Lazy Blogger's guide to Super Charge WordPress with 100+ Plugins 2024

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Ask yourself a question, “Are you a Lazy Blogger?”. Even if you are not, these plugins will bring you to next evolution for your WordPress blog which will change the way you do blogging.

“Why do you need these plugins?”. Because, WordPress is the best and the most expandable blogging platform in the world, the plugin architecture simply gives you the power to add engaging features, improve communication and build a strong relation between you and your blog readers. Savvy? No?

Blogging is about writing great content and if your spend all your sweet time modifying your blog by hard coding then “When will you find the time to write the great content?”. Makes you think? By the time you reach over this post, you might be so proud of yourself that you have actually 23 plugins installed on your WordPress and you begin to think like you are getting professional. Well my friend, I can tell you one thing –

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“Quality matters over Quantity”

Today the mission of this post is to guide you to discover the most useful, smart and efficient plugins for WordPress. These plugins will let you concentrate more about writing your content rather than spending time over managing the blog.

Carefully hand picked and incredibly handy WordPress plugins to power up your blog are included in this list. Among some popular WordPress plugins you also will discover new, not so well known or underrated but extremely useful WordPress plugins.

Just a few Notes before continue :

Spend enough time to understand your need and purpose of your blog. An example would be a photo blog. A photo blog will require image gallery plugins etc. So sort out first what kind of blog and then add appropriate plugins.
Do not install all of the plugins, it will simply overload your WordPress configuration. If possible test it out on your local system.
Not all the plugins listed here are the very best but they do “get the things done”.
Ah I just found out someone simply stolen the content and image of this article and changed the image to claim it as their own.

‘Nuff said, lets continue…

Blog Management Plugins

Managing your blog can be tedious task. Lets see how we can simplify the process of managing your blog using these plugins.

WordPress Backup – WordPress Backup is an essential plugin for all WordPress blog administrators. It performs regular backups of your upload (images) current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email. Don’t get caught without a recent backup of your theme or images or plugins.
You can adjust the interval between backups and the email address to which the backups are sent.
Note:
a) As the size of the zip files increase, it may not be possible to email the files due to limitations of email servers.
b) It requires some editing on PHP.INI at your server, but not all hosting service provider allows you to access that feature.
Why do you need this?
On a Rainy Day this will save your life.
WP Database Backup – Database is the crucial part of your blog system. WordPress database backup creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database. It can backup database to your server as well as it can email the database directly to your inbox. Nifty? Yup, it is pretty sweet when you can also schedule the interval between the backups.
Why do you need this?
On a Rainy Day this also will save your life.
WP Super Cache â A very popular and easy to use caching plugin which generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. Yes, it is a noticeable performance improvement tool. Pretty easy to setup and configure.
Why do you need this?
This generates static files and reduce loads on the server dramatically.
Alternative would be:

