Over the coming months, I will gradually be compiling an ongoing list of my favorite wordpress plugins into a single post that will hopefully prove useful to those that are new to WordPress. Included in the post are brief descriptions of what each plugins does and links to full reviews I’ve done of each individual plugin.

A little while ago Stasys actually took this a step further by compiling a list of the Top 3o of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins. Stasys actually went through and compiled a list of the most popular plugins recommended by various WordPress users and tallied them. He then figured which ones are the most often recommended.

For your reference, here are the top 5 most recommended plugins from around the blogosphere:

1. Akismet
2. Google Sitemap Generator
3. Related Posts
4. WP-Contact Form
5. WP-DB Backup

I have no real complaints with these 5, although I’m surprised Related Posts wasn’t #1. To see the other 25, click over to Staska!

If you are a WordPress user, you are probably aware that their are hundreds (if not thousands) of great Wordpress plugins scattered all over the internet.  These plugins are created by your fellow WordPress users that want to make the software better and more functional, and most are available to you at no charge.  Of these plugins, many I would consider to be situational plugins, but there are a few that all WordPress blogs should use in my opinion. 

Subscribe to Comments is one of the important plugins that every blog should offer to their readers. This plugin will automatically place a subscription box in your comments form and allow your readers to receive e-mail notifications each time a follow up comment is left on your site.  If you’d prefer to tell the plugin where to display the box, you can do so by placing the following code into your comments.php file where you want the subscription box to appear:

<?php if (function_exists('show_subscription_checkbox')) { show_subscription_checkbox(); } ?>

I recommend placing this just above the Submit button (or whatever your button says to submit the comment). This will allow readers to see the “subscribe box” before reading the comment and check it if they want to be notified of any responses to their comment.  

It is important to note that you should NOT have this box checked by default (you can control this in your plugin’s Option panel).  This will significantly annoy potential commentators as well as turn away some readers.  I’ve noticed a few websites that have it checked by default and there is nothing more frustrating than leaving a comment and finding out you were subscribed to a post you commented on against your will.  Make the box visable and people will use it if they want notification.   I will sometimes check this box when I want to see any follow up comments, but I generally will not comment on sites that have this checked by default.

While searching the blogosphere for great themes to put on my best WordPress themes post , I happened to run across a a post that was published back in March which highlights the 49 most downloaded WordPress themes of all time.  These 49 themes have been downloaded a large number of times, ranging from 47,000+ downloads to 6,500+ downloads.

While it is important to note that a lot of great themes have been released in the 6 months since the post was written, I mention the post because I think that by looking over the themes on the list you can gather a bunch of information and see a few trends emerge:

1. 2-Column Themes - A majority of the themes use 2-columns.  Without manually counting, I would guess at least 80% of the themes are 2-column themes.
2. White Backgrounds - It appears people want white backgrounds in the content area.   This is probably because it makes it easier to add icons and stuff to the blog if you aren’t using transparent .gif images.
3. Split Sidebars on 3-Column Themes - Of the 3-column themes included, most of them have the content in the middle and a sidebar on both the left and right sides.

If you are a theme author that wants their themes to get used, I would recommend offering a 2-column theme with white backgrounds.

Today I ran across a great post over at Web Designer Wall that I thought I would share with everyone. In the post, Nick La covers a wide variety of WordPress Theme Hacks that web designers that use WordPress will find useful. Some are pretty basic, but Nick provides the code for a few more advanced techniques as well.

Here are a few of the techniques that you’ll find the code for:

• Dynamic Highlight Menu
• Dynamic Content
• Dynamic Title Tags
• Dynamic Subpage Menu
• Featuring Posts

Click over to check out the rest of the code provided!

So you signed up for BlogRush but haven’t seen any traffic show up?   Over the past month there have been all sorts of hacks people have come up with to give you more control over the BlogRush widget and help improve your results. 

If you are a WordPress user, there is now a really easy way to get full control over your widget and make BlogRush work for you.   Simply install the BlogRush widget somewhere on your WordPress blog, then upload and active the BlogRush Click Maximizer in order to start seeing results.

What does this plugin do?

• Create a customized RSS feed - Want to feature a particular post?  You can create a customized feed that controls which posts BlogRush features on their widget. 
• Create a customized post title - You may not want to use your posts title in the BlogRush widget because it will be cut off after 40 characters.  With this plugin, you can now write a special title for your custom feed that is 40 characters or less. 

The only drawback I could find is that you have to provide your e-mail address in order to download the plugin.   Otherwise, this WordPress plugin will prove to be quite useful to those trying to improve their traffic with BlogRush. 

If you run a self-hosted WordPress blog and have been blogging for awhile, you have probably poored some blood, some sweat, and even some tears into your work.   A lot of us are very passionate about blogging and end up investing a lot of time into our blogs.   It also serves for many of us as a way to make money.  As a result, it can be extremely important to backup your blog weekly, if not more often, to ensure that your work will still be available if something goes wrong.

About a week ago MakeUSEOf wrote a great post titled 4 free tools for fool-proof WordPress backup, which does a great job covering some tools you can use to safeguard your work.  After reading this post, I figured this would be a good opportunity to talk a bit about backing up your blog, and the free WordPress available to use.

The first plugin I wanted to cover is one of my favorite WordPress plugins, known as WP-DB Manager.  This plugin is designed to be a more advanced database management system.   It will actually add a Database tab to your dashboard which allows you to fully manage it.  Management options range from backing up your database, restoring your backups that you’ve previously made, optimizing and repairing your database, or even delete your unused tables (typically used for old plugins tables you no longer use).  This plugin will give you the most control, but requires some advanced use to setup and use.

If you feel this plugin may be a little to advanced for you and just need the backup, I recommend using an alternative plugin known as Wordpress Database Backup.   This plugin will basically allow you to backup your database with the click of a button and download it, add it to your FTP, or even have it e-mailed to you.  It also allows you to schedule automatic backups to be e-mailed to you.  The biggest drawback with this plugin is that it doesn’t offer an easy way to restore your database from the backup if something comes up.