My Favorite Premium WordPress Plugins

Last week I told you about the free plugins I use on Faithful Bloggers and now it’s time to tell you about the premium plugins I use. Premium plugins are not free and they usually go above and beyond what free plugins do.

Backup Buddy

“The most complete WordPress solution for Backup, Restoration, and Migration. Backs up a customizable selection of files, settings, and content for the complete snapshot of your site. Restore and/or migrate your site to a new host or new domain with complete ease-of-mind.”

I’ve discussed in the past why backing up your blog is so important and I’ve even recorded an instructional video on how to do using Backup Buddy so you are probably not surprised to see it on this list. Backup Buddy is my favorite way to backup my blogs.

Formidable Forms

“Quickly and easily create drag-and-drop forms”

This is one of my absolute favorite plugins of all time! You can create all kind of fun forms using this plugin. I use for guest post submissions and it automatically creates the post for me! I’m also using Formidable Forms to run the blog directory. There is a free version of this plugin available, but I highly recommend getting the pro version.

MaxBlogPress Subscribers Magnet

“Insert and manage optin form in your blog as well as build your subscribers list rapidly.”

I use this plugin to give my readers to the option to sign up for the Faithful Bloggers newsletter at the end of every post. See that blue box under the related posts? Yep, this plugin put it there. It also allows commenters to signup for the newsletter with just a checkbox while leaving a comment. Subscribers Magnet just makes it so easy for people to sign-up!

Social Image Hover for WordPress

“Create cool, hover over effects that allow your users to share images / pages on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.”

Have you noticed that when you use your mouse to hover over an image in a blog post that you are given social media share options? This plugin makes that happen! It so very cool and automated so I don’t have to remember to setup links or special image CSS classes.

These are only the premium plugins I use on Faithful Bloggers. I do use other premium plugins on other sites and clients’ sites.

If there is a premium plugin that you want to use but don’t have the money to buy it check to see if the plugin developer has a free version available. A lot of developers have a lite version of their premium plugin that they offer for free. It may not have all the features, but it gives you a chance to try it out and see if it will work for you and your blog.

What premium plugins do you use?

My Favorite Free WordPress Plugins

If you run a blog using WordPress chances are you are also using plugins. One of the great things about the WordPress community is all the developers who create plugins. As I mentioned in this post, a plugin is a piece of software, or code, that sites on top of WordPress and extends its capabilities.

There are thousands and thousands of plugins currently available. You can most free plugins at the WordPress Plugin Respository. The only problem with have so many choices is knowing which plugins to actually use! Every blog has different needs and wants, so no two WordPress sites are going to run the exact same set of plugins.

Below is a list of the free WordPress plugins I use here at Faithful Bloggers.

Akismet

“Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep.”

I use Akismet to help fight spam and it does an excellent job at that! I’ve tried some other spam plugins but like Akismet the best so far.

Better WP Security

“Helps protect your Wordpress installation from attackers. Hardens standard Wordpress security by hiding vital areas of your site, protecting access to important files via htaccess, preventing brute-force login attempts, detecting attack attempts, and more.”

I first found out about this plugin when a client’s blog got hacked. My client hired WP Security Lock to clean up the hack job and introduced me to Better WP Security. I know install it on all my WordPress sites.

CommentLuv

“Reward your readers by automatically placing a link to their last blog post at the end of their comment. Encourage a community and discover new posts.”

This is a great plugin to help encourage other bloggers to comment on your site. It allows them to add a link back their blog when they leave a comment. Who doesn't a want link back to their site?

Duplicate Post

“Clone posts and pages.”

As the title of the plugin suggests, this plugin allows you to duplicate any post you have already written. I use this mainly for podcasts and Content We Love blog posts. This works great for any type of post that has the same format or layout. All I have to do is update the content and I’ll good to go.

RefTagger

“Transform Bible references into links to the full text of the verse.”

This is a nifty little plugin that automatically turn your Bible reference into links that pops up with the Bible verse when clicked! Very cool.

S3 Video Plugin

“Upload and embed videos using your Amazon S3 account”

Any video that I don’t upload to YouTube goes to my Amazon S3 account. It super cheap to host videos on S3 and this plugin make it’s easy to display them on any WordPress site.

WP Clean Up

“WP Clean Up can help us to clean up the wordpress database by removing "revision" "draft" "auto draft" "moderated comments" "spam comments" "trash comments" "orphan postmeta" "orphan commentmeta" "orphan relationships" "dashboard transient feed". It allows you to optimize your WordPress database without phpMyAdmin.”

This plugin helps to clean up your WordPress database. This helps to keep it nice and clean which leads to faster blog.

What free plugins are you using on your WordPress blog?

Five Top Wordpress Plugins

What is a plugin, anyway?  Plugins are user-friendly coding that can make your blog do almost anything!  Someone puts hard work into creating these wonderful tools, so that you, the blogger, can give your blog what it needs to function or be reader friendly.

Akismet

A spam filter service that puts possible spam in a separate folder.  I can review them all and choose 'delete permantently' or just trust Akismet and delete them all without reviewing them.  Akismet has only placed 9 real comments (or false positives, as they call them -- LOL) in the spam folder.  That's not bad for having had 1,096 spam comments over the past six months.

Broken Link Checker

A link checker for all links on your blog, whether it's the link to one of your blog posts or an outgoing link.  This is good for reporting sites to you that are no longer active.  I usually just 'unlink' and I'm good to go.  Sometimes, if it's a link to a site that is still up and running, but that particular page is no longer active, I remove all but the main part of the link.  For example, if "http://ABlogSiteILinkedTo.com/ThisPageNotWorking' is no longer working, then I reduce it to "http://ABlogSiteILinkedTo.com", so that my readers still have access to the blog or website being referenced.

The only concern I have is that sometimes it reports a link as broken when it's not.  In that case, there is a button to click to tell the checker that the link is not broken.

Fast Secure Contact Form

Put your email address on your website or blog, and you're bound to get lots of spam, guaranteed!  This plugin allows the reader to contact you via a form on your blog.  You receive an email, in return.  Since it's not spammer friendly, I've never received any spam email via the contact form.  It also benefits your reader, because he or she doesn't have to open their email client to contact you.

Follow Me

This feature allows your readers to subscribe to your blog via RSS or email, and connect to you via Twitter, Youtube, Digg, StumbleUpon, and others.  All you have to do is enter those links initially, and they appear as recognizable icons.  (Take a look at my sidebar for an example. It's listed under my customizable heading 'Follow This Mom!')

WordPress Database Backup

Although I've never had to use this one, and I pray that I don't have to, this is a must for any blogger!  Back up your blog!  Things get lost!  This plugin gives you the option of a regularly scheduled back up.  It can be saved to your computer or emailed to you.

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Do you have any plugins that your blog couldn't do without?  Share them with me, pretty please!

Happy Plugin!

~Tami