The Plugins I use and more importantly WHY!

OK, about every few weeks on here I see a ?What the best Wordpress plugin? post, and bunch of people drop in two to five plugins they use and of course they say they are the best plugins.

But, I have yet to see anyone explain what all their plugins do for them, how they work together, and why they are the best.

So, I figured I would give it a shot. Now let me be clear, the best plugin for me is the one that get the job done, that is until I find one that does it better. So, if anyone knows of plugins that work better then what I list, bust out with the info and say why it?s a superior plugin.

First off, I?ve been slowly building autoblogs for about a year now, so all of these are geared towards making it easier for me to do that.

Here we go with a quick list of all the plugins I use, in alphabetical order, and then I?ll explain what they do and why they work for me:

Askimet
All in One Adsense and YPN
All in One SEO Pack
Auto SEO Tags
Contact Form 7
Duplicate Posts Eraser
Google XML Sitemaps
Open in New Window Plugin
Privacy Policy
SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic)
StatPress
Strictly Auto Tags
Terms of Use
WassUp
WordPress Database Backup
WP-o-Matic
WP Robot 3

First off Askimet - because shockingly there are a lot of people out there that like to drop off topic comments with their links in them on my blogs. You know who you are?

All in One Adsense and YPN - because it?s simple and lets me put in my ads without a bunch of setup hassles.

All in One SEO Pack - because people that know more shit about SEO than I do say it works. No really that?s why I use it?

WP-o-Matic - because it is an autobloggers friend, it will auto-detect the RSS feeds, and has all the basic stuff I need to get it to post when I want it to.

WP Robot 3 - because this can handle all the stuff that WP-o-Matic can?t. Like Ebay, Amazon, Flikr, YouTube, and a crap load of other content sites. And yes I know this will also pull RSS feeds, but I don?t like how I have to set them up, so I stuck with WP-o-Matic for that.

As a side note: WP Robot 3 is the only one I list that isn't a free plugin, but if you look around BHW a little bit, you may find a copy laying about... I'm just say'n...

Duplicate Posts Eraser- I use this because sometimes WP-o-Matic likes to do a little double bump and post the same thing twice. This plugin stops that from happening.

Strictly Auto Tags - this little plugin will check the posts that are being feed in and put the most relevant tags on it based on word density. It?s a good first run, and I don?t have to do it.

Auto SEO Tags - after Strictly Auto Tags does its work this one takes over, every time someone comes to a post on one of my blogs from one of the search engines (Big G, Yahoo, etc.), it uses the search terms they used to discover my post, and it automatically updates the tags on that post with those search terms.

SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 - This plugin uses all the search terms people use to find my blog and creates a search term tag cloud to help with SEO.

Google XML Sitemaps ? Because Google bots need a map sometimes to find all the great content you have to share.

Contact Form 7 ? Because some search engine companies (Big G) want people to be able to contact you (what a stupid ass concept, right), like you?re a real business. So, with this one all I had to do was drop in an email address, and it set up a very nice contact form for me. Easy?

Privacy Policy ? Same reason as with Contact Form 7, and it didn?t take anything to set up.

Terms of Use ? Once again same reason as with Contact Form 7, and it didn?t take anything to set up.

Keep in mind that there probably is a single plugin that will do what Contact Form 7, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use do, but I was makin shit up as I went when I was first started autoblogging, and now I?m just too lazy to go back and change them out for one plugin . Someone needs to suggest a good one down below and I?ll use it in the future.

SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic)- I use this because I like the look, and hell if someone wants to let their friends know about my blogs, I?m going to make it as easy as I can for them.

Open in New Window Plugin ? Because this way they?ll be able to keep my blog open even if they go to an outside link. Give them a chance to find more good stuff to read and purchase.

StatPress- basically because it was the most common stats plugin I found when I first started, I need to find something better.

WassUp ? because it does some shit that StatPress doesn?t, like I said, I need to find something better. If you know of something post it?

WordPress Database Backup ? Because losing a years worth of work because your database shit it self sucks?

Now there you go, those are all the plugins I use on my autoblogs. If you think these suck, let me know, if you think I?m full of shit, well go blow yourself :thefinger.

