At Vision Tank we have had experience with many off the shelf open source content management systems. WordPress has been by far the most straight forward and no nonsense with a thriving community it stands head and shoulders over the competition for ease of use and customisation.
We have put together a list of our essential plugins for WordPress at the moment but we are always looking for suggestions so please feel free to comment!
Security
Security has been an issue and yes we have seen many WordPress websites easily hacked with blissful unawareness that they have left many doors wide open for hackers to have their wicked way.
WordPress website security protection. BulletProof Security protects your website from XSS, CSRF, Base64 and SQL Injection hacking attempts. This plugin offers a very effective approach and is an essential tool in your website development.
Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities. This is useful for highlighting areas on your website development that need some enhanced security.
Limits the number of login attempts from a given IP range within a certain time period.
Website Building
All in one Favicon management. Easily add a Favicon to your site and the WordPress admin pages. Complete with upload functionality. Supports all three Favicon types (ico,png,gif)
2. Formidable
Quickly and easily build forms with a simple drag-and-drop interface and in-place editing. There are dozens of form-building plugins out there to create forms, but most are confusing and overly complicated. With Formidable, it is easy to create forms within a simple drag-and-drop interface. You can construct custom forms or generate them from a template. Shortcodes can be used as well as spam catching services. We use the pro version of this which offers some great features like uploading content.
Google Analyticator also includes several widgets for displaying Analytics data in the admin and on your blog.
Provides a WordPress interface for SWFObject 2, the best way to embed Flash content on any site.
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Great features that have saved us time and time again like automated email to backup full databases.
The most complete all in one SEO solution for your WordPress website, this plugin has a huge list of features, including xml site maps, focus keywords and great meta management.
NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with dozens of options and features. Great time saving features with this plugin.
MapPress is the most popular and easiest way to create great-looking Google Maps and driving directions in your website.
Browse through your soundcloud tracks from a tab in the post’s ‘upload media’. Select, add a track to your post. Live preview, easy.
To send newsletters. Features: collect subcribers on registration or with an ajax widget, mailing lists, cron batch sending, multilanguage.
Hope you find some of these as helpful as we have. Please let us know of any plugins that you use we are always on the look out for something new!
