10 Essential Timesaving WordPress Plugins
As one of the most popular blogging platforms ever, WordPress is a convenient and powerful solution for publishing to the Web. As blogs grow and as bloggers get busier, they have less time for routine behind-the-scenes tasks like managing old posts, cleaning up code, or managing databases. Fortunately, WordPress can be customized and scaled with user-selected plugins that help make it easier to manage.
Plugins can help adapt WordPress to bloggers depending on their individual needs to make their time more profitable by converting management time into revenue-generating blogging time. The following list presents 10 essential timesaving WordPress plugins for you to try.
1. Pages+
WordPress pages become more difficult to manage as they increase in number. Pages+ provide bulk page management that solves that problem. This plugin saves you time by allowing you to define page order and categories on many pages at once. Pages + also provides for the addition and deletion of pages. When installed, this plugin replaces the page admin section inside the WordPress dashboard with a powerful and easy to use page management interface.
WordPress users who Tweets know how much time it takes to tweet all their WordPress blog posts. By adding the Tweetable Tweets plugin, WordPress users will automatically tweet every new post without any extra time or effort. The plugin even allows you to choose your preferred short URL service.
By enhancing WordPress into a robust Content Management System (CMS) for videos, Smart Video takes the hassle out of embedding videos into your WordPress blog, saving you precious time for other things. SmartVideo Plus enhances the look of your blog too by displaying thumbnails rather than video player boxes on your blog. Even better, SmartVideo Plus helps with SEO, helping your titles and tags to be readily found via Google and other search engines.
4. Sticky Post
Sticky Post saves bloggers time by making it easier to add the same content to the top of blog all your posts. No longer do you have to modify each post by hand or spend your time hacking WordPress themes to do this. With this plugin, you can easily add an important message or article to the beginning of every post so your visitors won’t miss it, all through a time saving interface. Sticky Post works by adding one custom field to the post you want to “stick” and you’re done!
5. Post Ideas
This fantastic plugin isn’t very fancy, but it saves a lot of time by helping WordPress users manage their drafts. In fact, you can enter your rough drafts or blog ideas without creating an unmanageable mess in your blog’s dashboard. This is great for brainstorming through an easy to manage prioritized list of all the writing ideas you want to develop for future use.
For bloggers that spend a lot of time ‘under the hood’ of WordPress, the WP-DB Manager plugin is a lifesaver as well as a time-saver. This makes managing your WordPress database an easy task. This plugin adds a new ‘Database’ tab to your dashboard and allows you to backup, optimize, and manage your blog’s underlying database with ease, all within the WordPress administrator’s login.
7. Adrotate
Those who monetize their WordPress blogs often spend too much time managing advertisements. Adrotate is one of the easiest and most powerful banner management plugins that saves time by rotating advertisements, setting expiration dates, managing groups of ads, and tracking advertising clicks. Do all this from a handy interface found in your WordPress dashboard.
When names, email addresses, or URLs change, they can leave a lot of embarrassing broken links on your blog. Manually updating these items took a lot of time in the past, but now the Search and Replace plugin makes it fast and easy. A user-friendly interface lets you set parameters for the data you want to manipulate. Once you fill that out, just enter the information you want to replace and the information you want to replace it with, press a button and you’re done!
9. Tidy Up
Many WordPress users spend too much time updating HTML into optimized XHTML to make blog posts, pages, and comments load faster and display properly in visitors’ browsers. The Tidy Up plugin streamlines this process by locating problems and updating code automatically all from a convenient user interface.
You’ve been blogging for years and have thousands of posts to deal with every time you change your categories or manage comments. Don’t spend hours doing this manually! Mass Post Manager allows you to bulk-apply new categories, delete comments, and perform other routine tasks on large numbers of posts at once. Keep an eye on this plugin too, because even more features are expected to be added in the future that will make WordPress management even easier.
This guest post was written by Tom Walker, a designer and blogger working with a provider of ink next day anywhere in the UK. He edits and contributes posts to their blog on the subjects of advertising art and print media design.
Related WordPress plugins articles:
- Guest Blogger Plugin For Your WordPress Blog (howtospoter.com)
- What, Why, How – WordPress Plugins (blogmistress.com)
- Four Lazy WordPress Plugin Desires (climbtothestars.org)
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Thanks for the tweetable twitter link. From your description, it seems like an interesting piece of software for someone like me (just starting out with blogging and twitter as well). I’ll give it a try.
Some really cool goodies here Tom.
Tweetable Twitter – does this differ anyway from the others that auto-tweet posts?
Sticky Post – hasn’t this been part of the admin since like version 2.7? is the plugin better?
Adrotate – Same question as the twitter plugin
I’ll definitely be checking some out, like post ideas…I have almost 600 drafts. lol
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..New Updated Long Detailed Comment Policy Coming very SOON! Among Others…
I almost didn’t read this because I’ve seen all the WordPress plugin posts. You have some really great plugin posts here though! WP-DB manager and Tidy Up are both being downloaded right now. DB manager looks worth it just for the backup and I use HTML tidy in other apps. Definitely good for optimization.
