Over my time of working with WordPress and using it to create websites for clients, I have found that some of the most unique requests I have recieved from clients have been settled by a simple WordPress plugin. We all know the major things needed for every website – From SEO to Analytics, which I will also be including in this article.

Getting Started

For those of you that are new to using WordPress and installing plugins – There are a couple of different ways to do it. The easiest being to use your admin panel under “Plugins” and clicking on “Add New” where you can search for each plugin and install directly from your admin panel. The other way is to use an FTP client such as FileZilla and browse to your WordPress Plugin directory “WP-Content” – Then “Plugins” to manually upload the plugin files.

Remember that after manually uploading your plugin files you will still need to activate them by visiting your admin panel and going to the plugin tab and choosing activate.

The Plugins

Here is my own personal list of my top 10 WordPress Plugins that go along with each personal and client installation of WordPress. Remember also that there are many different variations of some of the plugins, which some people like more or less than the ones I have listed. Through my own personal experience using these plugins and doing my own research the following ones are the ones that have suited me the best and worked for me.

1. Akismet

Akismet Home Page

This one should be a given. This is actually included with every WordPress install by default. You will need to obtain a Akismet API key to use it, but it is on my top list of plugins that are worth using. Make sure to use it on all of your WordPress powered websites to cut back on the spam comments. Although it doesn’t cut out 100% of all spam comments, I myself cannot imagine not having it installed and activated. There are also other plugins that take it a step further and more protect from spam comments, but Akismet is well worth using.

2. All in One SEO Pack

By: SemperFiWebDesign.com – All in One SEO Pack

I have tried and tested many of the other SEO plugins available for WordPress and found this one to work the best for everything I have ever needed. The list of options is almost endless, and the ease of use adds to the list of great features offered by this wonderful plugin. Most of us that currently use WordPress have used this plugin, or probably currently use it now. I would recommend this with each and every WordPress install. If you are looking to really make your website Search Engine Friendly then I would always use this, and take advantage of all the options it has to offer.

3. Contact Form 7

By: Takayuki Miyoshi – Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is another one that has always been high on my list of must have WordPress plugins. Everyone that has created a website knows the importance of having a secure contact form. I have choosen this one as my favorite due to all of the options available for it, along with how easy it is to create and implement forms on any page of my WordPress powered website. I have used this to create large surveys for clients websites, and custom contact forms for times when very special things were needed on the form itself. I want to also mention that using the included .CSS file it is VERY easy to modify the appearance of this plugin on your website to make it fit in with your website.

4. Google XML Sitemaps

By: Arne Brachhold – Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin has been a top performer from the start. We all know the importance of XML sitemaps for SEO purposes, and especially using Googles Webmaster Tools. This sitemap creater runs by itself to always keep your sitemap current, and also submits it to the major search engines. It can also create HTML sitemaps, and .gzip sitemaps as well. Another top one on my list that I think should be added to every WordPress powered website.

5. Secure WordPress

By: SiteSecurityMonitor – Secure WordPress

This has proven to be a great security plugin for WordPress. It use to be individually owned and was recently purchased by SiteSecurityMonitor (SSM) and made a lot better. Below is a brief overview of features directly from SSM.

Secure WordPress:

1. Removes error-information on login-page
2. Adds index.php plugin-directory (virtual)
3. Removes the wp-version, except in admin-area
4. Removes Really Simple Discovery
5. Removes Windows Live Writer
6. Removes core update information for non-admins
7. Removes plugin-update information for non-admins
8. Removes theme-update informationfor non-admins (only WP 2.8 and higher)
9. Hides WP-version in backend-dashboard for non-admins
10. Adds string for use WP Scanner
11. Blocks bad queries
12. Validates your site with a free malware and vulnerabilities scan

6. Secure Admin

By: Ryan Boren and Robert Accettura – Secure Admin

Like Secure WordPress, the Secure Admin plugin adds more security to your WordPress admin panel. I have always used this alongside of Secure WordPress to try and protect each of my WordPress installs. I have done research on both and always used them. I put alot of thought into how much work and effort I had in each of my WordPress powered sites, and thought it only made sense to activate a simple plugin to offer more protection. There are many other security plugins available but some offer the same things. With this one and the above mentioned, they together cover most everything.

7. WordPress Database Backup

By: Austin Matzko – WordPress Database Backup

The WordPress Database Backup plugin is exactly what it says. I have not personally found a more straight forward way of backing up my WordPress site and having so many options to automate the process as well. I always run this on every WordPress site I have, and it has never let me down. I have always set mine up to email me a weekly copy of my website, for those just in case situations. If you are looking for a way to backup your WP database, as well as your published articles and information that you have on your site, then you need this plugin.

