29 WordPress plugins I use and why they’re worth the memory for me

Posted: Sep 6, 2013 - Modified: Sep 9, 2013

One of the advantages of setting up WordPress on my own server is the ability to add plugins that make my blogging life easier. Each plugin takes a little bit of extra memory, but I think they’re worth it. Here are 31 of the plugins I use on my blog at http://sachachua.com . (If you’re curious about where I host, I use Linode at $30/month, although there are cheaper hosting options)

Organization

WordPress Editorial Calendar: Awesome way to see what I’ve got scheduled for when, and drag-and-drop interface for rescheduling posts
Redirection: Super-useful for setting up short URLs or dealing with broken links
Share a Draft: Excellent way to give people sneak previews
Show Menu Shortcode: More shortcuts for adding in-page navigation
Short Post URLs: Quick numeric URLs for easy sharing

Commenting

Akismet: spam filtering for comments
Better WordPress Recent Comments: paginated list of comments in my sidebar. I like quickly seeing new comments, so this is handy.

Security

Better WP SecurityBecause a compromised blog sucks.Wordfence SecuritySecurity, of course

Discovery

On This Day: Because I’ve got more than ten years of posts and it’s interesting to look back into the past
WordPress Popular Posts: Because data
Post-Plugin Library: Needed by the Similar Posts plugin
Similar Posts: Suggestions

Categories and tags

Term Management Tools: Rein in your categories and tags
Categorized: Gets rid of “Uncategorized” when I actually pick a category. Handy when I was reorganizing.
Display Posts Shortcode: Lets me easily list posts from a category or tag
WP Views: Flexible system for creating lists of things (paid plugin)

Images

Easy Add Thumbnail: Because I’d rather not set the featured image myself if I already have an image
NextGEN Gallery by Photocrati: Easy to add images to. Great for my sketchnotes.

Stats

FeedBurner FeedSmith: Because stats are helpful
Google Analytics for WordPress: Because stats are helpful

Other conveniences

Highlight Search Terms: Making life easier for searchers
Jetpack by WordPress.com: A behemoth of a plugin, but the subscriptions are easier for people
RSS Footer: Add links to my scraped content
WP-Polls: This makes it easy to ask quick questions, which I should do more of
Subscribers Text Counter: Social proof without dealing with visually-conflicting widgets
WP Missed Schedule: Helps guard against missed schedule posts. Still happens, though
A patched version of Auto Featured Image: I changed this to pick the largest image
Sacha Chua’s fixes: Little tweaks to make my blogging life easier, such as adding Share a Draft and Redirection to my post editing screen

Every so often, I go through my list and remove plugins I don’t use as much in order to reduce memory use and improve security. Still, with thousands of plugins available on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins, there are always more ways to make blogs better. (Come to think of it, I should probably add a SEO-focused plugin too. WordPress SEO by Yoast seems popular…) Hope this list of favourites helps!

Which WordPress plugins do you use?

You can view 3 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

3 comments

marcelwidmer

2013-12-14T14:24:27Z

Thanks for sharing your plugin list, Sacha. (And your invaluable collection of know how, here in your blog!)
Can you tell me, which plugin you're using for the "On this page" block showing the seven posts on a page!
Thanks for your great work!
Kind regards
Marcel

sachac

2013-12-16T01:56:33Z

You're welcome! "On this page" is actually a little bit of custom code I wrote myself:

<div class="on-this-page">
On this page:
<ul>
<?php while(have_posts()):the_post(); ?>
    <li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>" class="entry-summary-title"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; rewind_posts(); ?>
</ul></div>

marcelwidmer

2013-12-16T06:43:21Z

I love simple solutions - thanks a lot!