5 Great WordPress Plugins

Having recently made the switch from BlogEngine.NET blogging software to WordPress I’ve been discovering a lot really great plugins for use with WordPress.  I’ve concentrated on “free” Plugins which you do not need to either register or pay for, but some of them do have paid-for versions if you want even more functionality.

1. All In One SEO Pack : A must have for anybody thinking of taking Search Engine Optimisation seriously. Wait. Doesn’t everyone take SEO seriously?
2. Simple 301 Redirects : OK. So you’ve updated an existing site and all the pages that you used to have don’t exist anymore, so search engines kind of lose the plot a bit and think there is something wrong with your site. They might stop indexing your site as often or as deeply as they used to because the pages they thought were there aren’t anymore.  Likewise with the bookmarks that people save to your site in their browser software, they won’t work anymore.  Simple 301 Redirects allows you to tell search engines and browsers where a page has ‘moved’ to, or at least, what you replaced it with.  It might involve building a list of alternative URLs, but at least then Search engines and browsers will be automatically redirected to your new content if they try looking at your old content.
3. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam : If you have a popular WordPress blog then chances are you will get a lot of comments on your content, and the chances are that you’ll get a lot of spam comments also. If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s my time being wasted filtering out spam. So this anti-spam plugin does the business, filtering out automated comment ‘bots’ by making people who want to comment type in a ‘captcha‘ code to verify they are human.  I’m going to be road-testing a different plugin that filters automated commenting which may be better, but for now, I’m happy with this tried and tested plugin.
4. Grunion Contact Form : It’s a great contact form. What more do you need to know??
5. WP Resonder : Disclosure? I’ve not used this ‘in anger’ yet.  But I’ve been doing some behind-the-scenes testing for WhizzyDigital purposes, and this looks like a great e-mail newsletter plugin that I’m going to use once I get the time. Give it a try, let me know what you think!

I’m looking at a few other plugins, but the ones above are the only ones I’ve installed and kept installed due to their great functionality and just basic necessity.

If you have any favourite plugins then let me know below!