8. WP Google Analytics

By: Xavisys.com – WP Google Analytics

Exactly what it says, and if you don’t know about Google Analytics then you don’t know what you are missing. This is the best way to use a plugin to add Analytics to your site. There are other ways (Manually adding it, and you can also do it using your functions.php file) But for the easiest most straight forward way…. The plugin is the answer. This will ensure that your stats can always be seen by you to know what is going on with your site. Great way to monitor the details of your visitors.

9. WP No Category Base

By: WordPressSupplies – WP No Category Base

I found this plugin when I realized that WordPress was making a “Category” directory trailing my domain name, that was being placed before my pretty URL’s I had created. This was throwing me off, and I searched high and low for a way to remove the category base. Using this plugin is as easy as it gets, just install – then activate it, and your done! Works the first time every time, and makes those URL’s look much much better. Great for SEO purposes.

10. White Label CMS

By: VideoUserManuals.com – White Label CMS

One of the best CMS plugins I have found that has so many options. White Lael gives you the option of customizing your WordPress install along with making it more aimed at a CMS instead of just blogging. I have used this numerous times for many purposes and it is worth taking a look at. Great way to make a CMS site, or use it just to customize your WordPress login and Admin panel with a custom logo and branding. Great Plugin!

Other Useful and Unknown Plugins

I have added some of these extra plugins that I have found over time at the request of different clients. As things are asked of me when I am creating a website I start searching and so far (Fingers Crossed) I have always found a plugin to fit my needs. These are all more reasons that I love and recommend WordPress. Here are the extras, along with a description of each. Many of you may already know about these, but the point of this article is partially a reminder, and to show new users to WordPress the power of certain plugins, and also as a reminder to those of you that may be using WordPress and just simply forgotten about some of these lovely plugins.

Web Invoicing and Billing

By: TwinCitiesTech

Great plugin for keeping track of clients and being able to create and send invoices directly from your admin panel. Nice way to keep track of your business needs, and also be able to monitor your income from the invoices. I really like this over other invoice plugins simply because it’s the best. It also will handle recurring payments you setup, and also recurring payments from PayPal. Great if you have a reason to send out invoices to get paid.

TubePress

By: TubePress Plugin

Great plugin to allow you to easily add some content to your website. Set it with keywords and it will add videos directly from YouTube directly to a post or page of your choice. Has options for you to change where the videos come from (also supports other video services like Vimeo) and will let you pull videos directly from a user, keywords, and many other options. Great for tutorial videos on a website of any kind. Awesome way to create more dynamic content to your site. I highly recommend this one and I currently use this on one of my sites as well.

Elastic Theme Engine and Editor

By: Elastic Theme Engine and Editor Plugin

I have played with this a number of times. I am still a little in between on really liking it and not being too sure about it. I do think that if you do not know anything about programming and want to make a custom site, then it is worth playing with. Like anything, it had it’s downside, but overall was really worth playing with. If you are looking to make your own custom WordPress site and don’t know any PHP or CSS then get this plugin, and make your own site easily.

WP125

By: WebMasterSource

This is one of my favorites. If you have a blog that you offer out advertising on, then you need this plugin. There are other plugins aimed specifically at BuySellAds.com, but this plugin is for the individual managing their own ads. It shows details on your admin panel, and can be set to run ads for a set number of days.

WP-Polls

By: Lester Chan

I love this simple plugin. As the name implies, it is for adding a poll to your website. Now I know that there are hundreds of other plugins that do this, but this one is the most simple straight forward that also offered the most options and never let me down. Just for that I will recommend it and keep using it myself. Customize the look and feel of it, while generating different polls over and over. Great plugin for doing exactly what it is suppose to do.

In Closing…

Plugins are a great way to add more functionality to your WordPress powered website - and no matter what you are looking for someone else has thought of it and probably made a plugin for it. I personally think that WordPress is still growing in popularity and being used more and more each day. This helps with the growing community of users supporting more WordPress themes(massive theme collection here) and plugins. If you don’t find what you are looking for then you can always create your own. I hope everyone has enjoyed the article!

You can use these plugins to add beautiful effects and functionality in your next project. These plugins will also help you in completing your task easily.

jQuery Menu and Navigation

Collapsing Site Navigation with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Creating a collapsing menu that contains vertical navigation bars and a slide out content area. When hovering over a menu item, an image slides down from the top and a submenu slides up from the bottom.

Beautiful Background Image Navigation with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
A beautiful navigation that has a background image slide effect. The main idea is to have three list items that contain the same background image but with a different position. The background image for each item will be animated to slide into place in different times, creating a really nice effect.

Slot Machine Tabs ( Demo | Download )
Three columns in each content box rotate like a slot machine to reveal the content in the next content box when a new tab is clicked.

Stylish Navigation Men ( Demo | Download )
A stylish CSS + XHTML navigation menu.

