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By Scott Frangos, Managing Editor - WebHelperMagazine.com

Some of you know that in addition to my duties here at WebHelperMagazine.com, I also manage three CMS websites based on WordPress, plus work with clients using WordPress… and so I use and evaluate a lot of plugins. I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites with screenshots zeroing in on some key features.

My Ten Favorite WordPress Plugins…

1) AdSense Manager - A must if you run Adsense ads on your blogs:
You enjoy a lot of control with the Adsense Manager plugin, including different shapes for the borders of your ads (circled).

2) Configurable Tag Cloud - If you like tag clouds (and find that your readers do too), then the stylistic control this plugin gives you is great for design integration:

The Configurable Tag Cloud plugin gets configured in the Widgets area, and gives you advanced control over CSS styles for your cloud.

3) Dagon Design SiteMap Generator - This creates a sitemap you display (not the secret one you show only to Google):

Sitemap Generator creates a visible page on your site, so the options shown give you a lot of flexibility in your display.

4) Google XML Sitemaps - This creates the secret map that only Google sees and is updated each time you post:

Note that in addition to Google you can notify Ask.com, and Yahoo of your updates, but that Yahoo requires that you get an API to do so. This is worth the effort.

5) HeadSpace 2 - A sort of Mega SEO plugin with a lot of control over Meta data, titles, descriptions, stylesheets and other goodies (take a good look at the “other goodies”). See the Overview Tutorial for more on this comprehensive program.

Above, a global meta description and tags setting for all pages is shown. You can override this with page specific settings when you write and edit individual posts. If you’re concerned about SEO… get this plugin.

6) OneClick Installer - Install plugins AND themes with one click! No FTP. No unzipping. This is a plugin and a Firefox extension that work together to make your life a lot easier. Installation may require chmod work — see tutorial.

Once installed, you Right Click (Control Click on a Mac), and instantly install themes or plugins. Stick with the install… it will be worth it.

7) Popularity Contest - Learn which posts you write are the most popular… a great way to get automatic feedback for future blog story ideas. You can display the most popular in a sidebar widget.

I love this one because it’s a win-win for you and your readers. Readers see the most popular posts, and this creates another point of interest/access to content they can use. You see a comprehensive list of statistics about what’s popular — and what’s not — on your blog. Above, (circled) you can view most popular content in your Permalink Views, Category Views, and Archive Views… but when you load the plugin — you’ll learn a lot more.

8.) Sphere - Here’s a plugin that ties you into “sphere” of influence with well known bloggers and new agencies, by related content. See overview article. TIP: Once you install Sphere, use it yourself to find out who’s writing similar articles, then visit those blogs and make comments — what goes around, comes around… in the Sphere.



Note that currently Sphere allows you to narrow just what links your readers will get when clicking on it — by US political parties. Interesting. I wonder if BlogMasters will tell their readers they’ve narrowed their scope? I wonder which party is daring enough to give links to the full political spectrum? What’s next — technical Sphere options for Mac Heads versus Windows fanatics?

9) WordPress Automatic Upgrade - I’ve used this one several times… and it works great. Make sure you do ALL the steps as presented, and backup as you go.


This one allows you to access your server for uploads using FTP — directly from the admin screen for the plugin. It then performs backups (DOWNLOAD THEM), turns off plugins, updates WordPress and returns everything to normal. Nice.

10) WP Cache - This plugin helps speed up the user experience at your WP blog by caching pages. You have good administrative control of what gets cached and when.


This is an excellent plugin to address speed issues for users at your blog. If you have a lot of traffic, it should provide a noticeable page serving difference. Above, note that you can manually remove pages from the cache, if you want to force loading of a page with new content.

Of course there are many more plugins out there — over 1200 at WordPress.org, the last time I visited — and I expect there are some other favorites out there. By all means… use the comment section below to list some of your own favorites… but give a a good feature or two we can sink our teeth into.