Tony Cosentino, the WordPress guy shares as many of his favourite plugins as he can in 25 minutes

1. Plugins spectacular
By Tony Cosentino - wphow.org - @wphow - facebook.com/wphow

2. Be careful what you wish for....
By Tony Cosentino - wphow.org - @wphow - facebook.com/wphow

3. What the hell are plugins?
✤ accessories to add to your vehicle
✤ php/javascript injection for dummies
✤ written by people smarter than me
✤ I have ADPHPD (Attention deficit php disorder)
✤ I also like wheels other people make, why re-invent them

4. Plugins versus widgets
“which came first, the plugin or the widget”

5. How to spot a good plugin

6. Free plugins can be
✤ free to stop being updated
✤ free to brake for extended periods of time
✤ free from developer contact information (sometimes anyway - I’m
being dramatic ok)
✤ free to go offline when the developer gets over of at all the whining
from internet marketers wanting it fixed yesterday for nada

7. OK free plugins can be awesome
too, if...
✤ the have a large benevolent company behind them
✤ are a loss leader for a paid version
✤ connect you to a commercial 3rd party product (eg sales force form)
✤ are supported by a Buddhist monk who is hoping to attain
enlightenment through perfect code and self sacrifice
(Nothing against that Buddhists either, they rock)

8. If you pay for a plugin (or theme)
✤ you are supporting WordPress developer/s who will then maintain
the very plugin that is making you look great
✤ inspiring more plugins to be built
✤ subsidising the support system
✤ putting people through college/uni

9. Time to get off my high horse
lets get into some free and paid plugins

10. Backups
✤ vaultpress (premium - vaultpress.com - $15/month)
✤ backupbuddy (premium - pluginbuddy.com - $75/year for 2 site
licence, $100/year for 10 sites, $150/year unlimited sites)
✤ BackUpWordPress (free - wordpress.org)

11. SEO
✤ WordPress SEO by Yoast
✤ SEO Ultimate
✤ SEO Rank Tracker
✤ Link Juice Keeper
✤ SEOPressor (premium - http://
seopressor.com - $97)
✤ Analytics360 - Google and
mailchimps lovechild

12. eCommerce
✤ WooCommerce (the new up
and comer)
✤ WP Shopp (premium - http://
shoppplugin.net )
✤ WP eCommerce (the original)
✤ Ecwid Shopping Cart (use with
facebook too)

13. My sites too small to be a target...
small unsecured sites make great fake South African Banks

14. Security
✤ Limit login attempts
✤ Firewall 2
✤ Block Spam By Math Reloaded
✤ Wordpress file monitor
✤ wp-ban
✤ Timthumb Vulnerability
Scanner

15. Images
✤ Lightbox Plus (popups instead
of a blank page)
✤ NextGEN Gallery

16. Training and support
✤ Video User Manuals ($24/month on unlimited client sites)
✤ WP Help

17. Mobile friendly
✤ WP Touch
✤ WP Touch Pro (Premium - http://www.bravenewcode.com/
product/wptouch-pro/ - $49 or $199 for developers licence)

18. Content helpers
✤ Organize Series ✤ Easy Content TemplatesReplace
Featured Image with Video
✤ Shortcodes Ultimate
✤ TinyMCE Advanced
✤ WP-chgFontSize
✤ YARP Yet another related post
✤ Duplicate Post

19. Forms
✤ Gravity forms (premium - http://gravityforms.com -

20. Cache
totally, super

21. Caching
✤ WP Super Cache
✤ W3 Total Cache

22. Search
✤ Search Everything
✤ Relevanssi - A Better Search
✤ Google Custom Search

23. Live chat
✤ Zopim Live Chat
✤ ClickDesk Live-Chat, Help Desk & Live-Call

24. Events
✤ Event espresso (premium)
✤ All-in-One Event Calendar
✤ CalPress Event Calendar

25. Social media
✤ The social links
✤ facebook (not perfect, still needs to work)
✤ Simple Facebook Share Button
✤ jetpack

26. Hey, no sleeping
please make up the person snoring next to you, its a tad distracting

27. Dashboard customisation
✤ Whitelabel CMS
✤ Adminize
✤ TM Replace Howdy

28. Membership
✤ S2Member
✤ S2Member Pro (premium)

29. User management
✤ Import Users from CSV (import a lot of users from one spreadsheet)
✤ User Switching
✤ QuickLogin (popups for login pages so you need to leave the page
you are on)

30. Custom post types
✤ My Content Management (collection of custom post types pre built,
eg faqs, people, testimonials, locations, quotes, glossary, etc)
✤ CustomPress (premium - http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/
custompress )

31. Widget domination
✤ Widget logic ✤ Widget Entries (use with
Custom sidebars)
✤ Spectacu.la Page Widget
✤ Duplicate Widget (Ditto)
✤ WP-Cumulus
✤ PHP Code Widget
✤ Widgets on pages (add
javascript to a page via
shortcode that won’t dissapear)
✤ Executable PHP widget
✤ Custom sidebars

32. Developer backend tools
✤ Friends Only
✤ Revision control
✤ Velvet Blues Update URLs
✤ Page and Post Lister
✤ Redirection

33. The rest
✤ CalculatorPro Calculators - (204 different calculators)
✤ WP Survey And Quiz Tool

34. Credits
✤ 1.flickr - King of the road by ✤ 5. flickr -8 weeks african grey -
ejharaldseid - photo link by Papooga - image link
✤ 2. flickr - Horse - by
Moyan_Brenn - photo link
✤ 3. flickr - Hand Gun - by
roberthuffstutter - photo link
✤ 4. flickr - Lamborghini - by
_groundcoffee - photo link

35. Tony Cosentino - wphow.org
@wphow facebook.com/wphow