Recommended WordPress Plugins

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of WordPress plugins available today. These plugins can add all sorts of features to your blog – pretty much anything you can imagine. Finding the perfect plugins for your blog can be tough, and a time consuming process. For every custom blog setup that I perform, I install and configure this list of plugins.

GL3 Media’s Recommended WordPress Plugins

  • Akismet – The best anti-spam WordPress plugin available. Akismet does a fantastic job and catching comment spam.
  • Broken Link Checker – After months or years of blogging, some links can go cold. Use this plugin to automatically check for broken links.
  • WordPress Database Backup – It’s absolutely critical to backup your WordPress database on a regular basis. WP-Database Backup makes this an automatic process, so you don’t have to spend time backing up manually.
  • Subscribe to Comments – This plugin adds a little checkbox after your comments section, allowing visitors to receive an email update every time someone leaves a new comment.
  • WordPress Popular Posts – Lists your most visited posts in your sidebar, so your visitors can access them quickly and easily.
  • W3 Total Cache – WordPress can use a lot of server resources “out of the box.” Using an advanced caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache can drastically reduce server load, and improve the performance of your site.
  • Google XML Sitemaps – Automatically creates a sitemap for Google, to help it crawl all the pages of your site. It’s automatically updated every time you create a new post as well – no maintenance required.
  • Gravity Forms – *The* only way to create forms on your WordPress site. It takes what used to be a dreaded chore, and makes it the simplest of tasks. If you use more than a single form, then you need to have Gravity Forms.  Worth every penny.  I’m a Gravity Forms developer, which means every site I create gets Gravity Forms at no extra cost.  How cool is that?
  • WP-Optimize – WordPress databases need maintenance just like anything else. This plugin handles it for you easily, so you don’t need to get your hands dirty.

A few popular WordPress plugins that I don’t install, and why: