Essential Plugins For Your phpBay Site

Hi everyone.

I was going to cover this later on but I have been asked by several people what the best or essential plugins to use with phpbay. Firstly, this is not an exhuastive list and whatsmore its not the absolute guide to the best wordpress plugins. The ones I am going to list are the ones that I use with every phpbay site build but that said there are literally thousands of plugins out there, so only use the ones which you feel you really need or are of benefit to your site.

If you want to browse the list of wordpress plugins you can do so at the wordpress plugin directory here.

So what do I consider as the essential wordpress plugins for your phpBay site.

The Thirteen Essential Plugins

Askimet- This plugin is already installed with your version of wordpress and you just need to get an API key for it, activate it and your good to go. The Askiment plugin will help control the spam on your site and believe my you will get people spamming.

All In One SEO Pack- This is a must, is allows you to optimize the individual pages on your wordpress phpbay site by adding individual meta title, keywords, desc etc and you can automatically set it to generate that information aswell.

Redirection For WordPress- This plugin allows you to easily manage any changes to your site URL's. The plugin will manage 301 redirections and also keep track of any 404 errors. Its quite useful if you change the directory of your wordpress installation or you are moving pages around.

DD Form Mailer- This gives your site visitors a way of contacting you through any email address that you set. The plugin offers many great features including support for multiple instances, an easy to use dynamic form generation system (any number of fields, in any order), multiple recipients, multiple file attachments, optional auto reply feature, an image verification system, numerous security features (including protection against email header injection) and more!. Even though you are an affiliate site I still think it gives your site visitors a little reassurance that the site has a form of contact.

Easy Tube- This plugin allows you to easily place a google or youtube video in your site posts and pages without having to play with any of the html code.

phpBay- This is obvious, your phpbay site wouldn't be one without it :).

phpBay Search To Post- I have posted about this plugin previously from Alan Lewis, it automatically creates content pages or posts from the searches enetered into the search box on your site, read more about its functions here.

PopShops- The popshops plugin is one which is being talked about more and more on the blogs, Mark Hansen from The Niche Store Builder has discussed using it in wordpress. This plugin allows you to add products to your WP blog from any of the major affiliate networks, It is another great revenue generator.

Privacy Policy 1.0- This plugin allows you to easily and quickly create a privacy policy page for your site, you have to have one of these to meet the requirements of the EPN.

SEO-Automatic Links- With SEO Auto Links you can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. You can choose which text you want linked and where you want the links to point.

Sitemap Generator- This creates a sitemap for your phpBay site, its not just another XML sitemap but a real sitemap which can be viewed and navigated on your site. With the plugin you can show pages or posts or both, you can choose to order your sitemap list from a range of options.

Tell A Friend- This plugin adds a 'share this post' buttom after each post and so allows visitors to your site to pass the info on. It also supports add to favourites.

WP-Database Backup- For me this plugin is a must, it allows you to keep a backup of your wordpress database either by downloading when you choose or by setting downloads at set intervals such as once a day or every week. It also allows you to get the backup sent to your email.

Other Plugins

The Statpress Plugin- This is a great plugin if you have it working correctly, it enables you to view your visitor stats for your phpBay site within your wp-admin, however there were some problems with this recently and I know Melissa Eaton posted about a possible fix on her site for it. You can read about the problems with it here and the update/fix to those here.

Plugins Coming Soon!

php Amazon- This plugin is currently in development by Wade Wells, the creator of phpBay. He tells me that he is around 60-70% done on this so we just need to watch this space but I will announce any more updates as I get them.

So thats is those are the plugins I use when I setup a new phpBay site, of course there are many many others which you could use and I'm sure would come in useful. If you do find any more that you feel will be useful for a phpBay site then please feel free to post them in the comments.