WordPress 2.8 is out now. It is my favourite blogging platform and my blog runs on it. It has more than 13 million users in total and the self-hosted WordPress.org has been downloaded more than 5 million times. See a guide on how to install WordPress.
WordPress plugins are a big part of the community. Over the years I have used many of the best WordPress plugins. WordPress plugins help you make a better blog and get more reader interaction. There are in total 4,245 plugins and these have been downloaded 22,152,788 times.
Best WordPress plugins
This post is a tribute to the top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever (Akismet is not included as it comes with the default installation). Each of these 18 has been downloaded a minimum of 200,000 times.
- All in One SEO Pack – Automatically optimizes your blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization) – Downloads 1,603,368
- Google XML Sitemaps – Create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your blog – Downloads 954,459
- NextGEN Gallery – A full integrated Image Gallery WordPress plugin with a Flash slideshow option – Downloads 715,819
- WP.com Stats – You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WP.com’s stat system – Downloads 712,71
- WP Super Cache – A very fast caching engine that produces static html files – Downloads 492,637
- Contact Form 7 – Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible – Downloads 393,916
- Automatic upgrade – Allows a user to automatically upgrade the installation to the latest one – Downloads 288,600
- Sociable – Automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites to your posts, pages and RSS feed - Downloads 284,117
- Viper’s Video Quicktags – Allows easy and XHTML valid posting of videos from various websites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, and more – Downloads 254,807
- Simple Tags – The successor of Simple Tagging Plugin and is THE perfect tool to perfectly manage your WP tags – Downloads 254,353
- WP-DB-Backup – On-demand backup of your database – Downloads 250,795
- Google Analytics – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics – Downloads 239,837
- Google Analyticator – Same as the one above, enables Google Analytics tracking - Downloads 229,970
- Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button – Helps readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and over 100 more – Downloads 226,056
- WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your blog. You can also easily add a poll into your blog post / page – Downloads 222,196
- Sidebar Widgets – Adds “Sidebar Widgets” panel under Presentation menu – Downloads 221,024
- podPress – A dream WordPress plugin for podcasters – Downloads 207,491
- WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation your blog – Downloads 204,005
Wisdom of the crowds?
“Automatic upgrade” and “Sidebar Widgets” are the classics which are no longer needed as they are a part of software now.
From the top 18 WordPress plugins I currently only use Google XML Sitemaps, WP Super Cache and Contact Form 7 on my blog. All in one SEO Pack and Google Analytics are also very important but my Thesis theme has these functions built-in.
What do you think about the wisdom of the crowds in case of WordPress plugins? Are these the best plugins? Do you still use any of them?
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Great list and very helpful..
Thogh there are few plugins which I think every wordpress blog should have
Max blogpress ping optimizer
SEO friendly image wordpress plugin
feedburner feedsmith
Though the first one according to me is very essential for any wordpress blog. Because wordpress by default ping all the ping services when you update or edit a post.
Just my 2 cents to a great post of yours
Thanks for the info! I actually use at least 12 of those on my blog.
Quick Q though — when a new plugin upgrade is available, mine never upgrades automatically. I have to download the new v. and then upload it. What do you think is the issue?
One of my favourite plugins that I use is called Link Juice — it scans and lets you know if you have an broken links, where they are and automatically lets you edit them.
@Harsh Agrawal – Agree. Ping optimizer and Feedburner Feedsmith I use on this blog as well. See the list of all the plugins I use.
@Sasha – Maybe you’re not on WordPress 2.7? It’s only from that release that WordPress started automatic updates of the plugins if I remember correctly. It lets you upgrade plugins with one click from inside the WordPress interface, no need for uploading files to your server etc as before.
@Lisa Irby – Definitely! Analytics code you can put directly into your footer via Thesis interface and Thesis also features all the META tags options in-built.
Great list, Marko! I use most of these. But as you said, I could really disable some now because I’m using Thesis.
Wow great stuff!
I’ve installed both Wordpress.com Stats and Statpress Reloaded. Personally, I prefer the latter. To me, it gives more detailed information.
Anyway, Marko, thanks once again for the useful information! Your blog rocks!
I appreciate you,
MN
Thanks for all the comments, I am glad you liked the article.
@John Hoff – Yeah I have been trying to limit the number of plugins I use as well. That’s why I have recently coded stuff like Tweet this and Seth Godin etc instead of using the pluigns. See details on how I coded these.
@Mr. I – That may be the reason it is not that popular as well. Usability is a main thing many new bloggers look at. I have experienced that technical level of new bloggers is not very high so your plugin must be as easy as possible to use to get some buzz.
Hi Marko. I’d say “Subscribe to Comments” is probably up there with one of the most downloaded plugins out there.
Two plugins which I think no one should really bother with are the Feedsmith and Google Analytics plugins. These can be set up relatively easy (as easy as installing the plugins and pasting in code) and in the end will cause your site to load slower (more plugins to load) and cause possible security leaks.