SUPERFISH JQUERY MENU PLUGIN ( Demo | Download )
Superfish is an enhanced Suckerfish-style menu jQuery plugin that takes an existing pure CSS drop-down menu.

LavaLamp for jQuery lovers! ( Demo | Download )
Lavalamp allows you to create a beautiful effect over your horizontal navigation bars.

Sexy Drop Down Menu w/ jQuery & CSS ( Demo | Download )
Create a sexy drop down menu that can also degrade gracefully.

SLIDE A NAVIGATION TOOL IN YOUR PAGE ( Demo | Download )
This jquery component let you easly build a sliding panel where to insert any kind of content; it has builtin all the functionalities for managing menu lines and sub panels with accordion effect. It can get the content via ajax and therefore you can dynamically build it by passing DATA via request using the metadata attribute settable on the extruder container.

Stay-On-Top Menu ( Demo | Download )

HoverFade ( Demo | Download )
The plugin is designed to be used with navigation menus, where each menu item is made from an anchor element within a list-item element. You can apply the effect to different collections of elements by supplying new trigger and faderTemplate options.

jQuery Menu Style ( Demo | Download )
An Easy to setup and beautiful Menu Plugin.

jQuery Slideshow and Image Gallery

Thumbnails Navigation Gallery with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
An extraordinary gallery with scrollable thumbnails that slide out from a navigation. The main idea is to have a menu of albums where each item will reveal a horizontal bar with thumbnails when clicked. The thumbnails container will scroll automatically when the user moves the mouse to the left or right.

Minimalistic Slideshow Gallery with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
A simple and beautiful slideshow gallery that can be easily integrated in your web site. The idea is to have a container with our slideshow and the options to view a grid of thumbnails, pause the slideshow, and navigate through the pictures. The thumbnail grid will slide out from the top and allow the user to navigate through a set of thumbnails.

HTML5 Slideshow w/ Canvas & jQuery ( Demo | Download )
You’ve probably heard a lot about the new HTML5 canvas element. As the name implies, this is a special element that allows us to create and modify graphics. In addition, we can also use it like any other element on the page – apply jQuery animations on it.

A Slick Content Slider ( Demo | Download )
In this tutorial we are going to make a slick content slider for a computer shop, with the help of jQuery and the MopSlider plugin.

Google Wave History Slider ( Demo | Download )
It shows you how to create a Google Wave-like history slider. Using it, we will enable our visitors to go back and forth in time to view the changes that take place on a comment thread.

Cool jQuery Gallery ( Demo | Download )
A custom gallery that scans a folder of images and outputs a slick gallery, utilizing PHP, CSS, jQuery and the jQuery Lightbox plug-in.

jqFancyTransitions ( Demo | Download )
jqFancyTransitions is easy-to-use jQuery plugin for displaying your photos as slideshow with fancy transition effects.

YoxView – jQuer Image Viewer Plugin ( Demo | Download )
YoxView is a free Lightbox-type media and image viewer jQuery plugin. It’s easy to use and feature-rich.

Beautiful Photo Stack Gallery with jQuery and CSS3 ( Demo | Download )
A Beautiful and fresh image gallery. The idea is to show the albums as a slider, and when an album is chosen, we show the images of that album as a beautiful photo stack. In the photo stack view, we can browse through the images by putting the top most image behind all the stack with a slick animation.

Fresh Sliding Thumbnails Gallery with jQuery and PHP ( Demo | Download )
A full page image gallery with a nice thumbnail area that scrolls automatically when moving the mouse. The idea is to allow the user to slightly zoom into the picture by clicking on it. The thumbnails bar slides down and the image resizes according to the screen size.

Auto-Playing Featured Content Slider ( Demo | Download )
This is an alteration based on the jQuery “Coda Slider” plugin. Each “slide” can be any kind of html content whatsoever, or be a full-size image with an overlay.

Slide Deck ( Demo | Download )
SlideDeck is a powerful slider plugin made for web designers. With SlideDeck, you can organize any type of web content into a beautiful and user-friendly slider.

jQuery Table Manipulation

DataTables ( Demo | Download )
DataTables is a plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library. It is a highly flexible tool, based upon the foundations of progressive enhancement, which will add advanced interaction controls to any HTML table.

Scrollable HTML table ( Demo | Download )
This JavaScript code can be used to convert tables in ordinary HTML into scrollable ones. No additional coding is necessary. All you need to do is put header rows (if you need them) in THEAD section, table body rows in TBODY section, footer rows (if you need them) in TFOOT section.

JQTreeTable ( Demo | Download )
With JQTreeTable, you can have a treeview in your table. With this plugin, users still get the plain table even thought they disable Javascript.

