WordPress is a world of plugins. I come from developing sites in Expression Engine and therefore I’m used to hand coding a lot of stuff. But in WordPress plugins is the way to go. From embedding .swf movies to writing some custom inline JavaScript in a bog post —everything is done by plugins.
So this post will be where I collect the list of plugins I’m finding useful along the way. It will change and grow. I hope it’s useful for others too.
Contact Forms
Contact Form 7 is the best contact form plugin I’ve encountered in WordPress. It has literally tons of options ranging from validation, captchas, Ajax submit, multiple contact forms, etc.
Image compression and optimization
I’m a big fan of Smush.it, a free image optimization service provided by a couple of great guys from Yahoo. Now there’s WP-Smush.it. A plugin that optimizes your images as you upload them to your blog. This is a biggie. (thx www.danielgavilan.com for the tip)
Embedding Flash in blog posts and pages:
Kimili Flash Embed is the best plugin for embedding swf files in WordPress. The syntax for getting a movie embedded is very straightforward and easy to understand. It supports the passing of Flashvars and Parameters to your movie easily. You also get a shiny little Flash button in your visual editor to make things even easier.
Syntax highlighting for code examples:
WP-Syntax has support for tons of languages and simply works. Everyone uses it and so should you.
Font Replacement
WP-Cufon is the lastest and greatest. It’s based on the new technique for font replacement called Cufon which is an alternative to sIFR. It’s easy to install, automatically recognizes the fonts you generate and upload to your website and has a preferences page to get the little details all set up.
Inline Javascript
I know that writing inline Javascript is a crappy practice. But you might need it from time to time. This plugin won’t blow your mind, but hey, it’s worked for me when I’ve needed it. Volcano Inline JS.
Embedding YouTube Videos
Smart YouTube. This plugin rocks. It has options for embedding different quality versions of a video and has support for HQ. It allows you to set some default sizes for your blog posts and sidebar videos. Get it.