The newest plugin I’ve installed is the Event Viewer plugin. It shows every event that happens in your WordPress. Great for keeping an eye out for hackers.
Great list, wasn’t aware of quite a few of these. The database and Poll plugins in particular. The Contact Form is something I’m looking at right now as well.
Thanks for the extra guidance bud, love your information you provide.
In my opinion, the wisdom of crowd fails as far as SEO goes. All in One SEO Pack is over-hyped and nothing else. There is a small underdog in WordPress Plugins Directory called HeadSpace2 that has all its functionality and lot more. It lets you add 10+ Tracking Scripts for traffic tracking (Google Analytics, Statcounter, Mint and even some unheard ones are supported). It does everything that All in One SEO Pack does + Google Analyticator. It lets setting up different themes on post/page basis, can execute javascript when a specific page loads and so on(lots of features!)
I guess the only let-down is its interface, its not easy to use and you have to customize it a bit in starting.
I love add to any and WP stats!
This is great stuff. Didn’t know about the SEO pluging. Will start using it today and see how it goes as it’s really hard to get “Google juice” when you have just opened your blog, and I need all the help I can get.
I use quite a few of those plugins on my blogs actually, and am in the same boat as you when it came to All in on SEO pack. Thesis has got my back.
Google Analyticator worked great on my blog for the first couple of weeks. Now i find it unreliable as it is telling me I have had less visitors than I have had based on the emails about my new posts and people I know have read them.
I use Google XML Sitemaps and have been thinking of installing all in one SEO.
Good post!
Lou
Thanks for the list of plug ins. I use some of them as standard on my blogs and some I have looked at and not explored so will do. I have never fully exploited the use of NextGen.
Google XML Sitemaps is of course a must have. Have bookmarked this site and will be back again to explore some more.
Kieran
@kdaly100
I almost have all the plug-ins you mentioned on the post even before I read this post
I also want to add Disable Revisions and Disable email notifications (disable the second email after you approve a comment)
There are literally other useful plug-ins out there too but unfortunately we can’t install them all (performance issue)
very cool thnx
Hey,
Thanks for the great list. I have installed few of the plugins for my blog. In those plugins, Especially I am very much impressed with Contact Form 7 Plugin. It’s pretty cool and working great.
Thanks
Sankar
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned anything about Akismet
That’s a must-have plugin for every blog!
Curious as to why folks choose Sociable and Add to Any over ShareThis. Actually, Sociable is different from the other two in that it doesn’t list all of them — just adds the buttons. I think Add to Any and ShareThis are better because they have a nice clean interface that pops up.
Nope, I’m using WP 2.7.1 :-/
I just don’t know why it doesn’t upgrade automatically like everyone else’s.
I just started using WordPress and I’m blown away by the functionality. I had been browsing through the plug-ins and have already downloaded some of these in the list.
I appreciate the help here in weeding through the large number of available plug-ins. There are so many its hard to decide which ones to try. I’ll start with these and see how they work. Thanks.
Hmm, I should call them about that. I use GoDaddy at the moment.
@Sasha – It may have to do with your web host. I’ve heard of others in the WP support forums having a similar issue and I seem to recall for one person his problem was the way his web hosting company had their software configured. WP Upgrade didn’t like it so much.
GD should be fine. I know bloggers who use them and it works with no problems. Must be something else. Sorry.
hmm, I’ll call GoDaddy and see if they know about it. Does WordPress have tech support? Like a phone number? Not a forum, lol.
I use a number of those. I also added a great one yesterday: WP-Print. It adds a “Print This” link at the top of your posts. The link generates a print-ready version thanks to a simplified CSS file that strips out the header, footer, sidebar and fancy styling. I also like the Tweetmeme “Tweet This” plugin.
No tech support over the phone, that would be cool though. I seem to recall some website offering that though (a service fee for helping you with WordPress).
Sorry for the second message but just thought of it while hitting “send”.
It could be a plugin you have installed which is causing the issue. Try first deactivating all your plugins and then doing the auto upgrade.
WordPress also suggests you change your theme back to the default theme with no plugins activated (puts WP back in its original state) for the upgrade, though that’s not typically needed.
@Sasha, the upgrade issue for specific web hosts is more for WP itself than the plugins. Only one type of GoDaddy configuratio is on the list http://codex.wordpress.org/Core_Update_Host_Compatibility.
The plugin upgrade problem that you are describing is usually a file permission issue. It can also occur if you are on a Windows web server instead of a linux server
@Meryl K. Evans: I used to love Add To Any but loading the widget takes a considerable amount of time!
@Bean — thanks for the info. I really appreciate it. Do you know how to fix the file permission issue? GoDaddy is Windows isn’t it?
With GD you have the choice of Windows or Linux hosting. For WordPress, you should use Linux. If you’re on Windows, they can probably assist you in transferring your hosting to Linux.
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