How did I selected?
I have selected these plugins on some basic factors which are especially compatible for any type of people running WordPress.
- Speed
- Accuracy
- Reliability
- Server Load
- Admin Interface
While examining all these plugins that I am going to mention below, each plugin loads very fast, has very user friendly interface for the admins to choose settings related to the plugin, It takes only little load for the server and can forget the headache of server overload. These plugins have been tested in 2 of my sites having the latest WordPress which contains 17,000 articles and with a limited server resources configured to those sites.
WordPress Plugins 2013…
What are you waiting for? Here are those 8 Plugins that you can use for your needs.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Let’s check out some options in this plugin.
- Dashboard
There are 3 useful option that you can fill in here are Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, Alexa Verification ID. So by using this plugin, you don’t need to find any other plugin that allows you to enter these option or even don’t have to put these meta tags by yourself using the code editor. - Titles & Metas
Inside “General” tab, here the useful options are under the Sitewide meta settings, where you can enable “Noindex subpages of archives” and under Cleanup the <head>, you can tick these options “Hide RSD Links”, “Hide WLW Manifest Links”, “Hide Shortlink for posts”.
Inside “Home” tab, you have to fill in all the details and if you want your Google+ profile to be embedded in your posts, then select your name inside “Author highlighting” dropdown and enter your Google+ Publisher Page (Google+ page, if you have).
Inside “Post Types” tab, here only thing which you would like to disable noindex option is under Media, where you don’t actually need to index images or files dedicated pages, like those attachment URL(s). I feel it stupid because those posts appear in my search results so if you want, you can tick “noindex, follow” in the Media section only!
Other tabs can be left with default options. - Social
Inside Social, you can enter your Facebook & Twitter details. If you want, you can put a default image also if an image in the post isn’t available. Actually those images are shown when you share a post to Facebook or other social networks. - XML Sitemaps
Very neat feature! Because, it actually took less load in my server to generate sitemaps, seriously! I have another blog which contains over 17,000 posts and believe it or not, I use shared hosting! and I never got a suspended warning from them! I use this plugin to keep the load low for sitemap generation. Yes, I know there are other plugins (even I used many) but this plugin is just right!
So inside this, enable the sitemap, Exclude Media (attachment), Tags (post_tag), Format (post_format) by ticking them and set Entries per page to 100 (If your on shared hosting environment). - Permalinks
Well inside this, only thing I would like to choose is Redirect attachment URL’s to parent post URL to be ticked. - Internal Links
This option isn’t necessary. If your theme doesn’t have breadcrumbs then you can enable it if you want. - RSS
Another neat feature in which you can customize the RSS feeds. You may want to check it out and configure it accordingly.
W3 Total Cache
SEO Smart Links +
Another incredible lightweight plugin that will link all the texts inside a particular post or page with the posts that matches. Its very handy because you don’t need to link a specific post or page since it does automatically. There are a lot of options inside the plugin that you can set according to your needs.
Features :
- SEO Smart Links + can automatically link keywords and phrases in your site.
- SEO Smart Links + is compatible with bbPress plugin (Topics, Topic Tags)
- SEO Smart Links + allows you to set up your own keywords and set of matching URLs.
- SEO Smart Links + allows you to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window.
