I love cool tech stuff, how about you? Well, Yesterday I wrote about the absolutely awesome plugin Wordpress Automatic Upgrade which you can read about here. Although I’ve got quite a few Wordpress plugins installed, there are a few that I rank highly and I’d like to share them with you.

1. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator is a very cool plugin that will auto-generate a sitemap for you. If you look at the top of my blog, you’ll notice the Sitemap link. Click here it and check it out. Not only is this a great way to help Google index your pages, but also an added value to your readers who are looking for specific content. You can get the plugin here.
2. WP Super Cache is a must have for any Wordpress user. Wordpress, although great, uses PHP which can often hog the allotted CPU limits on your Blog’s server. If your site has ever been temporarily suspended because of “Excessive Bandwidth Usage” then you know what I’m talking about. WP Super Cache will help reduce the burden on CPU usage by converting your PHP into regular HTML pages. What this means is that the server won’t spend time translating PHP and therefore makes your site both load faster, and more efficient. You can get the plugin here.
   
3. cforms is another one of those tools that will add value to your blog. If you’ve ever needed to add a Contact Form to your site, then this one comes highly recommended. You can check my contact form at the top of the page under, you guessed it, Contact or by clicking here. The Contact Form looks sharp and also includes a Captcha security field.You can get the plugin here.
   
4. NextGEN Gallery is a must have if you use a lot of images on your site. It will allow you to organize your photo albums on the back end and deliver them to your readers in a very clean format on your blog. If you would like to see an example of this click here to see my post on Devil’s Pool Victoria Falls. You can get the plugin here.
5. Theme Test Drive is possibly one of the most useful plugins that I’ve ever come across. It will allow you to test other Wordpress Themes without any of your visitors seeing it. Basically, your admin login session will trigger the plugin to feed you the Theme that you are testing. Anyone else not logged in as admin will only see the original Theme. You can find that plugin here.

These 5 plugins, in my opinion, are must haves for your blog. There are other plugins that may do the same thing as the ones I’ve chosen, but these are the ones I use and have been completely satisfied with. I think you’ll find that incorporating these plugins into your site will be a big step forward for you and your blog.

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