9 Best WordPress Plugins

wordpress logoNow that WordPress is more mature and it has a solid core, some of the plugins from WordPress.org are obsolete. I say this because with this last version, WordPress has many features that were previously found only in plugins. But not all of the plugins are useless now, many are quite important for the community and indispensable for bloggers. Let’s see which plugin made it for Graphic Rating’s 9 Best WordPress Plugins list.

1. Math Comment Spam Protection

This is a perfect solution for keeping your hair young. Really, it saves you from all that stress caused by spam and it does that without hurting your visitors’ eyes (Captcha). Check this plugin that adds only a text box to your comment form and asks you basic math question.
Link:Math Comment Spam Protection Plugin

2. Post-Plugin Library & Co.

By far one of the most used library because of its related plugins: Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, Popular Posts, and Recent Comments. As you can see, various and powerful results can be achieved by using the Post-Plugin Library and the other plugins.
Link:Post-Plugin Library

3. Insights

Vladimir Prelovac is a famous WordPress professional with a nice portfolio. You can find several plugins made by Vladimir in the WordPress plugin directory but the most important and helpful is Insights. This is a plugin that will help you in creating posts faster by providing several features: search your blog for posts, insert Flickr images, insert Youtube videos, search and link to Wikipedia, search Google, insert a Google Map.
Link:Insights

4. Contact Form 7

For interaction and feedback with your readers this plugin offers a wide range of possibilities. You just select what type of control you want to add to your contact form and through a simple interface this is done without any programming knowledge. It is the plugin that powers Graphic Rating.
Link:Contact Form 7

5. Sociable

Since the main idea of a blog post is to be known by others, WordPress has a plugin for that called Sociable. With a simple interface Sociable offers the most important articles sharing services. All you have to do is install the plugin and check the services that you want to be in your Sociable section. The rest is up to the reader.
Link:Sociable

6. WP Polls

You see this type of controls on most of the blogs and it is very simple to create one for yourself. All you have to do is to install WP Polls plugin, create your questions, insert the code in your post or page and … tada. Now you will have to wait for visitors to vote.
Link:WP Polls

7. WP Syntax

If you want to add source code to your blog posts this plugin is the way to go. You simply activate the plugin and then all you have to do is to paste your source code in a < pre> tag with a specified language attribute. It is simple and it does the job. Also this plugin is used on Graphic Rating.
Link:WP Syntax

8. WP Super Cache

Do you want to optimize your site in order to improve your user experience? Well this is the plugin you’ll need. WP Super Cache generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the PHP scripts.
Link:WP Super Cache

9. WP Smushit

This last script is also dedicated to the optimization process. It uses the technology behind Smushit.com and it helps your blog images to loose weight (file size). It is simple to use because after you activate this plugin, the compression will be applied on every uploaded image.
Link:WP Smushit

Conclusion

These are the 9 plugins that we consider to be very valuable and important. Combined, these WordPress plugins can boost your productivity, boost your site performance and many other things. Make sure to test them in order to improve your WordPress blog and also you can check the WordPress plugins directory for new ones. Cheers

Andy Gongea is a passionate UI/UX designer with a great appetite for technology and trends. Currently he owns, a future wife, a loan that comes with a monthly fee and some strange ideas about user interface and user interaction. Cheers!

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