Flexigrid ( Demo | Download )
Flexigrid is a lightweight but rich data grid with resizable columns and a scrolling data to match the headers, plus an ability to connect to an xml based data source using Ajax to load the content.

Tablesorter ( Demo | Download )
tablesorter is a jQuery plugin for turning a standard HTML table with THEAD and TBODY tags into a sortable table without page refreshes. tablesorter can successfully parse and sort many types of data including linked data in a cell. It has many useful feature.

Ingrid ( Demo | Download )
Ingrid is an unobtrusive jQuery component that adds datagrid behaviors (column resizing, paging, sorting, row and column styling, and more)

jQuery ColumnManager plugin ( Demo | Download )
A jQuery-plugin to toggle the visibility of table columns (collapsing and expanding them) and to save the state until the next visit.
It’s supporting tables with colspans and rowspans, too!

Table Pagination ( Demo | Download )
This jquery plugin is used to create a pagination element under a table element. You can customize your pagination needs through various settings.

jQuery TableRowCheckboxToggle ( Demo | Download )
This plugin can add toggle checkbox to any rows that can be specified through the CSS class names.

uiTableFilter ( Demo | Download )
uiTableFilter is a jQuery plugin for filtering table rows.

jQuery Form Element Enhancing

Progress Bar ( Demo | Download )
It’s a very simple widget with a small API that exposes a limited number of properties and methods, but it can still be highly effective and is great for providing visual feedback to visitors on the percentage of a process is left before it is complete.

Ajax Fancy Captcha ( Demo | Download )
Ajax Fancy Captcha is a jQuery plugin that helps you protect your web pages from bots and spammers.

Elastic – Make your textareas grow ( Demo | Download )
This Jquery plugin makes your textareas grow and shrink to fit it’s content. It was inspired by the auto growing textareas on Facebook. The major difference between Elastic and it’s competitors is it’s weight.

jQuery “Highlight” Plugin ( Demo | Download )

FormToWizard Plugin ( Demo | Download )
The FormToWizard plugin help you to turn any webform into a powerful wizard with jQuery with “steps left” information.

File Style jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Browsers do not let you style file inputs. File Style plugin fixes this problem. It enables you to use image as browse button. You can also style filename field as normal textfield using css. It is written using JavaScript and jQuery.

Uploadify – a multiple file upload plugin for jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Uploadify is a jQuery plugin that allows the easy integration of a multiple (or single) file uploads on your website. It requires Flash and any backend development language. An array of options allow for full customization for advanced users, but basic implementation is so easy that even coding novices can do it.

jQuery Form Wizard Plugin ( Demo | Download )
The jQuery Form Wizard Plugin will convert your regular forms into step-by-step form wizard without having to reload the page when moving from one step to another. The plugin is unobtrusive and gives you the ability to set up flow of the different steps, by creating specific routes based on user input.

Uniform – Sexy forms with jQuery ( Demo | Download )
Uniform masks your standard form controls with custom themed controls. It works in sync with your real form elements to ensure accessibility and compatibility.

jQuery.uiSelect ( Demo | Download )

Autocomplete ( Demo | Download )
By giving an autocompleted field focus or entering something into it, the plugin starts searching for matching entries and displays a list of values to choose from. By entering more characters, the user can filter down the list to better matches.

jQuery Miscellaneous

jQuery Quicksand ( Demo | Download )
Reorder and filter items with a nice shuffling animation.

jQuery PhotoShoot ( Demo | Download )
The jQuery PhotoShoot plugin gives you the ability to convert any div on your web page into a photo shooting effect, complete with a view finder.

QuickFlip ( Demo | Download )
It flips any piece of HTML markup over like a card. The new version is faster and even easier to use—simply call the flip animation through a jQuery selector and the QuickFlip will flip the front panel to show its back.

Canimate ( Demo | Download )
If you’ve ever wanted to create an animation using a series of images for your website, but were forced to an alternative because you didn’t want to deal with the constraints of the GIF filetype, like color limit and difficult-to-deal-with FPS controls, then Canimate is the solution.

Tooltip ( Demo | Download )
In this tutorial we are going to write a simple jQuery tooltip plugin. It is going to convert the title attributes of elements withing your page, into a series of colorful tooltips. Six color themes are available, so you can easily match it with the rest of your design.

jQuery Twitter Ticker ( Demo | Download )
Create a pure jQuery & CSS twitter ticker which utilizes Twitter’s Search API.

