10 WordPress Plugins I Can’t Live Without on IFB… PLUS 8 more!

I am delighted, excited, thrilled, pumped – really, really happy – to share that my first guest post has been published on IFB!

I get a lot of questions about the plugins I use on this site so I thought it would be a great topic for an IFB post.  But because I had a difficult time narrowing it down to 10, I decided to include an additional 8 plugins… right here on Beautifully Invisible!

Check out the 10 WordPress Plugins I Can’t Live Without by clicking on the image or read about my other 8 picks below!

Click here to read the post on IFB!

Behind-the-Scenes

1. Categories to Tags Converter:  Are your post categories  and tags a mess?  Do you wish you could easily manage them?  This plugin will help you do it.   It let’s you selectively convert existing categories to tags and vice versa.  Great for cleaning-up behind-the-scenes!

2. Revision Control:  WordPress is great about auto-saving your posts for you… almost too good.  It creates and stores so many revisions that they can clog up your database.  This plugin let’s you dictate how many revisions you want saved and stored.

3.  TinyMCE Advanced:  If you use the native WordPress post editor you might find yourself wishing for more control over your formatting.  This plugin gives that to you.  It allows you to selectively choose which types of features to add to your post editor, like font size and family, tables, search and replace and more!  My post editor looks like this now:

Wordpress Post Editor with TinyMCE Advanced

4. Thesis Open Hook:  If you are a Thesis Theme user you must install this plugin.  It makes customizing Thesis incredibly easy and allows you to customize Thesis directly from your admin panel.

Design

5. Calendar Archives:  There are a ton of great archive plugins that you can choose from in WordPress. Smart Archives reloaded is probably the best known of these and looks quite elegant.  I chose Calendar Archives because I am a very visual person – I like seeing the images that go with the posts and I like the calendar format.  I think it’s something different and fun!

6. Contact Form 7:  For some reason it took me ages to actually set-up a contact form on my blog.  I used to just have my email address/twitter/etc. listed and realized that wasn’t very efficient.  A contact form simplifies the process for people wanting to get in touch with you.  I picked Contact Form 7 because both the form and email are customizable.

7.  Most Popular Posts:  This one is pretty self-explanatory and you can see it at work in my sidebar above the instagram widget.  I am sure there is a way to code this yourself, but I am too lazy.  Again, there are quite a few plugins that list your most popular posts, but I wanted one that would sort by number of comments. This does that and more.

8. Tweet Old Post:  I just recently installed this plugin and already love it.  Again, it does just what it says – tweets your old posts!  Most likely many of your current readers have never seen these so its a great way to introduce them to some of your old posts.  You can customize the time frame it tweets from, exclude categories, etc.

And there you have it… these plugins, combined with the 10 I wrote about for IFB, are by far my favorites.

Now – what are some of yours?


{ 29 comments… add one }

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  • Tia November 21, 2011, 5:17 PM

    Thank you so much, I appreciate this list. Although I’m already using about 2 of these things because of IFB. I am still appreciating your pointers on things that I didn’t even know exist. I’m about to get right on TinyMCEAdvanced and Thesis Open Hook plugin. Again thanks for exposing me to these plugins they were just what I needed too! I might try the twitter plugin and archives one when I’m ready. Thank you again!

    Reply
  • leah of sang the bird September 20, 2011, 3:05 AM

    Hi, i just installed TinyMCE Advanced and i only have 2 rows of options, not 4 like yours… No font family or styles. Do you have any suggestions? Hope you can help. I feel a bit limited by my current options. Great post. Thanks x

    Reply
  • alyson August 16, 2011, 4:47 PM

    you’re amazing! as a blogger with one year of experience who is so clueless when it comes to the back end of the blog (on my to-do list!), you are so immensely helpful. can’t wait to meet you at blogger brilliance next month!

    Reply
  • Aprill August 14, 2011, 6:58 PM

    Yes I agree with tweet old post, very handy and keeps posts in circulation!

