I have spent countless hours using different plugins to test their functionality, efficiency and how useful they really are.

I thought I would give you a list of the plugins I use almost every time I setup a fresh WordPress install either for me or for clients.

Most of these plugins are free and some are so cheap it is not even an issue (especially since the premium/paid ones are usually for making money anyway).

You will most likely want to use more, this is just my list of essentials that I use pretty much every time. Enjoy!

So here is a list of my favourite WordPress plugins:

Dashboard Heaven

A simple but very useful plugin that gives you control over the dashboard area widgets. It allows you to hide the widgets you don’t want to see and also allows you to control which user levels get to see which widgets.

It’s excellent if you have loads of plugins that display things such as stats or links that you don’t want every user to be able to see.

Click here to check out Dashboard Heaven

WP Maintenance Mode

This plugin is a must if you are editing or building the site while it’s live!

I always build live like this (some developers say is a bad idea), then you know exactly how it will work online because it is online.

WP Maintenance Mode is pretty self explanatory, it adds a splash page to your site to let visitors know that it is under construction or under-going scheduled maintenance. You can use a built in theme, write your own text, use count-down timers and even create your own style sheet so that it is completely your own. A great addition to any WordPress blog/website.

Click here to check out WP Maintenance Mode

Login Logo

Login Logo is another self explanatory one. It replaces the WordPress logo on the standard login screen… No more editing core code that gets wiped when you upgrade your WP installation (unless you want to make further customisations).

It is SO SIMPLE! Just create a png no wider than 326px and name it login-logo.png, drop it in your wp-content folder and activate your plugin. That’s it! Definitely give this one a crack!

I use this all the time unless the current theme supports it’s own login logo. It’s great if you use it for a client because you can display your logo when they login to their admin area, or you can just use the client’s logo to create continuity from front-end to back-end

Click here to check out Login Logo

Exclude Pages

Another very simple but useful plugin. This one just adds a check box to your admin panel when creating or editing a page so if you decide to uncheck it, that particular page will be left off the standard navigation menu. So easy and helpful.

Click here to check out Exclude Pages

WordPress Importer

This plugin was built by the WordPress team and allows you to import files that you have exported from different WordPress installations.
It will import:

• Posts, pages and other custom post types
• Comments, custom fields and post meta
• Categories, tags and terms from custom taxonomies
• Authors

Obviously this is only useful if your are creating a whole new site for someone who has a blog already and wants to keep all of the same content or who wants to include the content in a different installation for whatever reason. I rarely use it but it has come in handy so I thought I’d chuck it in.

Click here to check out WordPress Importer

WPtouch (FREE and PRO)

Now this is a cool plugin!
So many people are accessing the net on mobile devices these days, about 40% of visitors to this site are using mobile so I looked into mobile themes.
This plugin automatically turns your standard WordPress into a mobile theme (similar style to a native app) on detection of the device that is browsing. It places a button below the footer to switch between your desktop theme and your mobile theme so visitors still have the choice how they view it. On top of all this, the admin panel allows you to change quite a lot of options.
If you know any CSS, then going in deeper to customise the theme should be no worries at all.
I have only used the free one so far but from what I can tell, the pro version looks even more powerful and it is not very expensive for such cool capabilities.

I suggest you have a play around with this one and consider purchasing the pro version. It has saved me a whole lot of time not having to build a mobile theme from scratch. (It’s also perfect if you don’t know any code at all, it will do everything for you)

Click here to check out WPtouch (FREE)
Click here to check out WPtouch (PRO)

Google XML Sitemaps

This creates an xml file that search engines love! It basically just helps them index your blog more efficiently. It also gives you a whole bunch of options (which you can leave as default if you don’t understand), some of which allow you to allocate frequency of updates to search engines and priority of different parts of your site.
I definitely recommend this plugin.

Click here to check out Google XML Sitemaps

Google Analytics for WordPress

There is heaps of analytics plugins out there but this is the one I use at the moment. I have used Google Analyticator in the past, which gives you analytics data on your admin dashboard which is pretty cool but I recently decided on a bit of change.
This one doesn’t give you the dashboard info but it does the job very nicely… I like to check the analytics from my Google account anyway, there is so many areas of information to look at there.

Click here to check out Google Analytics for WordPress

I will keep adding to this list when I get more time…
Feel free to let me know which plugins you use and love!
Please share this post if you think it is helpful.