W3 Total Cache – This is another alternative to the WP Super Cache plugin. Trusted by many popular blogs like: mashable.com, pearsonified.com, webdesignerdepot.com, freelanceswitch.com, briansolis.com, css3.info, tutsplus.com, yoast.com, noupe.com and others. W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download time of your theme and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
Benefits:
* At least 10x improvement in site performance (Grade A in YSlow, when fully configured)
* “Instant” second page views (browser caching after first page view)
* Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site (visitors view more pages)
* Optimized progressive render (pages appear to load instantly)
* Improved web server performance (easily sustain high traffic spikes)
* Up to 80% Bandwidth savings via Minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and RSS feeds
Note: This plugin is designed for very advance users.
Why do you need this?
I’ve moved from WP-Super Cache to this one for some specific performance reasons but as a general blogger you can always use WP Super Cache plugin.
Maintenance Mode Plugin â Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. A great tool to use while you upgrade your blog.
Why do you need this?
Definitely you don’t want your visitors to end up on some error page while you are upgrading your blog ;)
Plugin Manager – lets you to view, download and install plugins from wordpress.org from an AJAX’ed interface, instead of manually downloading, extracting and uploading each plugin. A real time saver you can say.
Another alternative would be:
Plugin Central – Automatically installs WordPress plugins by name and URL. Provides automatic update of multiple plugins.
Why do you need this?
It makes you life much more simpler for installing and updating plugins.
Role Manager – allows you to assign different levels of access to different contributors to your blog â for example, only allowing a user to contribute to a particular category. Comes with very detailed and exclusive options.
Why do you need this?
This one will give you the flexibility of managing multiple level of permissions on your blog. If you run a multi-author blog, this will become your Swiss army knife.
No Self Ping â Prevents your blog from sending pingbacks internally to your other posts.
Why do you need this?
Self-Pinging is simply annoying
WP-Optimize – Oh yeah, this is kinda shameless plug. I know. But Remember WP-Optimize can clean your database overhead in one simple click, cleans up your post revisions, additionally allows you to change your username and enables you to clean up your spam queue comments in a flash.
Why do you need this?
Enables you to cleanup your database overhead, easy and simple to use. Compatible with all WordPress 2.x databases and keeps your database in a optimal condition without going through PhpMyAdmin interface. You should run it at least once every month.
WPML Multilingual CMS – Allows building complete multilingual sites with WordPress
Pretty Link – Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. You can now shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)! In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Link tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os and host. Pretty Link is a killer plugin for people who want to mask their affiliate links, track clicks from emails, their links on Twitter to come from their own domain, or generally increase the reach of their website by spreading these links on forums or comments on other blogs.
Sidebar-Login – has both a widget and a template tag to allow you to have a login form in the sidebar of your wordpress powered blog.
WordPress.com Stats – Automattic created its own stats system, to focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provide them in a clear and concise interface. Installing this stats plugin is much like installing Akismet, all you need is to put in your API Key and the rest is automatic.
Feedburner Feed Replacement – Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while letting through some important User-Agents.
Adminimize – Visually compresses the administrative header so that more admin page content can be initially seen. Also moves ‘Dashboard’ onto the main administrative menu because having it sit in the tip-top black bar was ticking me off and many other changes in the edit-area. Adminimize is a WordPress plugin that lets you hide ‘unnecessary’ items from the WordPress administration menu, submenu and even the ‘Dashboard’, with forwarding to the Manage-page. On top of that, you can also hide post meta controls on the Write page and other areas in the admin-area and Write-page, so as to simplify the editing interface. Compatible with WordPress 2.5 or later. Configure all metaboxes and other areas in the write-area. The new theme move the Tags- and Category-box to the sidebar, switch off optional metaboxes and other areas in the write-area. Scroll automatically to the Textbox, when you click the write-button. Many options for menu, submenu and all areas, metaboxes in the write-area, separated for all roles in WordPress. Screen Shots.
WordPress Mobile Edition shows mobile visitors a mobile version of the site. You have to install the theme as well
Google Analyticator makes it easy to enable Google Analytics on your blog and measure where visitors are coming from, what terms they are searching for, etc.
Another strong alternative is:
Ultimate Google Analytics – Plugin to add Google Analytics JavaScript to each page on your weblog without making any changes to your template. The plugin can also add tracking to outbound links, downloads from your own site and mailto: links.
Branded Login Screen for WordPress – Lets you use custom login screen instead of WordPress default. Branded Admin which lets you change the admin area is also available
WP Sentry is a plugin for access-restricted posting, allowing bloggers to discuss sensitive subjects without being exposed to Google or non registered users. With WP Sentry you can create user groups, specify which users or groups have access to the post. Setting any access restrictions forces the post to be listed as private in WordPress, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to hide a sensitive post. Users may be members of multiple groups.
Absolute Privacy for WordPress provides you with the ultimate user moderation. It’s perfect for family blogs, private communities, and personal websites. It could force users to enter first and last name during registration, let users to choose their own passwords, get emailed every time an approval is waiting (with a link for quick approval), lock out all non-logged in views from your website.
Co-Authors Plugin – When you have a blog that is being run by multiple authors, there are times that more than one person contribute to an article. Co-Authors that will let you associate multiple authors to a post in WordPress. Co-authored posts appear on a co-author’s posts page and feed. Additionally, co-authors may edit the posts they are associated with, and co-authors who are contributors may only edit posts if they have not been published (as is usual).
Hide Dashboard – This plugin lets you hide dashboard features from some users. The title just say it all.
Pre-Publish Post Reminder – Always forget to insert your signature, thumbnail or maybe a category image? Or need a place to store your code where you can conveniently copy and paste into your post? Need to leave a note for co-authors? This is what this plugin is for â a handy reminder list on your Post Admin page.
Userextra On Blogs that have multiple authors, it is wise to assign authors to specific categories to avoid confusion. This plugin limits the user to publishing into the categories he/she is assigned.

