This is a list of my essential Wordpress layout plugins. The plugins I use from site to site varies, but these 4 plugins seem to be there each and every time. They all serve a purpose and function that Wordpress doesn’t (yet) provide – that I believe to be either necessary or required on every site I build or work on.

Privacy Page: Why do you need a privacy page? Adsense, and nearly every affiliate program out there requires that your have one to promote their products.

Breadcrumb NavXT: I’ve been creating and maintaining web sites for 15 years, and I still don’t understand why Wordpress and most modern CMS system don’t have better navigation. If google isn’t a clue, EVERY SINGLE PAGE on your web site should have what we call “breadcrumbs” at the top. It gives visitors a way “home” at all times and it shows where they are in your site (if you have multiple levels or sub-pages). Users expect that. The biggest sites have it – why shouldn’t you? There is NOTHING wrong with having redundant navigation in your header, sidebars, footer, and breadcrumbs – so long as it doesn’t clutter your site and make it more confusing.

WP PageNavi: The last thing your blog needs is to have those nasty “previous” and “next” post links on your homepage and single post pages. Lester Chan’s WP PageNavi plugin adds a bottom page navigation more like google’s. This doesn’t work automatically – you have to edit your wordpress home or index.php and single.php theme files on your own.

Subscribe to Comments: If you haven’t already, install and activate the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin. When I comment on a site if I can’t “subscribe” to any replies to my comment, I just get really annoyed.

If you liked those plugins, here’s some closely related post I wrote about Wordpress layout that are very popular:

Fixing your search results page: Custom Search Results Page and Template
Fixing your 404 Error page: Create a Custom 404 Error Page
Fixing your navigation: 10 Ways to improve your navigation
Fixing Categories: 9 things you can do with Categories
Fixing Tags: Hacking Wordpress Tags and Hacking tag pages
Fixing your comments: Rock Star Comments in Wordpress in 12 Steps

Jan 21st by admin