The Top 15 Plug-Ins I Use For WordPress

At heart… I am a super geek. I love technology, video games, marketing, and wordpress. When it comes to plugins my über geek sticks out like a sore thumb. I am always on the hunt trying to find the perfect plugin that takes the blog to another level.

So, through the years I have found some really neat plugins that will allow you to do some unique things with your blog. So, here you go…

The 15 Plugins That Run My WordPress Machine

Akismet
This is a standard plugin that comes installed with all WordPress installations. It is a plugin that helps control spam and it does it really well.

Digital Access Pass (DAP)
DAP is the membership plugin I use to manage the profit engine of the Blog. THis plugin is the best in its class in my opinion. It allows me to not only run a really cool membership site, but allows me to use this blog as the monetization hub for all my products.

So, if a product of mine in this niche is sold, it is delivered through the backend of this blog. DAP allows that to happen.

Category Posts Widgets
This plugin allows me to display links to posts in a specified category in the sidebar. Sounds like just a standard plugin right? Well, if you couple that with the widget logic plugin you can do some powerful things with your blog navigation.

Widget Logic Visual
This is one of my favorite plugins. It allows you to display widgets based on logic. So I can display widgets based on what category the post is in (think Category Posts Widgets), show one widget if the visitor is not logged in and another if the visitor is logged in. It allows you to really customize the visitors experience.

Contact Form 7
This plugin lets you build a form very easily. You can create multiple forms and pace them with shortcode.

Digg Digg
You may notice the social media icons floating beside this post. This plugin allows that to happen. Social media should be an important part of your marketing strategy and you need to make it as easy as possible for your readers to share your content. This plugin makes it easy and it is always there drawing your reader’s attention to the icons.

Floating Social Media Icons
At the time of this post I am using this plugin to power the social media icons in the header and below the post. This is a cool plugin, but I may just hard code them in. So, this may be one plugin I will drop in the future.

Pretty Links
No one wants an ugly affiliate link. So, you pretty them up with the pretty links plug-in. This allows you to shorten your affiliate links and much more. There is a lite version and a Pro version. Obviously, the Pro version is going to give you a lot more options. However, the lite version will suit your needs just fine as you get started.

Facebook Plug-In
This is a plug-in that is developed by Facebook. So, you know the functionality is going to be pretty solid. This allows you to easily integrate your blog with Facebook in many ways. If you look on the sidebar you will see that there is a like box. That like box is powered by this plug-in.

Global Hide/Remove Admin Bar
As I mentioned above I use this blog as more than just a blog. So, I have paid users that log into the blog to access their products. The last thing I want to do is confuse them with the bar that appears at the top of the blog when someone is logged in. So, I fired up this plug-in so I could remove it when my users are logged in.

Simple Sidebar Navigation
Sometimes you need a bit of flexibility with the way you lay out the navigation in the sidebar. This plug-in allows you to completely customize a navigation menu right in the sidebar. It becomes very handy when you are trying to make sure that the users of your blogs can easily navigate.

WordPress Database Backup
You need to make sure you always have a backup of your database. This is a fantastic free plug-in that will automatically backup your database and send you a copy of the database. You can schedule it to run hourly, daily, weekly, however often you tell it to run, it will run.

 WP–EVP (Word Press Easy Video Player Plug-In)
I use a product called Easy Video Player to manage my videos. It allows me to easily do cool things with video, for instance, if I want to add an opt in box at the end of the video I can easily do that. If I wanted to direct someone to a new site I can do that as well. There are way too many options to get into here, but it is a great piece of software.

 WP Optin Pro
I use GetResponse as my autoresponder of choice and their optin form builder is clunky and hard to work with. So, I bought this plug-in so I could easily create cool looking opt in forms. If you see an opt in form on this site, odds are it was built with this plug-in.

 Yet Another Related Posts PlugIn
People come to your blog for information. So, you want them to be able to consume that information as easily as possible. This post allows you to add related posts at the end of your post. So, if you create a post about plug-ins, this will show posts related to plug-ins at the end of the article.

That is a quick rundown of the plug-ins I use on this blog. However, I need to mention that I do not use an Seo plug-in because the theme I use, The Headway Theme, has the feature built-in. So, if your theme does not have a good Seo support system in place you need to make sure you download and use the All in One Seo Plug-In. This is one of the best Seo plug-ins available in the marketplace.

So, what is your favorite WordPress plug-in?