Content Plugins

Empower your contents with these terrific plugins:

Customizable Post Listings – Display Recent Posts, Recently Commented Posts, Recently Modified Posts, Random Posts, and other post, page, or draft listings using the post information of your choosing in an easily customizable manner. You can narrow post searches by specifying categories and/or authors, among other things.
Organize Series – This plugin adds a number of features to wordpress that enable you to easily write and organize a series of posts and display the series dynamically in your blog. You can associate “icons” or “logos” with the various series. This version of Organize Series Plugin requires at least WordPress 2.8 to workAnother alternative would be:In Series â Allows you to easily group a series of posts into a series.Why do you need this?
If you have multiple posts that are part of a series, this plugin will help you out by automating managing the series of posts.
Post Template allows you to create templates for posts with the same structure â perfect for reviews and series, and also useful to keep a multi-author blog consistent.
ComicPress Manager – ComicPress Manager ties in with the ComicPress theme to make managing your WordPress-hosted Webcomic easy and fast.
WP-Table Reloaded – Enables you to create and manage tables in your WP’s admin area. No HTML knowledge is needed. A comfortable backend allows to easily edit table data. You can include the tables into your posts, on your pages or in text widgets by using a shortcode or a template tag function. Tables can be imported and exported from/to CSV, XML and HTML. Screen shots.
Quotes Collection – Ajax powered Random Quote sidebar widget helps you collect and display your favorite quotes on your WordPress blog.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.AlternativeMicrokid’s Related Posts allows you to manually add related posts.
Yet Another Photoblog – Convert your WordPress Blog into a full featured photoblog in virtually no time. Use the full range of WordPress functions and plugins: Benefit from the big community WordPress has to offer
Add Signature Plugin for WordPress – This plugin lets you display a custom signature at the bottom of your posts. Simply type the text you want in the options page and configure it to display on every post, or manually display it by adding the trigger text wherever you like. You can also add in author information using the included variables â login name, first name, last name, nickname, email address, website, and description/bio. It get this information from the author’s account settings. It currently supports up to three different signature templates.
Insights WordPress plugin bring a powerful new way to write your blog posts. With Insights you can very quickly (in couple of seconds) do the following: search your blog for posts, edit them or insert links to them into the current post, insert Flickr Images, Youtube videos, links to Wikipedia, Google Map. Insights allows you to do all this using dynamic AJAX interface which loads the relevant information to your post in just a few seconds
Post By Author – This plugin will show the last X posts by the current author either at the bottom of every post, or where you manually specify in each post. Using the built-in options page, you can choose the number of posts to show, set the header text, choose to show the post dates, select the format of the date, and choose whether or not to include the current post in the list

SEO Plugins

SEO Plays a very crucial role in your Blog, so here are the plugins you need. For more SEO plugins and tools for WordPress, take a look inside the “Total solutions for WordPress SEO” post.

All in One SEO Pack – A must install. A very powerful Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.
Another alternative would be:

HeadSpace2 SEO – All-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site
Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
AskApache Google 404 – Displays unbeatable information to site visitors arriving at a non-existent page (from a bad link). Major SEO with Google AJAX, Google 404 Helper, Related Posts, Recent Posts, etc..
Smart 404 – Rescue your viewers from site errors! When content cannot be found, Smart 404 will use the current URL to attempt to find matching content, and redirect to it automatically. Smart 404 also supplies template tags which provide a list of suggestions, for use on a 404.php template page if matching content can’t be immediately discovered.
Simple Tags – Simple Tags is the successor of Simple Tagging Plugin This is THE perfect tool to manage perfectly your WP 2.3, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 tags. It was written with this philosophy : best performances, more secured.
WP Greet Box – Show a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, and more! Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins.

Comments Plugins

3rd Party Hosted Commenting Systems

Disqus Commenting System: My personal favorite. It’s a total web comments management service integrated with many popular Social Media Platforms. Namely you can comment using your facebook login, OpenID, Twitter and others. Very handy moderation dashboard and a mature product. You will need to have an account with Disqus and you need to register your blog to it first. It also sync the comments with WordPress database so if you decided not to use it anymore, all your comments will be available to WordPress. Not to mention that this system also contains a WordPress Plugin for easier sync and manageably. All comments interface is hosted by Disqus itself.

Alternative Choice 1

IntenseDebate: Almost all the same feature as Disqus commenting system with some additional options. It has it’s own WordPress plugin as well. Created by the owner of WordPress systems. I still prefer Disqus though.

Alternative Choice 2

JS-KIT Echo: Well known JavaScript based hosted commenting platform which also integrates with WordPress, provides a good number of alternative login systems and Social Media interaction for commenting.

