WordPress Plugin Recommendations ...

This is a page that I’ll comtinually update as I do more work with WordPress Plugins. All I can guarantee is I’ll be fair. I’m going to genuinely grade WordPress plugins according to how useful I think they are, and explain why I think they’re useful:

This plugin provides a far superior and separate image management capability from WordPress itself. I tried another plugin but this was so much better. One of the best things about it is that you can embed images anywhere with a simple call and it works. It also provides the capability to manages fairly large numbers of pictures. I have hundreds on this site and it works fine with that number. There is probably a scaling limit somewhere, but not one that would worry a single blogger.

To see what you can do in display terms with this plugin click here or here. Note that the slide show (first link) is slightly marred by the fact that I put borders on the images. The reflection effect at the bottom of every picture is a natural capability of NextGEN, slected by parameter. I was impressed by that.

I started using this before I started using Simple Tags. I regard both as good. All in One SEO would be better if it helped to generate the tags. Aside from that it does look after everything that I’m aware of thst is vital with Search Engine Optimization; title, alternative titles, description and set of key word meta tags. It also has the virtus of being simple to use.

Personally I vote for Simple Tags and All in One SEO Pack to be merged. Simple Tags seems to do just about everything that needs to be done for tags. I was trying to do tags manually before Simple Tags and it’s pretty much a hopeless endeavor if you like being effective. I now have it pretty well buttoned down via automatic generation. This in turn helps other capabilities such as generating links to related postings, which provides a far better service to the reader. Nice piece of programming.

I use this plugin even though some of the functionality is provided by Simple Tags (and that may be all that most bloggers need.) This plugin is very impressive in three ways. I use:

   1. It provides all the necessary ability to exclude posts or pages that, for whatever reason you want to exclude.
   2. It provides you with very good matching algorithm to identify similar postings and it provides you with every parameter you coud think of to tune the behavior of the algorithm that works out the most realted posts in you have.
   3. It allows you to add the HTML you need to get manipulate the way that related post links appear.

Combined with Simple Tags (for tagging) this is a remarkably impressive plugin.

This one really is a no-brainer (as indicated.)  You need to cache your pages unless you never get a rush of traffic and even then, you probably could. This does it without you needing to think and, from the technical spec, it appears to be the most comprehensive capability of its kind. Just get it.

Scoring

I don’t use a 1 to 5 range and score everything 4, or above. I use the whole range. Nothing will score below 2.5, if I still use it. Anything below 2.5 should be avoided. For anything 2.5 or above you might consider a donation to the author and anything scoring 5 almost mandates it.

    * 2.5 means worth using, if it fits your need - but there may better plugins for this.
    * 3 means worth using and a good capability - but it may be bettered in time.
    * 3.5 means very good capability
    * 4 means definitely best in class, imho
    * 4.5 means best in class and highly valuable capability
    * 5 means close to perfect, awesome, superlative, etc.Ratenb.gif

The Have Mac Will Blog graphic depicts the score. If I believe that a plugin is a no-brainer - it can be a no-brainer without necessarily getting a high score because it may do something simple - then I indicate that with: the no-brainer symbol. This means “just get it.” A no brainer symbol implies almost no learning curve.

Please Provide Feedback

I’d particularly appreciate any comments that recommend other plugins (for me to try) or alternative opinions on anything written here. I’d like to establish a useful resource here for WordPress users. I will be reviewing more plugins in time.

source: havemacwillblog

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