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[singlepic id=203 w=150 h=100 float=left]WordPress 2.8 is about to be released. WordPress is my favourite blogging platform and my blog runs on it. It has more than 13 million users in total and the self-hosted WordPres.org has been downloaded more than 5 million times.
Plugins are a big part of the WordPress community. Over the years I have used many of the WordPress plugins. WordPress plugins help you make a better blog and get more reader interaction. There are in total 4,245 plugins and these have been downloaded 22,152,788 times.
This post is a tribute to the top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever (Akismet is not included as it comes with the default WordPress installation). Each of these 18 has been downloaded a minimum of 200,000 times.
- All in One SEO Pack - Automatically optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization) - Downloads 1,603,368
- Google XML Sitemaps - Create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog - Downloads 954,459
- NextGEN Gallery - A full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option - Downloads 715,819
- WordPress.com Stats - You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system - Downloads 712,71
- WP Super Cache - A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files - Downloads 492,637
- Contact Form 7 - Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible - Downloads 393,916
- Wordpress Automatic upgrade - Allows a user to automatically upgrade the Wordpress installation to the latest one - Downloads 288,600
- Sociable - Automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites to your posts, pages and RSS feed - Downloads 284,117
- Viper’s Video Quicktags - Allows easy and XHTML valid posting of videos from various websites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, and more - Downloads 254,807
- Simple Tags - The successor of Simple Tagging Plugin and is THE perfect tool to perfectly manage your WP tags - Downloads 254,353
- WP-DB-Backup - On-demand backup of your WordPress database - Downloads 250,795
- Google Analytics for WordPress - Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics - Downloads 239,837
- Google Analyticator - Same as the one above, enables Google Analytics tracking - Downloads 229,970
- Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button - Helps readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and over 100 more - Downloads 226,056
- WP-Polls - Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can also easily add a poll into your WordPress’s blog post / page - Downloads 222,196
- Sidebar Widgets - Adds “Sidebar Widgets” panel under Presentation menu - Downloads 221,024
- podPress - A dream plugin for podcasters using WordPress - Downloads 207,491
- WP-PageNavi - Adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog - Downloads 204,005
“Wordpress Automatic upgrade” and “Sidebar Widgets” are the classics which are no longer needed as they are a part of WordPress now.
From the top 18 plugins I currently only use Google XML Sitemaps, WP Super Cache and Contact Form 7 on my blog. All in one SEO Pack and Google Analytics are also very important but my Thesis theme has these functions built-in.
What do you think about the wisdom of the crowds in case of WordPress plugins? Are these the best plugins? Do you still use any of them?
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Note: As for me, I use 9 of these plugins, including NextGEN Gallery, All-in-one SEO, WP-SuperCache and Sociable. In addition to the above list, I also use cforms II plugin for creating feedback forms.
Update (14 Jul 2010) : I have deactivated Sociable, and use three new plugins: Tweetmeme, WP Google-Buzz, and FaceBook Share. Those are pretty much the ones people are using to share links anyway these days. :-)
