My List of Indispensible WordPress Plugins…

WordPress is an amazing tool for publishing to the web. It is at once both incredibly simple AND extremely powerful. Almost anyone can create a dynamic and engaging web site through WordPress… if they make the attempt.

Part of the power of WordPress is in the extensibility of the platform through plug-ins. The large community of WordPress users have created these little snippets to solve problems or overcome shortfalls of the basic program.

These are some of my favorites…

And I’m going to start off with two that aren’t for WordPress, but that I use ALL of the time…

• Zemanta – This is one of my “blogging assistants”.  Zemanta searches for relavent photos for posts, while I am writing them.  It is a FireFox plugin, and functions on all of the WordPress blogs without installing a WP plugin.  I also have it installed on my Joomla sites…  I did have to install a Joomla plugin…
• ScribeFire – Another of my “blogging assistants” … and a commenting assitant, too.  ScribeFire lets me format posts or comments, even adding video to comments on Active Rain.  I can add headlines, colored text and other features using it.  It is also a FireFox plugin.

I promised WordPress Plugins…  So here are a few…

• Add Post Footer – Just like the Post Footer settings here on AR, I can add whatever I want to each post on my blog with this plug-in.  Automatically…
• All-In-One SEO Pack – Tunes SEO for the blog and posts easily…
• Apture – A different way to present media.  I just started using this on my WP blogs after reading about it here from Brad Andersohn.
• Google XML Sitemap – It is very important to have a sitemap.  This automatically creates, updates and sends to search engines…
• Great Real Estate – I can showcase listings easily on my blog…  I also can run sidebar widgets with the listing pics and other info if I choose.
• Local Market Explorer – This is a tool from Zillow that put market stats, reports, pictures, info and other juicy stuff on pages in my blogs… easily.
• MobilePress – Automatically see when a mobile devide is looking at the blog and tweak it to better display on that device.
• NextGEN Gallery – This is a better gallery system that the stock one in WordPress.  It is also required for Great Real Estate.
• Property Watch – Automatically builds a form so that buyers can send me requests for the type of property they are looking for…
• SoJ Tag Feed – I can create a landing page for ANY tag or catagory on my blog… with this I can create an RSS feed for any tag as well.
• Wibiya – Check out the Toolbar at the bottom of LaneBailey.com.  Although I might have to pull it down to experiment with something else (something BETA this way comes?)
• WP-DB Manager – I can do database management from my blog… and have it automatically email back-ups to me.

There are actually a lot more plugins that I run, but this gives you a good idea of what is available.  it is a VERY extensible platform.

What do you think of the new theme?  Like how it matches GarageHomesUSA, even though they are on different platforms?

from Lane’s Active Rain blog