And most importantly, if you?ve got better ones, then do like my uncle Charles likes to say when he?s sloppy drunk:

Put em? on the glass bitches, so I can get a better look.

you forgot 1 of the most important which is caching plugins such as wp super cache.

jacobs, what does that plugin do?

ThankMeLater is Also Good Plugin.

Ampit, what does it do?

Many thanks, bookmarked

which terms of use to you use and is that the official name? i am searching the plugins and not finding one that has been updated to 3.0

oh, and super cache makes your site load faster - helpful with sites with lots of plugins, lots of content or hardcore templates

Hi Mandom, Terms of Use is the name of the one I use. I have upgraded all of my blogs to the newest WP version and all of the plugins that I use work just fine with them.

Enjoy.

Sometimes I get so caught up in finding out how things are done "the old-fashioned way", I completely forget to even check if there's a plugin to do it for me. That AdSense one might help me out. Thanks for reminding me again why I use WordPress.

I use most of the tools you use too.

I have used most of plugins you use too. it's work for me

Godspeed.Digital, I do have to agree with you, I am amazed at how many plugins are available for WP, and that fact that nearly all of them are free is great. I just wish I had a better handle on everything you could do with them.

I've had a couple of instances where I couldn't find a way to do something with a plugin, so I created my own way around it only to discover a few weeks later I was just looking up the wrong word and the plugin already existed. Ya live ya learn.

Also I have a new plugin that I found and like it is:

Theme Test Drive - This lets you have one wordpress theme up for visitors while you as the admin can see another theme. This is useful if you want to be able to make changes to a theme, but don't want your visitors to see it, and you don't want to do a completely separate install of your blog somewhere else to mess with.

One thing you do need to be careful with on this one, is if you have a cacheing plugin it will be a pain to flip back and forth between the current theme and the one you're working on. I had to turn off my cacheing to use it effectively.

WP http compression is also a must (GZIP your pages and feeds) and try StatSurfer rather than Statpress since it's more flexible and you can view past stats which can't be done with statpress.

As for privacy policy and plugins alike - best to just initiate them, create the page and disable them. You don't want too many non-active plugins on your blog and the sole intention in these is to create a page.

Contact form 7 is an amazing plugin but it's also a target for hackers. If you need to get files or stuff alike from visitors it's a must, but just for contact it's best to just provide an email address for security purposes.

Bross, thanks for the info, what does WP http compression do for you?

I'll check out statsurfer, like I said right now I'm using statpress and wussup because neither of them are really what I'm after.

Thanks.

I was trying the WP Robot to publish articles but it seems like it can scrape article off articlebase.com. I don't like the way it scrapes the articles, it is scraping everything on the webpage.

Do you know how I can make it NOT scrape articlebase but some other directories maybe?

I generally don't use WProbot to scrape articles, because like you I didn't like how they looked. I personally just use RSS feeds most of the time for blog posts, so I couldn't give you any useful advice on scraping article directories. Hopefully someone else can give you some help on that.

I used to use some of the ones you listed but I have replaced them -

Akismet - I have replaced with SI Captcha - it has eliminated all my automated spammers

All in One SEO - I have replaced with Wordpress SEO - I strongly prefer this plugin by Joost. I do have to look at his "example" settings because it is so thorough in giving me complete control over SEO options. I especially like the fact that it rates my posts for SEO before I publish them.

I have replaced Sexy Bookmarks with Share and Follow - again - for increased control/options/customability

I also agree with the suggestion of quick cache. I use that as well.

I also like Wassup and VStats - for the additional information I can gain about my visitors

I used to use some of the ones you listed but I have replaced them -

Akismet - I have replaced with SI Captcha - it has eliminated all my automated spammers

All in One SEO - I have replaced with Wordpress SEO - I strongly prefer this plugin by Joost. I do have to look at his "example" settings because it is so thorough in giving me complete control over SEO options. I especially like the fact that it rates my posts for SEO before I publish them.

I have replaced Sexy Bookmarks with Share and Follow - again - for increased control/options/customability

I also agree with the suggestion of quick cache. I use that as well.

I also like Wassup and VStats - for the additional information I can gain about my visitors

A really good plugin is SEO Smart Links - it helps with your internal linking structure.
I also like cbnet favicon to give a little personalized touch...