HOW TO WordPress Plugin – The top 15 most popular FREE WordPress Plugins!
If you want to know How TO Blog and How to use WordPress then you need to know How To WordPress Plugin!
WordPress plugins are functions that you can add to your wordpress blog by just adding them and automatically installing them (If you do not know how to add a wordpress plugin then just click on the following link to read our article on How TO WordPress Plugin )
With wordpress plugins you can automatically optimize your blog for the search engines or you can automatically send sitemaps to the search engines, or automatically handle you tube videos or automatically add a slideshow of images to your blog or you can add anti spam measures to your blog…there are over 9700 wordpress plugins available.
Some WordPress plugins cost money. Most of the ones that cost money are really worth it (See our article on the WordPress DataFeedr plugin (http://www.wpthemesdeals.com/how-to-datafeedr-plugin-to-add-an-affiliate-store-to-your-blog-automatically) to automatically add an affiliate store to your blog for an example of a valuable wordpress plugin that is purchased but well worth the money.
This How to Wordress Plugin article focuses on the top 15 Free wordpress plugins. Here’s the list:
Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will automatically create an XML sitemap (which helps the search engines like Google Yahoo and Bing to index your blog better). Best of all it automatically creates a new sitemap AND sends it to the top search engines every time youcreate a new blog entry. No wonder it is the number 1 most popular free wordpress plugin!
Version 3.2.3Updated 2010-4-2Downloads 3,567,053
All in One SEO Pack
This is one of the top, if not the top, free wordpress plugin that Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (SEO = Search Engine Optimization). It also lets you do manual modifications as well. I highly recommend using the Keyword statistics plugin in conjunction with this. It really helps. ESPECIALLY the keyword statistics plugin feature that shows you, real time, the number of 1, 2 and 3 keyword combinations as you type your blog and how many times they occur and keyword density!
I can’t tell you how many times I have written a blog entry on a specific subject with a targeted niche and keyword(s) in mind only to find that I only used the keyword or keyword phrases that I had intended to a couple of times in the whole article.
Version 1.6.10.2Updated 2010-3-5Downloads 4,912,348
Twitter Tools
I have not personally used this one but the Twitter Tools free wordpress plugin creates a complete automatic integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.
Version 2.3.1 Updated 2010-5-1 Downloads 500,734
WPtouch iPhone Theme
WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed an iPhone, iPod touch, Android or BlackBerry touch mobile device.
The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm visitors, without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme
Version 1.9.10 Updated 2010-4-29 Downloads 712,594
Contact Form 7
This is a handy free wordpress plugin. It is a contact form plugin. It is easy to use with a number of options for setting up your contact form plugin.
Version 2.2Updated 2010-3-22 Downloads 1,795,041
NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is the best free image gallery wordpress plugin out there, it features a fully integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. Really cool. Get it.
Version 1.5.3 Updated 2010-4-11 Downloads 1,817,661
WP-PageNavi
This free wordpress plugin adds a more advanced paging navigation system to your WordPress site. Note that some of the quality purchased themes (like you can get from Woo themes or WPZoom Themes, already have great built in page navigation and features. But for the free themes you really need this to help people navigate around your site.
Version 2.72 Updated 2010-4-19 Downloads 762,622
AddToAny:
This free wordpress plugin Helps your blog readers share, bookmark, and email your posts & pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious and many more.
I prefer using the onlywire plugin for this myself. But giving your users the capability to do this quickly and easily is a plus no matter what you use!
Also the WP Sociable plugin is a really nice one as well.
Version .9.9.5.3 Updated 2010-4-30 Downloads 900,491
Fast and Secure Contact Form
This is another free wordpress plugin for a contact form plugin that lets your visitors contact you by sending you a quick E-mail message. Blocks all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem if you use this wordpress contact form plugin
You can also use the Akismet Plugin or
The WP Captcha plugin for anti spam as well (but ist does not include the wordpress contact form plugin)
Version 2.5.4 Updated 2010-5-1 Downloads 221,335
Post videos and photo galleries
This is a really good free wordpress plugin that lets you Post your videos and photo galleries/flash slideshows to your blog easily and in seconds.
Version 1.57 Updated 2010-4-28 Downloads 213,962
Google Analyticator
This is a free wordpress plugin that will add the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics. Includes widgets for Analytics data display. This is a must have
There is also another plugin that I actually use for this called Ultimate Google Analytics. Take your pick.
Version 6.1Updated 2010-4-14Downloads 826,356Average Rating
Broken Link Checker
This free wordpress plugin will check your posts, comments and other places for broken links and missing images and notify you if any are found so you can fix them.
Version 0.9.2 Updated 2010-4-2 8Downloads 313,402
WordPress.com Stats
This is a good plugin for site statistics (again I prefer to use the google analytics tools and the google webmaster tools) but using this free wordpress plugin You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com's stat system.
Version 1.6.3 Updated 2010-3-30 Downloads 1,548,348
WP e-Commerce
The WP e-Commerce free wordpress plugin is a Web 2.0 application designed with usability, aesthetics, and presentation in mind. I have never used it but if you are after e-commerce vs an affiliate store then give this a shot.
Also check out or recommendation for the DataFeedr Plugin that I mentioned at the start of the article for automatically inserting an affiliate store into your blog that adds SEO benefits as well.
Also, Amazon has their free e-store that you can insert into your WordPress blog as well.
Version 3.7.6.1 Updated 2010-4-20 Downloads 538,264
WP Super Cache
This is a free wordpress plugin that speeds up your website . A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.
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