A Fancy AJAX Contact Form ( Demo | Download )
In this tutorial we are going to make an AJAX contact form which leverages modern web development techniques.
We are using PHP, CSS and jQuery with the help of the formValidator plugin for form validation and the JQTransform plugin

jQuery-Notes 1.0.2 ( Demo | Download )
jQuery-Notes is a simple and easy to use jQuery-Plugin that allows you to add notes to any image (even foreign ones) on your website or blog.

jQuery Roundabout ( Demo | Download )

Google Buzz Widget ( Demo | Download )

CLEditor ( Demo | Download )
CLEditor is an open source jQuery plugin which provides a lightweight, full featured, cross browser, extensible, WYSIWYG HTML editor that can be easily added into any web site.

jQuery color plugin xcolor ( Demo | Download )

IdmgAreaSelect ( Demo | Download )
imgAreaSelect is a jQuery plugin for selecting a rectangular area of an image. It allows web developers to easily implement image cropping functionality, as well as other user interface features.

Useful Resources

• jQuery Techniques and Plugins
  40 useful but obscure jQuery plug-ins that will hopefully help you improve the user experience on your websites.
• Useful jQuery Plugins for Slideshows, Graphs and Text Effects
  35 powerful and effective jQuery plugins and techniques for slideshows, graphs and text effects.
• 50 Useful Coding Techniques (CSS Layouts, Visual Effects and Forms)
  An overview of useful CSS/jQuery coding tips, tricks and techniques for visual effects, layouts and web form design to help you find solutions to the problems you are dealing with or will have to deal with in future.
• Amazing and Fresh jQuery Plugins
  25 of the best newly (or, pretty close to new) released jQuery plugins.
• 40 Exceptional jQuery Interface Techniques and Tutorials
  Explore the strengths of jQuery in letting web developers create impressive client-side-based user interface components.
• 40+ Excellent jQuery Tutorials
  Various jQuery Tutorials for your source of inspiration.
• 50 Useful JavaScript and jQuery Techniques and Plugins
  Useful JavaScript and jQuery techniques, plugins and tools that may help you improve the user experience for your site.

These plugins help you with your content by either adding any fields or hiding it from certain users. You can set roles for each user visiting your site and set some exclusive rights for each one about how much they should be accessing your blog, some plugins help you with a smooth navigation which can be in the pages or in the sidebars which also supports the CSS drop down menus and manages you pages and posts. These plugins also help you in a case where you are too much obsessed with multi languages or find it hard to manage with more than one language.

For all those avid WordPress users, we have collected some of the most used and popular plugins which helps you grow as a professional blogger.

Easily Manage Categories, Pages and Posts

1.Idealien category enhancements

Idealien category enhancements makes the category and post templates selectable through the drop down lists as easy as page templates and includes configuration of sub-categories to inherit templates from their parent or not and applies for both category and post templates and sub-category inheritance also applies and deleting a category will delete all the record too.

2.Pagemash

The Page Management plugin images you pages by customizing the order of the pages and rearranging the page menus with the drag and drop style with AJAX interface which allows sorting and hiding easily and toggling the page to be hidden from the output making the page hierarchy very easy. Allows features quick page renaming, alternate list coloring, reordering and modifying the page by dragging a page to become a chill and toggling it from the view.

3.Yet another related posts plugin

Yet another related posts plugin gives you pages related to the current entry and other relevant content on you site to the reader which features an advanced, versatile and customizable algorithm which considers the post titles, contents, tag and categories. You can know, how your related posts and pages are displayed and caches the relates posts data which improves its performance, displays the related posts in RSS and allows to disable certain tags and categories.

4.Exclude pages

Exclude Pages adds a check box for the user ‘include the page in menus’ which is checked by default and uncheckable it makes to page disappear from the listings of pages and do not show in the menu listings and pages which come under the excluded pages or children of excluded pages will also not show up.

5.Wp no category base

The plugin WP No Category Base will remove the mandatory category base from the category permalinks and will not break any links taking care of the redirection of the old category links to the new ones. Does not require any set up and other plugins to work. Is compatible with the sitemap plugins and works with multiple sub categories making it good for SEO.

Better & Smart Navigation

6.Wp pagenavi

WP PageNavi plugin adds an advanced and numbered paging navigation . You can use this plugin to replace the Previous pages and Next ones links from the home pages. The look and feel of this plugin is adapted from the original WordPress PageNavi plugin to match the LightWord WordPress theme. Has an option to display the texts for first, last, current, previous and next pages.

7.Multi level navigation plugin

Multi-level Navigation plugin adds a CSS based, SEO friendly accessible dropdown or slider menu to your blog. Produces W3C valid XHTML and CSS. This plugin allows you to control the animation speed of the dropdown menu, mouseover delay, what type of content should be displayed, keyboard accessibility, hover sensitivity and allows to hide the delay. This plugin also has a similar functionality to the PixoPoint menu plugin.

8.Breadcrumbs

Yoast Breadcrumbs plugin allows you add to breadcrumbs in your theme for WordPress SEO here the posts, newletters, presentations everything comes under the SEO guide to WordPress. This is also decustomised for any website running WordPress and makes setting the options easy for administrator and making available a direct class for theme developers and adventurous users. Has a translation in more than eight languages.

