OptimWise - Web Design & Development Simpsonville/Greenville SC

These are 10 free, popular WordPress plugins that I've found useful for most WordPress sites.

I presented this list at the Kalamazoo/West Michigan WordPress Users Group on Dec 9, 2010. Please add your feedback and favorite WordPress plugins in the comments!

Akismet

• filters comments and trackbacks for spam
• you need an Akismet API key

Chap Secure Login

• locally encrypts login password
• allows relatively secure login without SSL

Contact Form 7

• simple customizable contact form that sends email
• add CAPTCHA by installing Really Simple CAPTCHA

FD Feedburner Plugin

• redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed to Feedburner
• tip: append category/tag URL, or don’t redirect category/tag feeds

Google Custom Search Plugin

• replaces the default search engine with Google Custom Search
• create CSE through Google, copy and paste code into plugin configuration
• inserts Google AdWords if your site is for-profit

Google XML Sitemaps or Google XML Sitemaps with Multisite support

• generates an XML sitemap to help search engines index site
• notifies all major search engines every time you create a post

ShareThis

• allows users to share through email and 50+ social networks
• you customize which networks users can share to
• you can track analytics

WB-DB-Backup

• back ups WordPress database locally or to email
• on-demand or scheduled
• backs up core tables and optional tables
• database can be saved to to server, download locally, or emailed

WordPress Backup

• schedule hourly, daily, weekly backups
• backs up the uploads directory, current theme directory, and plugins directory to zip files
• zip files can be downloaded locally or emailed

WP Super Cache

• generates static HTML files, serves those instead of processing PHP
• saves bandwidth and loads pages faster