Jared Detroit´s last blog ..Easy & Effective Content Creation
I hate hunting though plugins and trying one after another until I find the right one for me. I much rather try plugins that are recommended by people I trust. Thanks Alex.
William Wells´s last blog ..Buying Groceries Online
William,
This is a guest post and I have not tested those myself. just setting record straight.
Thanks for setting the record straight. ‘Tidy Up’ fits a need I have, so I’ll definitely give that a test run.
William Wells´s last blog ..Buying Groceries Online
The only one I had been using was the Twitter plug in which has been saving me a ton of time. Can;t wait to try some of the others out.
Chattaranga´s last blog ..Toothless Heart-Throb
Thanks for sharing.i use sticky post plugin.its a really helpful.i will try all your recommend plug in my site.
mAmun_bangladeshi´s last blog ..Banglalink Introduce Banglalink Internet Modem
Really fantastic article on the WP plug-ins, especially the one on Videos! Been battling that myself lately.
Have you seen this other blog on Blog Income
Thanks for the great tips on blogging – they are always appreciated!
Cindy
Cindy´s last blog ..Blog Income Video
Fantasic Article regarding 10 WP essential plugins. I am still getting my feet wet learning about wordpress there is so much that can be done with it. I look forward to more great articles from you in the future.
John
John Schaeffer´s last blog ..3 NR PLR Package
John,
Just be sure to NOT overload your blog with unnecessary functionality
Thanks for the great post. I always love reading top 10 word press plugins, everyone always has different ones! I will definitely be using the tweetable one for sure though!
Hi Tom / Spotter
Got a feeling that I tried WP-DB Manager but you have to whitelist your own IP address.
Trouble is, I have a roving IP so I couldn’t set it up.
I may be confusing it with another database plugin so I’ll give it another try.
Tidy Up sounds interesting and I’ve not heard it mentioned before.
Keith Davis´s last blog ..Flying in formation
Keith,
I personally use and install for all my customers this plugin:
http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/
Works like a champ and no need for complications.
Just starting to use wordpress, so this was a great article for me. thanks!
I love the all in one seo pack and the xml sitemaps generator the best. They are both big timesavers for me in optimising my wordpress sites.
Well..It seems I have to consider trying..
->Pages+
->Sticky Post
->Post Ideas
->Adrotate->
->Search and Replace
Do you recommend any plugin with which I can track the real time visitors with their locations and the source of their visit?
Thanks in advance…
Michelle
Michelle´s last blog ..Consider Forms of Payment Before You Transfer Money to China
Hey Great post.
I was kind of surprise to discover some new wordpress plugin in your list. Normally when peoples post about wordpress plugin you pretty much always see the same plugins.
Will go take a good look at the Adrotate plugin, this one look really cool.
Thanks for sharing.
Cedric Aubry
Cedric Aubry´s last blog ..How To Boost Your Link Building With YouTube
I really enjoyed your post. The Mass Post Organizer looks great. I think I’ll be adding it to some of my websites which already have way too many posts. It’s so difficult to keep up with all my posts anyways.
Wonderful blog and keep up the great work!
If you like, you can visit my blog too @ GSniper Review
Adri´s last blog ..Google Sniper Review
Very nice collection of not particularly known wordpress plugins. I think post ideas is probably the most important one of these.
Spyros´s last blog ..50 Powerful Ways to Gain Traffic For Your Blog
Hi there,
Thank you! Good job! I have been looking for Search and Replace plugin. WP-DB certanly is very time-saving if we have troubles with wp. Everyone must have it to backup the db. I’m trying search and replace.
I would recomend Revision Control plugin.
It gives the possibility to manage number of revisions of the posts. We can turn off the revisions also. The db becomes less and the wp faster.
Agreed – great plugin and so easy to set up.
Keeps those revision numbers to whatever you set it to.
I set mine to two.
Keith Davis´s last blog ..Flying in formation
I set mine to 0.
Guys,
Just edit your wp-config.php and add this code:
define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 3); – to have 3 revisions or
define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false ); – to disable them
WHY add another plugin for something that could be done via config file modification? I also recommend this codex page for even more tweaks: http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php
You are absolutely right!
Completely forgot.
Thanks for reminder!
The plugin Sticky Post gives an error and could not been installed. I did some research and found a solution. The Sticky Post plugin could be replaced by simple code.
Michael´s last blog ..Output The Posts With The Specified Field-Value
Michael,
Starting with WordPress 2.8 I think – Sticky Post is an option you can choose by simply placing a Check Mark into options while you are creating post – it is now part of the core of the WordPress
I’m using 2.9
There is no checkbox to check when inserting or editing existing post.
Any help will be appriciated!
Code is a virtue!
Michael´s last blog ..Remove Symbol From Post Excerpt
Code to replace sticky post.
Insert it into index.php
query_posts(‘meta_key=review_type&meta_value=music’)
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
Michael´s last blog ..Output The Posts With The Specified Field-Value
Michael,
Thanks for sharing but once again – this options ia already built into your blog, as I described above:
I m using 2.9 2.8
There is no checkbox to check when inserting or editing existing post.