WordPress is endowed with hundreds of plugins, all contributed by their authors in true sharing spirit. It’s one of the main reasons why it is the most popular blogging platform of all time. But out of the hundreds of plugins, how many does a WordPress user need at any given time? Not many.
Over the past couple of years, a few have turned out to be virtually essential for most new WordPress installations, such as Akismet, Google sitemaps, Feedburner Feed Replacement, Ultimate Tag Warrior, any one of the social bookmarking plugins, here (link no longer works)., Spam Karma, and WordPress Widgets. Some of the ideas behind these plugins have since been default incorporated within recent WordPress updates, making the plugins redundant by now.
But there are also a few less well known plugins that make you go – “Why didn’t someone think of that?”
Here are 3 I’ve found, which although not well known, add a lot of convenience for the WordPress blogger.
1) Automatic Upgrade – Makes updating WordPress a lot easier; automates almost everything.
Actually, there is another similar plugin at Zirona; the one at Techie Buzz automates the change of file permissions. Both claim to upgrade WordPress with just a click. The most important thing to ensure these plugins work is to grant your blog installation appropriate FTP permissions right from the start.
Sidenote: It’s still best practice to do the upgrade manually. Accidents can and do happen. I can see it being useful though, for people with multiple blogs.
2) OneClick – Roughly similar to Automatic Upgrade in concept. It will auto-install a theme or plugin without the need to log into the WordPress admin area. The nice part about the plugin is the “purgatory,” which can safely remove bad plugins/themes without touching the WordPress core files.
3) Absolute Comments – I wonder why WordPress still doesn’t allow replies direct from within the Admin area or a quick reply link from email. I reckon the plugin’s features are likely to get integrated with future WordPress releases, simply because it just makes sense.
So there you have it, 3 plugins with useful features that I think can still be improved on, and warrant serious consideration, in future WordPress releases.
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