Verdict: Disqus Commenting System. Continue to the rest of this section if you are not interested on one stop solutions or you might like to customize the features of the comments section of your blog.

Blog Comments Plugins

Akismet Spam filter plugin (Requires a WordPress.org free account) is an absolute must for any blog, filtering out obvious spam and holding back the dubious stuff for moderation.
WP Ajax Edit Comments – The most powerful comment editing solution for WordPress. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments.
Note: Handy and Useful but resource heavy.
DoFollow is a plugin which disables the default ânofollow’ setting on WordPress blogs (which tells search engines to disregard any links in comments). This means that links posted in comments benefit from âGoogle juice’.
Note: Personally I’m not using it right now because I am using Disqus.
CommentLuv – This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve a selection of their last blog posts, tweets or digg submissions which they can choose one from to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
Note: It has been found to increase comments and the community spirit for the thousands of blogs that have installed it. With a simple install you will immediately start to find new and interesting blog posts, tweets and diggs from your own blog and community. Visit ComLuv for more information.
Gurken StC is an extension of the version from Mark Jaquith (txfx.net). It supports closed-loop authentication which means that you first have to confirm your mail address, before you’re able to receive notifications about subsequent comments.
Comment Rating – Allows visitors to rate comments in Like vs. Dislike fashion with clickable images. Poorly-rated & highly-rated comments are displayed differently
Comment Redirect – This plugin redirect your first time commentators to a WordPress page of your choice. This is an excellent plugin to use if you want to thank your first time commentators. You can send them to a page where you have written some kind words for them.
Comment Relish â This plugin lets you send out email to your new commentators and welcome them/thank them. This is a great way to initiate the process of interaction. Keep the message short and sweet. Tag with it some resources that might be helpful to your users. Often times marketers attach freebies and other products which makes the new visitor, a loyal user to your website.

Image Plugins

Scissors – Enhances WordPress’ handling of images by introducing cropping, resizing, rotating, and watermarking functionality.
Simple Flickr Photos – Displays Flickr photos based on your settings.
Note: This one also depends on what kind of focus you have on your blog. If you are a photographer and you host your images at Flickr then you might consider using this.
jQuery Lightbox – Image overlay plugin
Another alternative would be:
jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries – Makes the native WordPress galleries use a lightbox to display the fullsize images.
Yet another alternative would be:
Lightview Plus – A wordpress plugin which implements lightview of Nick Stakenburg. Lightview does the same as lightbox, but in a much nicer way and since Version 2.0 much more. Now lightview-plus plays videos from YouTube and Vimeo.
Another alternative would be:
Lightbox Plus – Permits users to view larger versions of images from the current page and display simple slide shows, all in an overlay.
Nexgen Gallery – NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. You need to check out the Demo Site.
Another alternative would be:
GRAND Flash Album Gallery – Full integrated (flash skin based, slideshow) Image Gallery plugin with a powerful admin back end.

Social Media Plugins

Lets you integrate your blog and interact with many social media platforms:

