design reverb

With WordPress being the most used blog publishing platform, chances are you use it. I know alot of sites I’ve built use WordPress, whether it be for a blog, newsletter, or someone wanting a simple to use cms (content management system).

I wrote recently of some Free WordPress Themes I made for Lunarpages Web Hosting, and while building some other WordPress based sites, realized there were a few core plugins I use on a regular basis. These are all plugins that help to make my life and the life of my clients a much easier one.

I therefore give you my Great Eight:

Askimet – Spam is the bane of many a webmaster. I have test blogs that aren’t even listed that receive comment spam. Akismet is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again. Akismet is free for personal use, and it ships by default with WordPress 2.0 and later. I always keep this plugin activated.

Google Sitemap Generator – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. Make your site more google friendly. If you use Google Webmaster Tools, then this plugin is for you!

Related Posts – Now called Related Entries – This plugin will output a series of “related” entries based on keyword matching. I use this on most of the blogs I create for myself and clients.

Add Meta Tags – This plugin adds XHTML META tags to your WordPress blog. Its design is based on the assumption that the WordPress categories are used as tags, so it requires no user configuration in order to work. On the other hand, the latest versions include all those features a SEO-concerned publisher would need in order to have total control over those meta tags.

All-in-One SEO – If I’m not using Add Meta Tags, then I’m using this plugin. Automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box for your wordpress blog. I was turned on to this plugin by John Chow. Works like a charm.

Gravatar – This plugin allows you to generate a gravatar URL complete with rating, size, default, and border options. The plugin makes available a tag called gravatar that, when used inside the Comment Loop, outputs the correct gravatar URL based on the commenter’s email address.

WP Contact Form – WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. It currently works with WordPress 2.0+

Democracy – This plugin makes it easy to use, install, and manage a poll for your WordPress blog.

Everyone loves free stuff, and with the popularity of the WordPress blog publishing platform, WordPress themes abound on the internet. Just Google “WordPress themes” and see how many results come up (I currently get results of over 60 million).

Lunarpages.com, being the awesome web hosting company that they are, offers their hosting customers easy setup of the WordPress blog publishing platform through Fantastico, and through their blog, Lunartics, they offer free WordPress templates as well.

Their first offering, “Green Theme”, was such a hit, that they aske me to create some new themes and create new graphics for some wordpress themes for them. The themes currently offered are not total from the ground up new themes. They are basically just graphical reskins of the “Green Theme” that they offer. More full wordpress themes and graphic reskins are projects in the works.

Lunarpages.com is a great web hosting company. If you are looking for reliable and affordable web hosting, be sure to check them out, I’ve been happily hosting with them for over 2 years now. Right now I have teamed up with Lunarpages to offer you $25 off any 12 or 24 month hosting plan. This includes their Basic, Business or Windows hosting plans.