9.Simple sidebar navigation

Simple Sidebar Navigation creates a navigation in sidebars and other pre-defined areas with a support for the CSS custom drop down menus in a much simpler way. Also adds a widget or unlimited number of navigation widgets into the Widgets dashboard without any PHP coding and conditional tags are included while specifying the pages along with an option to add navigation links with title, URL and target attributes.

Making Your Content Unbreakable

10.More fields

More Fields plugin, as the name says adds additional fields or boxes to the Edit or Site page. The fields can be input field, such as the name, work, title etc., Also you can add check boxes, radio buttons, create archives and create buttons programmatically, add Web forms or HTML5 fields. These fields or boxes can be placed either to the right or to the left of the Write/ Edit pages.

11.Fresh page

Flutter is a plugin which simplifies the content management by creating customized write panels like radio buttons, check boxes, file and image uploads i.e. offers you all sorts of options for each of the field. Allows you to create different content on different pages. Flutter allows to modulate your themes and includes image manipulations such as cropping, resizing, editing in place, watermarking etc.,

12.Wp cms post control

Sometimes, you may feel that you don’t want to show certain items to others, in that case WP CMS Post Control plugin hides the unwanted items within the write / edit page for every user and alos gives you the complete control to create content. You can set an option of what kind of users need to see what type of content, and enable or disable the revisions, auto saves and Flash uploader.

Managing Users and their Roles

13.User access manager

The plugin User Access Manager gives you complete control to manage your pages, files and posts where you can create a group separately for readers and editors, set the rights and allow only registered users to use the group which is accessible only for the members of that group. The main advantage in this plugin is that other people can write in your blog but not everywhere.You can hide pages, limit the access to uploaded files or give access even by IP address.

14.Role scoper

Role Scoper gives you complete access in reading and editing permissions for access control and editing where you can set the access and roles to specified pages or posts or categories ie control the categories where users can post, grant access for a limited time, limit the post / page publishing dates and inherit the restrictions and roles to certain categories and exclude the un-editable post and set default restrictions for any new post.

15.Role manager

Role Manager plugin gives you the rights to define a role for each user who can have individual capabilities i.e.  he can perform a set of assigned tasks to him and he can belong only to that role. Also you can work or create multiple subscriber profiles and set controls for each role setting the access of what they should do and what they should not do like give certain user permissions like unfiltered HTML posting.

16.Member access

Member Access is a plugin for Administrator to set permissions for members to make pages and posts accessible only to logged in members i.e either you can make them globally accessible or only to the members. This plugin also let you configure the search results, archives ad RSS feeds to omit entire content available to members or include some excerpt for non-members to use and make it viewable only to members. Redirection to the login page can also be configured for non members.

17.Custom post type UI

Custom Post Type UI plugin create for WordPress 3.0 manages to create and manage the custom post types, content sorting which makes the developers work easy especially if they are new to WordPress , panels and taxonomies without any PHP coding. You can also assign both the custom and built-in taxonomies to post types and label the post types.

Having a Multilingual Site

18.Sitepress multi lingual CMS

Language support is a problem faced by many users in WordPress but with WPML Multilingual you can build multilingual sites with WordPress making the multi lingual content management easy and makes you feel like you are running the site in one language. This plugin features a Comments translation which allows you to reply to comments in your own language, a Professional translation to connect translators with the site owners. Includes CMS navigation elements to use site-wide navigation and for easy customization.

19.Xlanguage

The xLanguage plugin is for multi language lovers who love to blog in many languages and the users can select which to read. You can use this on all the blog UI elements, page, tags, categories and blog posts. The language is detected from the browser’s preferences and can also be configured to facilitate multiple fallbacks. Displays each language in a different theme and allows the user to switch the languages with the widget and template functions provided which can also be customized without the code getting disturbed.

20.Qtranslate

You may love to work in multi languages but creating a muliti linugual content is not that easy. qTranslate is a plugin which makes the multi language content management and translation very easy as working in a single language with some of the features like human and machine automated translation in 2 clicks, language customizations, switching languages with a single click and a support for multiple built-in languages and one URL for each language for friendly SEO.

Highly customizable Widgets

21.Widgets reloaded

Widget Reloaded was derived to correct the default WordPress widgets which don’t offer much control over their output on screen. This plugin replaces many of its predecessors and these widgets come with highly customizable control panels and are packed with archives, authors, bookmarks, calendar, pages, menus, tags, categories etc., This is very useful when you use a sub menu in your header using the sub menu widget area and base on Pages.

