{"id":2015,"date":"2010-12-18T00:00:23","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T06:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/2010\/12\/18\/wordpress-plugins\/"},"modified":"2010-12-20T08:02:48","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T14:02:48","slug":"wordpress-plugins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/2010\/12\/18\/wordpress-plugins\/","title":{"rendered":"5 of My Favorite WordPress Plugins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wordpress<\/a> Earlier today I was visiting DiTesco\u2019s site, iBlogZone<\/a>, and I came across one his articles about a list of his must have WordPress Plugins<\/a>. If you do get the chance, check out his article, he has some good ones on there that look very useful and I plan to test some of them and do a review on them.<\/p>\n

That article reminded me that I have been wanted to do an article on some of my favorite new plugins. So today, I thought I would list a few of the ones I recently installed and tested.<\/p>\n

Why Do I Need WordPress Plugins?<\/h2>\n

WordPress by itself is a great blogging tool, but its limited. Plugins are created by developers and WordPress fans that think of ways to do different things in a better or an easier way. I always recommend keeping your plugins to minimum and whenever possible hard code what you can into your theme. The more plugins you have, the slower your page loads can get. Make sure to always remove any plugins you are no longer using.<\/p>\n

My latest Plugins<\/h2>\n

Today, I went through my plugin lists<\/a> and notes and pulled out five of my favorite plugins. As mentioned before, all of the plugins that I mentioned today, have been installed in the last few months and I have tested and found that they work great and have no issues. When I get some time, I will post an update to my original post of my favorite must have plugins I did earlier this year. I will also be adding individual reviews and setup tutorials if I haven\u2019t already created ones for the listed plugins.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Plugin Test Drive<\/h3>\n

\"WordPress<\/a> Plugin Test\u00a0 Drive<\/a> is an important plugin that I use before any new plugin goes live. It was created by Omer of WebTechWise<\/a> as way to test new plugins without effecting the user experience. What You do is, you install the plugin you want to add to your site. But do not activate it. Then go to Test Drive and select the plugin and start testing. Its only active for your IP address. If you have any problems, then remove the plugin and no one thats on your site while your testing knows what is happing and will not have any issues.<\/p>\n

\"WordPress<\/a> This plugin has saved me several times. It has caught issues where a plugin didn\u2019t work with my theme and I was able to see the signs the that a certain plugin would cause a heavy load on the server resources. Because of those warning signs, I killed off the non working plugins before they anyone knew I had them installed. For information check out Plugin Test Drivewebsite.\u00a0 If you like the plugin , go to the WordPress Directory<\/a> and vote on it<\/p>\n

\"test-plugin-right-after-installation\"<\/a>Print screens from Plugin Test Drive<\/a><\/p>\n

2. Admin Management Xtended Plugin<\/h3>\n

Another of my favorite plugins is Admin Management Xtended Plugin<\/a>. I originally was referred to this plugin by Justin of DragonBlogger.com<\/a> about a month or so ago when I was trying to do some category and tag clean up. When I was using the category tool to remove old categories and move articles to another category, it did it smoothly and made the whole process a breeze to do. This plugin, gives you more features to the admin panel and makes some of the current tools in the dashboard easier to use.\u00a0 For more info check out the video and check plugin\u2019s site.<\/p>\n

Admin Management Xtended Demo<\/a> from Oliver Schl\u00f6be<\/a> on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Random Ads Rotator<\/h3>\n

The Datafeedr Random Ads plugin<\/a> is a free plugin which allows you to simply and easily show random ads anywhere in your template files or using the sidebar widgets. This plugin is so easy to use that, I will be removing the theme\u2019s built ad spots and using the plugin for everything I need. I like this plugin because, I can show less ads but if the reader moves to a different page or refreshes they will see a different ad.<\/p>\n

If you know how to modify your theme\u2019s code you can easily go into the code add the strings of php the plugin creates for you and can add it anywhere you want.<\/p>\n

Just because you display less adds with this tool doesn\u2019t mean you can have hundreds of ad and use the tool to randomly rotate them as a user navigates your site. If you add to many, Your readers will catch on and it will slow your site\u2019s load time down.<\/p>\n

Check out the video on how the plugin works.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

4. G.A.S.P. – GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin<\/h3>\n

\"GASP<\/a> G.A.S.P.<\/a> is an anti-spam plugin that was designed to replace captcha and Akismet anti-spam tools. The reason why this tool was created was because the above mentioned anti-spam tools work so well that they can keep your real commentators from commenting.<\/p>\n

But G.A.S.P. works diffrently, it uses a mixture of coding and a check box that a user has to check for the plugin to consider that a user is not a spammer. Most spambots are not designed to find and check this check box. G.A.S.P. also can block trackbacks and pingbacks as well.<\/p>\n

I have been using G.A.S.P<\/a>. almost since its release and I found it works great. However, I am starting to see more real spammers and G.A.S.P. is not designed to block them. Because of the amount of this type of spam I am receiving, I turned Akismet back on and I am not seeing as much now.<\/p>\n

Check out my review and walk through of how to setup G.A.S.P.<\/a><\/p>\n

5. AntiVirus for WordPress<\/h3>\n

\"wordpress<\/a> AntiVirus<\/a> is a plugin designed to Monitor your WordPress<\/a> installations for malicious injections and warns you of any possible attacks. Its a very simple plugin that scans your system and will email you if its finds anything you might want to be concerned about.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n

I love WordPress Plugins, but at the same time, I try and limit my use. I always test them out and make sure they work before they go live. If I find something I like, I will look for reviews. if I am concerned about the quality and how well the plugin works I try and find trusted bloggers to tell me what you think. Poorly designed plugins can hurt your site, so make sure you look into every plugin download and make sure they are the best at what they do.<\/p>\n

Have you used any of these plugins before? If so, what are your thoughts on them?<\/p>\n

Image Source: Flickr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier today I was visiting DiTesco\u2019s site, iBlogZone, and I came across one his articles about a list of his must have WordPress Plugins. If you do get the chance, check out his article, he has some good ones on there that look very useful and I plan to test some of them and do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[233,659,658,1481,83],"class_list":["post-2015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wordpress","tag-anti-spam-plugins","tag-dashboard-plugins","tag-g-as-p","tag-wordpress","tag-wordpress-plugins","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pJPdG-wv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.evolutionarydesigns.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}