WP to Twitter – The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress blog using the Cli.gs URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter. If you have a Cli.gs API key, the shortened URL will also be filed in your Cli.gs account so that you can track statistics for the shortened URL. The plugin can send a default message for updating or editing posts or pages, but also allows you to write a custom Tweet for your post which says whatever you want. By default, the shortened URL from Cli.gs is appended to the end of your message, so you should keep that in mind when writing your custom Tweet. Any status update you write which is longer than the available space will automatically be truncated by the plugin. This applies to both the default messages and to your custom messages.
Twitter Widget Pro – A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username, #hashtag, and link parsing. It supports displaying profiles images, and even lets you control whether to display the time and date of a tweet or how log ago it happened (about 5 hours ago, etc). Requires PHP5.
Sociable â Automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites to your posts, pages and RSS feed
SexyBookmarks – Adds an attractive social bookmarking menu to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three
Twitoaster – Twitter Conversations. Automatically retrieve Twitter Replies to your Blog’s Posts. These Twitter Replies are handled like Posts Comments, using WP built-in comment system.
Twitter Goodies plugin will show your tweets under Sidebar Area (Widget), Post and/or Pages
Twitter Friendly Links – The plugin creates a shorter link for every blog post, so instead of http://kovshenin.com/wordpress/plugins/twitter-friendly-links/ you can use http://kovshenin.com/712. Sweet, huh?
Digg Digg WordPress Plugin WordPress plugin that is used to generate social vote button, which include Digg , Reddit , Dzone , Yahoo Buzz , TweetMeme (twitter) , fbShare (facebook) and Polladium buttons.
WP FollowMe is a wordpress plugin that allow you to add a twitter “Follow me” badge on your wordpress blog.
BackType Tweetcount – The BackType Tweetcount plugin shows the number of tweets your posts get and allows users to retweet.
Another cool alternative would be:
Easy Retweet – Simple and effective retweet button for your blog posts.
Tweet Blender – Similar in functionality to Twitter’s own widget but has support for multiple authors, hashtags, and keywords all blended together. The plugin can show tweets from just one user (as all other Twitter plugins do); however, it can also show tweets for a topic which you can define via Twitter hashtag or keyword. But there is more! It can also show tweets for multiple authors AND multiple keywords AND multiple hashtags all blended together into a single stream. View Screen Shots.
Add to Any: Subscribe Button – Helps readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader, such as Google Reader, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, Windows Live, and all other RSS readers. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing history.
ShareThis – The ShareThis WordPress plugin provides a simple way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more
Another alternative would be:
Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button – Help readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing history
Gigya Socialize – Increase Registration and Engagement using Facebook Connect, Twitter and OpenID. Demo Site.
Facebook Connect for WordPress – WordPress plugin that allows direct integration of WordPress blogs with Facebook using Facebook Connect.
WordBook – Bring your WordPress blog posts into Facebook, and enabling users to comment and share those posts.
Last.Fm Records – This plugin shows CD covers on your WordPress weblog. It connects to last.fm and grabs the list of CDs you listened to recently and tries to find the cover images at last.fm
Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that automatically posts your delicious, ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit, or Yahoo Pipes bookmarks to your blog. The exact details of how your bookmarks are posted are very customizable and are designed to meet your specific needs. Postalicious uses the pseudo-cron functionality introduced in WordPress 2.1 to schedule automatic hourly updates. If you do not have WordPress 2.1 or later installed, you will still be able to use Postalicious, but you will have to perform the updates manually
WP-Email – Allows people to recommend/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.

Widget/Presentation Plugins

My Link Order – Allows you to set the order in which links and link categories will appear in the sidebar.
Video Sidebar Widgets – A video sidebar widget using WordPress 2.8 Widgets API to display videos such as Vimeo, YouTube, MySpace Videos etc. Requires at least WordPress 2.8.1
About Me widget – Add an “About Me” widget to your sidebar.
Note: Not really necessary but it still depends on your choice. It’s not a good thing to clutter up your sidebar.
Advanced RSS – This plugin creates a new RSS widget. You can use this to replace the built in RSS widget or along side it. It is substantially more powerful than the built in widget in that you have complete control over how the feed is displayed via XSL templates. The plugin also includes an admin page for creating, editing and deleting the xsl templates, along with running tests to ensure your environment supports the required features. Additionally some plugin-wide options may be configured
Sidebar Photoblog – An easy to use photoblog plugin helps you to share your daily photos on your sidebar. With photo archive, nice effects and ability to show random photo.
Top Commentators Widget – Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Adapted from Show Top Commentators plugin at Personal Financial Advice
Flexi Pages Widget – A highly configurable WordPress sidebar widget to list pages and sub-pages. User friendly widget control comes with various options.
Get Recent Comments – This plugin shows excerpts of the latest comments and/or trackbacks in your sidebar. You have comprehensive control about their appearance. This ranges from the number of comments, the length of the excerpts up to the html layout. You can let the plugin order the comments by the corresponding post, or simply order them by date. The plugin can (optionally) separate the trackbacks/pingbacks from the comments. It can ignore comments to certain categories, and it offers support for gravatars. It only gives extra work to the database, when actually a new comment arrived. You can filter out unwanted pingbacks, which originate from your own blog. And it is a widget.
Another alternative would be:
WP-RecentComments – Display recent comments in your blog sidebar.
Facebook Dashboard Widget – You can display your Facebook friends status updates, posted items and/or notifications on your WordPress dashboard. Require WP 2.5 or above.
List Authors Widget – This plugin display a list of authors in your WordPress Sidebar Widgets linking to the authors.php page

Banner and Advertise Plugins

AdRotate – Make making money easy with AdRotate. Add advanced banners to your website using the simplest interface available!
Easy AdSense – Easiest way to show AdSense and make money from your blog.
WP-Insert: Allows insert any type of content fragments inside your posts, can be used as a AD Manager also.
Sponsors Slideshow Widget – Widget to display a certain link category with images as slide show.
Author Advertising Plugin – Specially for multi author blogs. This plugin allows blog admins to create a revenue sharing program utilizing one of the many advertising programs out there i.e Yahoo, Google Adsense, Amazon, Allposters etc.