    Reply
  • Ashe @ Dramatis Personae August 14, 2011, 12:15 PM

    Both of these post have been SO inspiring and I’ve added a TON of new plugins.
    But my question for you…. with all the plugins I imagine you use (how many DO you use?), how do you keep them from slowing down your site too much? Recently I was getting a ton of server errors because my site was taking too much memory to load– I ended up resetting my WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache settings and things seem okay now… but I’m still terrified of too many plugins making my site too slow!

    Reply
    • Tia November 21, 2011, 5:19 PM

      I agree with you, using so many plugins always frighten me. Just recently I did a plugin swap to see what I can use that has more than one plugins into one so I can cut back. If you have any tips on making sure your plugins doesn’t interfere with the speed of your site let me know. Thank you! 🙂

      Reply
  • Judy August 13, 2011, 2:00 PM

    I like those “my favorite wordpress plugins” posts; you always pick up a few plugins you didn’t know about. For example the calendar plugin and the category tags converter you mentioned. I will test those for sure. Thanks a lot!

    Reply
  • Toya | The Limerick Lane August 12, 2011, 10:51 PM

    This is great! I downloaded many of the plugins IFB suggested, but you have some other ones I could use too. Thanks!

    Reply
  • Fajr | Stylish Thought August 12, 2011, 11:58 AM

    This is a great resource and I’m shocked I didn’t know about TinyMCE sooner!

    Reply
  • Casee Marie August 12, 2011, 12:08 AM

    (Just so you know, if your stats show my IP address spending hours on this page it’s because I’ve had it sitting here waiting for a moment when I have no distractions and can fully digest both posts to the fullest. Sorry it’s taken me so long! I feel like such a failure of a Beautifully Invisible fangirl.)

    Anyway, I knew you were the queen of WP plugins (one of your many titles, obvs.) but dang, both of these posts blew me away! Seriously. As for your top ten, I definitely couldn’t go without GASP and the Broken Link Checker, but there were a bunch you listed that I don’t know so I’ll definitely be checking them out. Of the extra eight, I love the contact form and Most Popular Posts, but I don’t know the rest! I needed that Categories-to-Tags converter a month or so ago; I actually went through every single post to edit them! I use the Smart Archives plugin, but I love the look of the calendar – I’ve never seen it before! And I love the concept of the Tweet Old Posts plugin!

    Some of my other favorites, I love the WordPress Editorial Calendar. I use it all the time, not that I really plan ahead but if I’m writing a post in advance I can just go to my calendar and pick the day I want. It also works well as a quick look back at the routine I’ve kept throughout the month. I also love the Tumblr Recent Photos Widget, which is quite customizable. I always feel like my Tumblr is very distant from my blog so that lets me connect them a bit and it’s a nice little aesthetic addition. The FT Signature Manager is an easy little thing; I don’t feel like I need a signature considering I’m the only writer, but I like the option. One of the latest I installed was FancyBox for WordPress which I use on my lookbook page, but I also used it when I posted Tilda Swinton’s editorial for W. It was perfect for the editorial because I wanted to focus on one image and still bring in the full series.

    Anyway! Thank you for this post and congratulations again on the IFB guest post! Well done, doll!

    Reply
  • Jamillah August 5, 2011, 10:31 AM

    B, really you are the best at sharing knowledge for making everyone’s blog better. I am so thankful you are in blogsphere. Bookmarking!!! I haven’t made the move yet but I am sooooo planning on it and will need this in my life.

    THANK YOU.

    Reply
  • Metsy August 5, 2011, 8:16 AM

    i can’t wait to try the calendar and contact form. I’ve put off creating a contact for because I’d have to research it. 🙂 Great work!

    Reply
  • GRIT & GLAMOUR August 5, 2011, 8:08 AM

    God bless you for sharing this! Can’t wait to see if I can actually use Thesis Open Hook to customize the blog more. You rock, B!

    Reply
  • www.blahblahbecky.co.uk August 5, 2011, 7:21 AM

    Well done on your first IFB contribution and thanks for sharing 18 great plug-ins!

    Reply
  • No Guilt Fashion August 4, 2011, 11:08 PM

    B, great post both here and on IFB! just added a few of these plugins to my blog.

    Reply
  • Amber from Real Girl Glam August 4, 2011, 7:12 PM

    Thank you for this post!! Was just trying to pick out some new plugins and these are excellent choices.

    Reply