ESSENTIAL WORDPRESS PLUGINS (REVISITED AGAIN)

Wordpress is immensely powerful straight out of the box, but it's possible to add pretty much ANY functionality you want, and it's usually for free.

This is a list of the TOP Plugins we use at q292u.com.
They are in no particular order.

(This is an UPDATED version of an updated version of an earlier post. There are SIGNIFICANT changes, as Wordpress is such a moving target)

AKISMET.
ESSENTIAL anti-spam system. Free to non-commercial users.
Filters out unwanted (spam) comments automatically, and provides stats on what it's doing. ESSENTIAL.

WORDPRESS SEO. (YOAST)

We now use this in preference to All-In-One-SEO-PACK. Allows us to tailor in-post SEO far better. Also handles Sitemaps. ESSENTIAL

BETTER-WP-SECURITY.

Plugs all the holes we could find. Also handles backups. Excellent! ESSENTIAL

ADROTATE.
Handles advertising on your site. Very comprehensive. Individual ads are created and then made into groups. You can then position the groups as widgets, in posts and on pages. Ads have start and end dates, and tracking can be switched on or off. Better than maxbannerads.  ** The latest version has had features removed due to a "premium" version. Avoid this version. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

WP AUTO TAGGER.
Automatically adds relevant tags to your posts as you create them, based on post content. It'll find tags you hadn't thought of. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

AUTO POST THUMBNAIL.

Automatically sets the "Featured Image" attribute of the post, based on the content. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

HYPERCACHE.
Excellent caching plugin, creates static version of all your posts and pages as they are created. Far better than SUPERCACHE. ESSENTIAL if you use a lot of plugins, or have a lot of visitors.
Get the "Clear Cache" Button plugin as well.

EXCLUDE FROM NAVIGATION.
Some themes automatically add all pages to navigation menus. This is how to stop it. Adds a checkbox in the editor. ESSENTIAL.

SMART 404.
Attempts to redirect 404 errors to relevant pages based on search query, and URL requested. Reduces bounce-rates. ESSENTIAL

Google Analytics. (YOAST)
This adds Google Analytics tracking code to all your pages and posts, so you can keep tabs on everything. You need an analytics account. ESSENTIAL.

CONTEXTUAL RELATED POSTS.
Adds links to other relevant posts on your site. Engages visitors, and keeps them on your site longer. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

STOP SPAMMERS

Blocks spammers from ever registering. So they can't post. Nice. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

COVERT SOCIAL CONTENT

We use this instead of FEEDWORDPRESS, due to performance issues. NOT FREE!

Strongly Recommended

COVERT SOCIAL BUZZ 

Generates Likes/Tweets/etc. Not Free. Strongly Recommended.

WP SOCIAL POPUP.

Generates Likes/Tweets/etc. Strongly Recommended.

SOCIAL LOCKER (FREE Version)

Excellent! - Locks up content until the user tweets, likes, g+1 or whatever. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

Wordpress 3.3 Upgrades Completed

Out of the final three (mission-critical) sites, two went through smoothly.
One did not, and had to be upgraded via FTP, then remove the .maintenance file.
Anyway, that's it. All plugins updated, and all sites running on Wordpress 3.3.

Give it a week, and there'll be an urgent security fix, while everyone is off on their xm,as break..

Wordbay problem.

Inexplicably, Wordbay stopped working across all my sites on unlimited last week.
Not only that, but it took out all sites with it installed.
Had to rename wordbay folder via FTP to get back in.
Quick e-mail to Mark Daniels (wordbay developer), and he's as puzzled as me.
It does point to a change at Unlimited, but they say no..

Anyway, It works if I switch off geo-location. Mark's changing the code for version 1.6, out soon.

10/10 for support, Mark!

Wordpress 3.1.2 Upgrade

Upgraded all sites to wordpress 3.1.2 last week.
Tested all sites: OK.
Of course, on Saturday, I find that one of the sites has fallen over with a memory allocation error in wp-db.php, which is in the Wordpress core directory..

Quick e-mail to unlimited support who confirm that nothing has changed at their end.

So that means it's either a problem with 3.1.2, or one of the plugins. Only solution: disable all plugins, and re-enable one by one, testing site as we go.

Eventually traced to "efficient related posts" plugin.
Site back up and running in a few minutes. Sorted.

Internal Server Error 500

Been getting this error intermittently across multiple sites and multiple hosting.
Last night, I had two sites down for a couple of hours.
Apparently, Wordpress is trying to access something that isn't available, and rather than timing-out, it's crashing.
WP forums has lots of conflicting info about this.
It's either a problem with dodgy plugins/themes, a problem with mod_rewrite rules in htaccess, or just Godaddy being crap. Well I'm not with Godaddy.

The only thing that seems to be consistent is that it started happening after WP 3.01.
I've just upgraded to 3.1.. so we'll see what happens..

Site Updates

Moved all remaining sites over to Wordpress Mobile Pack, rather than Wordpress Mobile Edition.
This was not without complications! Rights, settings, etc.
All sites with serious traffic are now running WP-Super-Cache. Page load times on Supercars-for-sale.com have dropped from "up-to-30-seconds" down to about 1 second.
Google Analytics says that traffic has picked up a bit as a result. Again, some interesting issues, and clashes with Mobile Pack.
Tweaked the Wordpress Mobile Pack Templates. Created new "Mobile" Ad groups in Datafeedr, and inserted the php code into header and footer. Bingo. Mobile ad space, controlled directly within WP admin.

.. and finally, got to the bottom of the speed issues. Wassup database had 280000 records.. MBP ping optimiser something similar. Deleted the lot. Sorted. Why can't these plugins do their own housekeeping?