John Raymond

Wordpress plugins are very powerful add-ons to the wordpress bloging software. If you’ve heard of them and aren’t sure what they are read my previous post about Wordpress Plugins.

It’s amazing to me what extra functionality you can add to your wordpress web site instantly. Here are a few of my favorite plugins:

Contact Form 7

This plug-in instantly set up forms on your web site without knowing html.  It also allows you to place the forms anywhere on your web site/blog including on the side bar.  It’s very easy to set up and implement.

NextGen Gallery

This is a photo gallery plugin that will allow you organize and display photos on your web site.  The plugin uses lightbox as well.  It also allows you to add images to a sidebar on your page

Events Calendar

Instantly implement a calendar to your site.   I’ve mostly used it to highlight upcoming events for different clients.  You can also list your next 5 upcoming events on the sidebar of your site as well.  When you add an event, you have the option of creating a post for it as well.  This will help with search engines and giving more details on the event.

All in one SEO

Getting people to your site is key.  This plugin allows you to control the meta data information for each page and post on your website.

IntenseDebate

This is a plugin that I’m going to test very soon.  I’ve seen it on other blogs and I like that it visually shows the reply from the author back.  Again, I haven’t had a chance to really play around with it, so if you have some feedback on this, it would be great

tweetmeme or tweetsuite

Essential functionality that records a visitors comment and allows them to tweet about your blog post to their friends and followers on twitter.  I highly recommend this one.

I’ve used most of them on this web site: http://www.gistinfo.org.

Check it out and let me know what your favorite wordpress plugins are.