22.Flexi pages widget

Flexi Pages Widget is sidebar widget which is configurable and is used to list the pages and sub pages, also can be used in place of ‘Pages’ widget. This plugin has many features like includes a link to the home page, has an option where only selected pages and sub pages can be displayed only in parent pages and related pages and lists. If you don’t want to use the widget, then you can use the function flexipages() which can be called anywhere from the template.

23.Side posts

Alkivia SidePosts widget displays the selected category and its entries in the sidebar giving a link to each entry in the sidebar or you can set another option in this plugin which shows only the private posts which are hidden in the home page. You can choose to display the full post or the excerpt of the post, can show a link to the selected category feeds or archives page or create your own template to show everything other than the provided templates.

24.Query posts widget wordpress plugin

Query Posts Widget lets you display anything on your posts by any criteria without knowing any code. You can choose to display your posts by tag, category, author, custom field key, date / time. Also show the full post or an excerpt or show the pages and order them by any term. This widget has almost 40 options to customize the display format.

SEO

25.Google sitemap generator

Google XML sitemaps generates a special XML map to help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing to index your blog easily. Makes it easier to see the complete structure of your blog and also supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages and notifies the search engines whenever you create a post and calculates a priority for each post and is available in multi languages and doesn’t require any PHP knowledge. Also has a WordPress filter which allows other plugins to add their pages to the sitemap.

26.All in one SEO pack

SEO is the most important part for any blog and All in one SEO pavk plugin optimizes you blog for search engines taking care of the custom Post types, supports CMS style WordPress, finetunes the navigation links, generates the META tags automatically and over rides any title and allows you to set META description and keywords, optimizes the titles and avoids the duplicate content on the blog, is compatible with other plugins because of its built-in API.

27.Redirection

Redirection is a WordPress plugin which makes it easier to migrate from an old website or while changing the directory for WordPress installations because this plugin keeps track and maintains a log of 404 errors and maps these to 301 redirection which are based upon login status, redirect based on the referrer and random pages. Maintains a log for all redirected URL’s and has a pass-through redirection which allows you to pass an URL to another website or page.

28.SEO smart links

Initially to improve ranking in search engines, a manual work was done to interlink the old blog posts to the new one but SEO smart links plugin  gets your blogs interlinked and adds links to other sites which automates SEO benefits to you site. This plugin automatically links the keywords and phrases to corresponding pages and categories in your blog and also allows you to create or set up your own keywords and matching URL’s. These changes which are done by default can also be changed from the options in the administrative settings panel.

28.Platinum SEO pack

In addition to the features incorporated with the All in one SEO plugin, Platinum SEO plugin offers additional features like adding index, meta tags, nofollow or follow, noodp to any post or page. This plugin not only automates the WordPress SEO but also provides an ultimate onsite SEO solution for the blogs. Also avoids the duplicate content, is compatible with other plugins, adds meta description and keywords automatically and generates the META tags relevant to SEO automatically.

29.Permalinks moved permanently

Migration of your WordPress blog from one permalink structure to another may result in a loss of Pagerank or traffic which accessed through the old permalinks sometimes, but if you dont want to happen this then ‘Permalinks Moved Permanently’ plugins is for you which grabs and checks the slug from the end of the request to the post with slug somewhere else on the blog. (before the generation of 404 from the old permalink) and generates a ‘301 moved permanently’ error to the visitor and forwards him to the new location.

Must Check Plugins

30.Search everything

Search Everything is a plugin which increases the search functionality by activating the Configure options Search (covers two steps) where the options (metadata) may be searching every page, tag, every category, highlighting, comments, excerpts, custom fields, custom taxonomies, exclude posts and exclude categories.

31.Subscribe2

Subscribe2 is a plugin to send email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish any new content in your blog providing a comprehensive subscription management. The emails sent can be on periodical or pre-post basis where certain categories can be excluded for individuals through a custom field. This plugin also lets you handle requests for subscription or to register with your blog by submitting their email addresses in a simple user form where the format of the email can also be customized as an excerpt or full post.

32.Exec PHP

The Exec-PHP plugin executes the PHP code in the content portion of your posts and in the excerpts which can also be restricted to certain users by using the roles and capabilities of theirs, also works in your news feeds. Updates the notifications is a new version of this plug-in is available and issues any user warnings for inappropriate blog and its settings. Supports multi languages which write the code in familiar syntax.

32.Wp ecommerce

WP e-Commerce is a shopping cart plugin which features shopping cart application used for selling your products, services or fess online can be primarily used for crafters, artists, books, DVD’sm bands & record labels. This plugin is designed for great presentation and aesthetics.