Other Plugins

PayPal Donations – Easy and simple setup and insertion of PayPal donate buttons with a shortcode or through a sidebar Widget. Donation purpose can be set for each button
Contact Form 7 – Simple, flexible but efficient contact form plugin
Another alternative would be:
cForms II allows you to create multiple and customizable contact forms across your blog, including multiple forms on the same page.
WordPress Download Monitor – Manage downloads on your site, view and show hits, and output in posts.
WP-CodeBox – WP-CodeBox provides clean syntax highlighting and AJAX advanced features for embedding source code within pages or posts.
WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog
PollDaddy Polls – The PollDaddy Polls plugin allows you to create and manage polls from within your WordPress dashboard. You can create polls, choose from 20 different styles for your polls and view all results for your polls as they come in. All PollDaddy polls are fully customizable, you can set a close date for your poll, create multiple choice polls, choose whether to display the results or keep them private. You can even embed the polls you create on other websites. You can collect unlimited votes and create unlimited polls
Category Icons – Assigns icons to categories with WordPress 2.3 or higher.
TDO Mini Forms – This plugin allows you to add highly customizable forms that work with your WordPress Theme to your website that allows non-registered users and/or subscribers (also configurable) to submit and edit posts and pages. New posts are kept in “draft” until an admin can publish them (also configurable). Likewise edits can be kept be automatically kept as revisions until an admin approves them. It can optionally use Akismet to check if submissions and contributions are spam. TDO Mini Forms can be used to create “outside-the-box” uses for WordPress, from Contact Managers, Ad Managers, Collaborates Image Sites, Submit Links, etc.
WP-Print – Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
Another alternative would be:
Bunny’s Print CSS creates a stylesheet for printing so users printing pages from your blog can avoid endless pages of widgets, comments or other page furniture (including design elements).
Easy Popular Posts shows you your most popular posts â useful to install in a sidebar (you’ll need to put a line of PHP in the sidebar template for this).
GD Star Rating – GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and also add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. Plugin includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. Plugin also supports multi ratings along with thumbs based ratings. Plugin supports use of cache plugins and dynamic loading of data using ajax
GD Press Tools – GD Press Tools is a collection of various administration, seo, maintenance, backup and security related tools. This tools can be integrated into the various WordPress admin panels, can perform maintenance operations, change some aspects of WordPress, see detailed server settings and information. Plugin can also track posts and pages views for various popularity lists. Some of the features don’t work with every version of the WordPress
RSSImport – Import and display Feeds in your blog, use PHP or the Shortcode.
Smart Archives Reloaded is an enhanced version of the Smart Archives. It’s easier to setup, there is no code editing required, it features better caching and now you don’t need to wait when publishing a new post and provides you settings page to choose how you want the archives displayed.
ProPlayer WP Plugin will help you to put videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Dailymoition on your blog in any FLV Player. It’s highly customizable with support of 27 skins and in addition you can play mov/mp4/h264/mp3 files too. Plugins includes Rating video, Visualizer for audio files, Displaying watermark. By default JW FLV Media Player is used.
Smart Youtube is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos in your post, comments and in your RSS feed. The plugin is designed to be small and fast and not use any external resources. Smart YouTube also supports playback of high quality videos, works on iPhone, produces xHTML valid code and allows you to view videos in fullscreen.
WordPress e-Commerce Plugin is e-Commerce platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards and usability. This plugin makes it easy for you to accept payments online via Google Checkout, Paypal, Authorize.net, Payment Express. You can also tweak your site to look however you want utilizing WordPress PHP template tags, shortcodes and widgets.
Breadcrumb Navigation is an excellent supplementary navigation system specially for CMS because it helps in site usability. The plugin we are going to share in this article reveals page hierarchy. It is a very good addition to the design because of usability and it also provides SEO benefits because it links to the path hence increasing bot activity in page indexing.
WP-Typography – Have you ever wished that you can have rounded quotes, show ellipses, your hyphens don’t get mixed up, yes WP-Typography takes care of that. This plugin is not required for everyone, it is just for those who care about minor details.

Conclusion

This is my current list of smart, efficient plugins; yet it’s inevitable that there are other plugins out there which I am not aware of at this moment. Do you know one or maybe few? Feel free to suggest me your favorite plugin using the comment form. I will try my best to keep this post updated with your suggestions.

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