This is a vital plug-in for any WordPress blog - it’s by Matt Mullenweg from the WordPress team and catches all the comment and trackback spam that your blog is bound to get. My blog is fairly new but so far Akismet has caught 32 spam comments.
Akismet should be included if you download the latest WordPress update but you can also download Akismet here.
Adsense-Deluxe
If you intend on monetizing your blog with AdSense you should definitely try this plug-in. It makes it so easy to insert AdSense ads into your pages and posts. It also makes sure you don’t go over the limit of 3 ad units per page. Also, if you want to edit the ad units (e.g. change the colors) or replace them with other kind of advertising you can do that easily within the plug-in options.
FeedBurner Feed Replacement
I mentioned this plug-in in the last post on subscriber stats and like I said this will forward all your feed traffic to FeedBurner. It’s easy to set up and even if you have some readers using your “old” feed the plug-in will handle that and forward them to the right FeedBurner URL.
Download FeedBurner Feed Replacement plug-in here.
WordPress Contact Form
You can see this plug-in in action on my contact form. Basically is easily creates a contact form for you so your readers can easily contact you without revealing your e-mail address (meaning: bots won’t scrape your e-mail address and spam you). I got the plug-in from Ryan Duff but for some reason his site has been down for the last few days/weeks. There is an alternative available with a challenge question [new page: the contact form project]. But if you want I can upload the original zip file I downloaded from Ryan Duff - just let me know in the comments or through the contact form.
Update: I’ve uploaded the zip file and you can download WP-ContactForm version 1.4.3 here.
That’s about it for now - I might write another plug-in post when the other plug-ins have gotten some “experience” :)
Keywords: WordPress, plugins, akismet, spam, plug-ins, plugin, adsense, FeedBurner
17 responses so far ↓
Doug Karr // Feb 23, 2007 at 3:20 am
I’ve written to Ryan as well and never got a response. Ryan wrote such a great plugin (programmatically) that he deserves all the credit. My little modification to add a challenge question was very simple because he did such a great job. My newest plugin, PostPost, was modeled after Ryan’s construction as well - though I take credit for writing it from scratch his was a huge influence.
Thanks for the mention!
Felista // Feb 23, 2007 at 6:20 am
Hi Hannes
I am extreamly excited about the information you keep on posting. I am currently in the process of uploading wordpress and will see how this works.
Gary // Feb 23, 2007 at 8:28 am
does the sidebar widget count as a plugin? if it does, I think that is one of the best ones out there! Oh . . the post post plugin to help monetize your RSS traffics . . that’s a great one too! It’s funny how no one ever shows the “Hello Dolly” plugin any love . . hahah . . see you around Hannes!
David Lithman // Feb 23, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Adsense Delux is my favorite. I don’t know what I’d do without it.
HMTKSteve // Feb 24, 2007 at 2:13 am
I switched over to WordPress about a week ago and Akismet has already caught over 1K spam comments. I even changed the name of my comments file to avoid some of the spamming!
I need the contact form file zipped please… Also, what do you use for recent articles? Is there a php code snippet you could send my way?
Hannes Johnson // Feb 24, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Sure thing - you can download the contact form plug-in here.
About the recent articles - do you mean the one that is in the sidebar? That comes with WordPress - if you have the Sidebar Widgets plug-in you can select “Recent Posts” under “Available Widgets”.
But the “Recent Entries” version that I’m using is something that came with the theme I’m using: Cutline.
Gary // Feb 27, 2007 at 7:49 pm
oh i get it . . thanks for clearing it up for me
StatCounter now lets you label your visitors | Hannes Johnson dot Com // Feb 28, 2007 at 2:31 am
[...] I know this is Gary because when I go to http://www.hannesjohnson.com/some…im-using/#comment-102 I go to the last comment made there which was made by Gary from MrGaryLee.com [...]
dan1el // Mar 3, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Two other plugins that I’d highly recommend are the Related Posts and Sitemap plugins.
http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator-v2-final
Hannes Johnson // Mar 4, 2007 at 3:12 am
Yeah, I actually have the Related Entries plug-in but haven’t yet added it to the template because I want to wait until I have a few more posts to pick from.
Yes, I always meant to set up the Sitemap plug-in - thanks for reminding me :)
Jeff Kee // Mar 6, 2007 at 6:09 am
The Sidebar Widget is a good one too..
Gary Lee // Mar 8, 2007 at 9:33 am
I just found another one from JC called MyAvatar where commenters can have their MyBlogLog Avatar next to their comments. I think it adds a little color and life into a comment thread.
Hannes Johnson // Mar 8, 2007 at 11:16 am
Gary - Yeah, I’ve been considering installing that plug-in. Not sure how it would fit with my current theme - but I might give it a try.
Added A Few More WordPress Plug-ins | Hannes Johnson dot Com // Mar 16, 2007 at 4:27 pm
[...] I talked recently about some of the WordPress plugins I’m using… well, I just installed a bunch of new plug-ins :) [...]
Techified // Mar 20, 2007 at 8:13 am
Feedburner, Akismet and AdSense are all great plugins, very useful
Article Checker // Apr 2, 2007 at 2:26 am
Hannes, great plugins. Thanks for the links. One question though: which plug in lists the comment number and # of views for each entry? Example: February 23rd, 2007 · 15 Comments · 243 views
Hannes Johnson // Apr 2, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Article Checker - the comment number is something that came with the theme I’m using. But this is the code for that:
<?php comments_popup_link('No Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?>The views come from the PageViews plug-in - check out my other plug-in post
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