Cliff Brake asked me which plugins I use on my blog for spam protection. I decided to write about all plugins which I use here.
Widgets
First part would be widgets which are used in sidebars:
- Configurable Tag Cloud — I had my own one but needed more functionality
- Feedburner Widget — tells how many readers my blog has via RSS readers. Not always sensible value ;)
- Popularity Contest Widget — lists popular posts
- Hrw Meta widget — no links to RSS, checks for WP/WPMU and give proper link
Spam related
I used Spam Karma 2 before but it is not maintained anymore. Now I use simpler ones:
- Yawasp - Yet Another WordPress Anti Spam Plugin — mangle names of comment fields and adds some automatically changed one to protect me from spambots
- ClearSpam — removes spam comments from database
Statistics
“Do not believe in statistics which you did not faked” or what to use to track visitors:
- Google Analytics for WordPress — real monster
- WordPress.com Stats — simple one but available in dashboard
Content related
- Markdown Extra — this should be part of WP core — no need to remember HTML as simpler markup is available
- Popularity Contest — gives informations which posts are still the most read one. Great when widget is used.
- SRG Clean Archives — powers Archives page. Very heavily modified by me with most of features removed.
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin — adds link to “probably related” posts at the end of each post
- Recommended Tags — recommends tags in post editor. Modified by me — will release my version one day.
- Tag Managing Thing — another rarely used plugin which helps to manage tags
- Scissors — simple editing of uploaded images
- Slimbox Plugin — nice popups of images
Other
- Contact Form — I use it on Contact page
- OpenID — adds possibility to use blog as OpenID server (also supports OpenID login to blog)
- WP Super Cache — just in case of Digg effect
Theme
OK, theme is not a plugin :D I use plaintxtblog by Scott with few modifications.