5 Lesser Known WordPress Plug-ins

One of the wonderful things about the WordPress blogging platform is the wide range of plug-ins available which can be used to give it extra functionality – in other words, make it do more things. Some plug-ins are very well known and widely talked about, for example: Akismet or the All In One SEO Pack. However, others, although very good and fairly popular, don’t receive the same amount of publicity. In this post I’d like to share a few of my favourite, lesser known plug-ins.

Add Post Footer: One of the more useful features of Blogger is the option to add custom code to the end of every post. This feature isn’t available in WordPress, but you can duplicate it with the Add Post Footer plug-in. Once installed you can use it to add a signature tag, advertising, and even a related posts list.

Blogroll Autolinker: If you’re in the habit of linking to blogs listed in your sidebar, this plug-in makes it much easier. Instead of using the full url, you just type the name of the blog inside custom code of your choice (I use two *) and the plug-in inserts the url for you.

Contextual Related Posts: Most related post plug-ins work by grouping posts according to categories or tags, which is not always useful if your blog happens to be more eclectic in nature. Contextual Related Posts works by identifying keywords within posts and building a list from those which is displayed at the end of the post. It’s very accurate, easy to install and customise, and probably a better option for personal blogs.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator: Although traditional HTML sitemaps are not seen as a feature of blogs, they are a useful addition – I notice a lot of visits to mine. This plug-in creates one automatically, which you can display by adding a small snippet of code to a page. From then on, any changes to your blog will instantly appear on your sitemap.

Maintenance Mode: There are times when your blog may may not be fit for viewing, for example: if you decide to edit the theme. This plug-in gives you the option of creating a splash page to greet visitors during maintenance, letting them know when your blog will working again and saving you the embarrassment of making your changes in public.