Pages: 1, 2
HTML5 Speech Search
Jetpack by WordPress.com
- Publicize
It enables you to automatically share your post to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, tumblr & Yahoo. - Notifications
The same notifications toolbar from WordPress.com in which you can track the notifications of your blog hosted at WordPress.com - WordPress.com Stats
Wallah, the best plugin that you can have to track the number of page views & visitors to your blog in which you can see it from your dashboard itself with a nice graph attached to it. It does have detailed information too with exact number of page views of each posts. - Jetpack Comments
Its basically an alternative comment system that enables users to login via WordPress, Facebook, Twitter when commenting on a particular post. Its a great alternative for Disqus. - Subscriptions
This is a great alternative for Feedburner Email Subscription as each new post will be sent to the subscribers via WordPress.com - Post by Email
If you are a traveler or if you cannot access your blog’s dashboard every time to make a post then this is a great choice. It will generate a special email id for you to sent and whenever you want to post something to your blog then you just email to the email id that your provided with Subject as your Blog post’s title & message as your content. - Carousel
Its just like the NextGen gallery plugin, It allows to to put up a slideshow for the default WP gallery that you add. - Sharing
It enables you to add a lightweight share icons for your post without depending on other plugins or custom codes. It has a lot of option to choose from and its like your wordpress widgets, as you can drag and drop to an area to activate them. Developer? Of course you can use custom stylesheet to personalize. - Spelling & Grammar
Of course, All the WordPress users use this and its already enabled. Title itself says it all. - VaultPress
Well, if you don’t have a backup solution then you can choose VaultPress by Automattic as they are the best while choosing a backup solution. Their plans starts from 15$/month for each WordPress site you have. You can get to know about their features too if your interested! - Gravatar Hovercards
While moving your mouse to the pictures of users in the comments and if those people have a profile in Gravatar then it will show more info about that particular person. Its very neat solution for bloggers who use the default wordpress comment system. - Contact Form
I love it! Its sleek, fast, matches any themes and more over, its so fast! I had been using another contact form plugin but after checking out this option in Jetpack, Its superb! Demo? See my contact form! - Tiled Galleries
Allows you to add a beautiful layout for all/selected pictures in a way as you don’t have to use any external graphics editors. Its amazingly fast, beautiful and loading of images are improved since its hosted in WordPress.com CDN service (Its free!) - WP.me Shortlinks
Haven’t you got your own personal short link domain hosted just for your blog or business (like mine – tpk.co.in) or don’t like bit.ly like URLs? Then here its for you as you can use their free wp.me short-links which is quite short. After you activate, in every post you can see “Get Shortlink” icon in it to get yours! - Shortcode Embeds
No need to open up the editor and paste the default embed codes from sites, as wordpress allows you to use a simple shortcode to embed your content. With just one simple code & the URL of the content, you can embed it in your posts!
Available shortcodes are: archives, audio, blip.tv, dailymotion, flickr, scribd, slideshare, soundcloud, vimeo, youtube, polldaddy, and wpvideo (VideoPress) - Mobile Theme
I happen to use this feature, and I am quite impressed with this service. It makes your own Mobile theme for free and yes its fast. Only disadvantage is that the pages you have with custom templates wouldn’t work & you cannot customize further the CSS of it. - Beautiful Math
Helps you to write some complex mathematics equations. You can read more about it by referring their documentation. - Extra Sidebar Widgets
It gives you the options to have RSS box, Facebook Like Box, Twitter box & Image Widget embedded on any of your sidebars on your theme. - Infinite Scroll
Its a handy option that turns your blog page into a scrolling one. Similar method is used in popular site like Mashable as the older entries are shown when you scroll down. Just like Facebook & Twitter! - Photon
Very good service in which it uploads your images on your blog as well as the external links that you have linked inside your posts to be served from WordPress.com CDN & its FREE! It helped me save huge bandwidth bills and made my sites faster too! Only problem I have experienced is that, it takes some time to upload to their servers for the first time and until its uploaded, you would get a broken image. - Enhanced Distribution
It pings various search engines to index the new post that you make every time automatically without using any of your server’s load in real-time. - Mobile Push Notifications
When a new comment is posted on your blog, then WordPress will send a push notification to your iOS device in almost real-time. You need to have WordPress for iOS app installed & your blog added to that app. The App is free and its there in the Apple Store. - JSON API
Using this, the connection to your blog will be secure and allows any application (that you specify) to use your blog in many different ways.
P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)
Its a nice plugin that gives you full details about the plugins load time in a beautiful graph. After you have scanned, you can see which plugins take lots of time and can be deactivated or re-install accordingly. The scan takes about 1-2 minutes. This plugin was made by Godaddy.
Ad Injection
Yeah, the best advertisement plugin that I have ever used for putting ads in between any wordpress posts or pages or both! I have heard some negative reviews about this plugin, but trust me! once if you have setup this plugin properly, it works like charm! and it even works when your using it with W3 Total Cache! This plugin doesn’t take any server load once you have the cache plugin activated. There are various settings to make use of and definitely I recommend this plugin to everyone! Demo? This blog uses it and you can see an ad above somewhere 😉