Part 1 of this post concerned the WordPress plugins that take care of the ‘behind the scenes’ work, such as anti-spam and stats etc. This post is about those plugins that I use on my blogs to improve reader experience and interaction.
As before, if you’ve got any further suggestions for cool plugins, I’d love to hear about them.
Add My Site: A simple plugin, which gives you a line of code to insert anywhere you want into your blog, which then creates a drop down menu allowing your readers to add your blog to 28 various social networking sites and readers such as Digg, Reddit, Bloglines etc.
Mister Linky: Taking part in some of the weekly memes where you post a photograph based on a given theme for example, can be a great way of finding new blogs and generating traffic to your site.Particularly suitable for personal blogs, this plugin allows you to add an ‘autolink’ box below your posts, so your visitors can add their name and URL. These are popular as they are Technorati friendly links, and of course you can visit other blogs & leave your link in their autolink boxes. An example of one in use can bee seen on my Thermal blog.
Top Commentators: Used on both my blogs, this has been a real success in increasing the number of comments left. If you make enough comments to get onto the ‘leaderboard’ you are rewarded with a free link to your blog. The plugin is easily configurable to set reset frequency and to ban commenters – your name for example, or people leaving irrelevant comments just to get on the list.
Subscribe To Comments: Enables people to subscribe to a particular thread and be emailed if new comments are left. Good for encouraging ‘comment conversations’ and allowing people to track what they’ve said. The commenter can also log back in and cancel the subscription if they wish, leaving you free of admin. The latest version also enables you to see who’s subscribed to certain posts.
Top Posts By Category: Lists the top posts in each of your categories, based on either comments or views. Configurable, you can see it in action on this page. Once activated, you can generate the text with a single line of code placed where you want it.
WPGrins: Puts a pick list of ’smilies’ in your comment box for your readers to choose. All WP blogs have these smilies present, but without this plugin, you have to know the code for ones like this
WPVideo: Easily embed Youtube and other videos into your posts. Activate the plugin, and then wherever you want the video in the post simply write [video]VIDEOURL[/ video] How simple do you need it?
Feed Copyrighter: Inserts a copyright notice into your RSS feed, to dissuade people from reposting your feed as their own work.
These all work for me, but I’m sure there’s some good ones I’ve missed – Let me know in the comments, and if I use them I’ll link you up 
9 users commented in " Favourite Wordpress Plugins – Part 2 "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackOn the subject of plugins.I wanted to ask if anyone else had noticed this.
I set up that askimet or whatever it is called just for the heck of it.
I think I get maybe one spam email a month.
Well, since I set up the plugin, the spam it is ‘catching’ has quadrupled.
I have to admit that I am highly suspicious of this.
Hmm, that’s an odd one, I haven’t experienced that myself.
Not sure what they would gain from it to be honest, being a free service. Maybe your site’s just reached that age that spambots are beginning to notice?
That subscribe to comments plugin seems to work fantastically for many many bloggers, yet there’s a problem with my personal blog and I can’t get it to work.
Perhaps Pinksy will get the coding sorted so I can drop it in directly, rather than relying on a plugin.
That’s an odd one David, it was one of those install & forget plugins for me.
Pinksy will hand craft you something no doubt
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the suggestion on plug-ins for my blog. It’s always fun to meet a new blogger who chances by my corner. I’ve earmarked this article to come back to with some time to review. You seem to really be on top of your game on first impression. I’ll be back.
Hugs,
Holly
Holly’s Corner
Hi Holly, thanks for visiting. You may also know me from Thermal…
I’d love to use the “subscribe to comments”, but my shared host only allows ~100 e-mails per hour. On more popular posts with lots of comments, I’d exceed this real quick, and then my host shuts down my web services for a time.
Show off
You must have a pretty good package given your visitor numbers, that sounds a little harsh on their part.
I must say that Subscribe To Comments is one of my favorite plugins, and one that I use regularly on other blogs which I read. It should come as a standard feature in WordPress installations in my mind.
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