plugin allows you to edit your meta data as you create of edit a post or page.
All in One SEO Pack – Complete SEO solution for your WordPress blog. This plugin allows you to edit your meta data as you create of edit a post or page. An Alternate to Platinum SEO Pack.
Contact Forms
Custom Contact Forms – Customize every aspect of your forms without any knowledge of CSS: borders, padding, sizes, colors. Ton’s of great features. Required fields, captchas, tooltip popovers, unlimited fields/forms/form styles, use a custom thank you page or built-in popover with a custom success message set for each form.
Fast Secure Contact Form – Fast Secure Contact Form for WordPress. The contact form lets your visitors send you a quick E-mail message. Blocks all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. Includes a CAPTCHA and Akismet support. Does not require JavaScript.
Contact Form 8 – A fork of Contact Form 7 (by takayukister), Contact Form 8 improves things like checkboxes (labels!). “Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.” Contact Form 7 and Contact Form 8 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Misc.
Google Translator – Translate your blog from sidebar instantly
Blog Introduction – Shows an introduction before posts without messing your theme files.
WP-Table Reloaded – This plugin allows you to create and easily manage tables in the admin-area of WordPress. A comfortable backend allows an easy manipulation of table data. You can then include the tables into your posts, on your pages or in text widgets by using a shortcode or a template tag function. Tables can be imported and exported from/to CSV, XML and HTML.