33.Next gen gallery

A fully integrated image gallery plugin, NextGEN come with a slideshow option along with role settings where each gallery has an author, sortable albums, watermark functions, option to upload pictures via a zip file, sidebar widget, tag support for images, JavaScript effect like Lightbox, Shutter, Highslide and Thickbox. Also has a multiple CSS stylesheet which gives a shadow effect for the thumbnails and a TinyMCE button for easily adding the gallery tags.

34.Contact form

Another simple and flexible plugin, ContactForm7 manages multiple contact forms which can be customized with the mail contents with a simple markup. This plugin also supports AJAX submitting, spam filtering, CAPTCHA etc. Comes with more than 35 translators.

35.Vipers video quick tags

Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin valid posting of videos with easy XHTML from websites like YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimoe and so on. You don’t have to copy and paste the embed HTML just click the ‘new’ button from this plugin and paste the site’s URL in the prompt box where you can configure the display option like alter the height, width, alignment and colors.

Other plugins

36.Contemplate

Contemplate plugin us manages commonly used content like text, HTML, CSS or JavaScript which appears on site pages,you can define the content template in the options page of the plugin and insert them anywhere in the site any number of times in the post, pages, widget or comments. and the change in the template is automatically updated everywhere in the site wherever defined.

37.Front end editor

Front-end Editor, a WordPress 3.0 plugin comes with fully editable widgets where you can also see the controls on the widget scree, can handle custom Post type including Posts and Pages, add or remove buttons from the settings page, double clicking in the thumbnail will display your images whatever be the overlay script. It is light and fast and compatible with any theme eliminating the need to load the admin back end.

38.Multiple post thumbnails

Multiple Post Thumbnails plugin adds multiple post thumbnails to a post type i.e. you can have more than one Featured image on your post.

Akismet

Akismet is so crucial to a WordPress blog it even comes pre-installed. All you need to do is sign up for an API key from WordPress.com in order to activate the plugin.

What does it do?

Akismet works on the front line in the battle against spam. It picks out spammy comments from your blog and helps protect your site against those pesky spam bots.

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All in One SEO Pack

Changing your Permalink structure is the first step you should take to a more optimised blog. The second step is to install the All in One SEO pack to allow complete customisation of every post and page to squeeze out the best search optimisation you can.

What does it do?

The All in One SEO pack makes a few important SEO improvements to your WordPress blog, such as canonical URL redirection and reconfiguration of page titles. More importantly it gives you complete control over the page title, meta description and keywords for every post and page so you can completely optimise your site.

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Google XML Sitemaps

After settings up your permalinks and installing the All in One SEO pack, all that’s left to do to completely SEO’ify your blog is to provide the Googlebots a sitemap to feast on. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin does exactly what it says on the tin…

What does it do?

The Google XML Sitemaps plugin creates and regenerates an XML based sitemap file that lists every page of your site in order of popularity. This allows the bots to easily crawl your pages, as well as quickly update changed pages in the search index.

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Login Lockdown

Brute force attacks are one of the most common ways blogs are hacked. One way to protect against this is with the Login Lockdown plugin, which provides a sturdy security wall between your site and the bad people by limiting the number of login attempts and blocking out IPs that exceed this set amount.

What does it do?

The Login Lockdown can be configured to allow X number of login retries. Once these retries have been exceeded, that particular IP will be locked out for a period of time (also configurable). The plugin also allows you to mask login errors, so WordPress will no longer give hackers a clue if they correctly guessed your username.

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W3 Total Cache

I’ve played around with just about every caching plugin out there, but W3 Total Cache definitely gets my recommendation. Caching is one of the most important additions to any WordPress blog. The W3 Total Cache plugin not only provides page caching, but also has database caching, object caching and a minify system built right in – All with customisable options.

What does it do?

W3 Total Cache speeds up your WordPress site by caching pages. Instead of WordPress making multiple calls to the server upon every visit, it displays a ready-made static file or reuses queries from the cache. This provides a huge speed increase and eases the load on your web server.

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WP-DBManager

Regularly taking backups of your WordPress database is as important as remembering breathe. There’s a good selection of ‘scheduled backup’ plugins out there, but my favourite is WP-DBManager. Not only does this plugin provide useful scheduling options, but it also allows you to browse, restore and optimize your database directly in WordPress.

What does it do?

WP-DBManager allows you to browse your database tables, restore existing backups, automatically optimize your database and set regular scheduled backups at interval of hours, days or months.

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WP Smush.it

The images you upload to your WordPress blog will account for a large portion of the load your server deals with. Smushing these images strips out the meta data, optimizes compression and removes unused colours from JPEG, GIF and PNG files, which in turn reduced their size by a couple of percent. This change isn’t huge on a per-file basis, but it all adds up when calculated across the whole site!

What does it do?

WP Smush.it automatically sends all the images you upload via the WordPress media uploader through the Smush.it API to optimize the images. You can even go back and Smush all your existing images using the handy button in the media browser.

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