The Top 10 Most Popular WordPress Plugins Of All Time

1. All In One SEO Pack- This is the number 1 WordPress plugin in terms of popularity with over 10 million downloads! Here are some of the features of this highly popular seo plugin:

• Google Analytics support
• Support for Custom Post Types
• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Fine tune Page Navigational Links
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• ONLY plugin to provide SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
• Nonce Security
• Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For beginners, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• For advanced users, you can fine-tune everything
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

2. Akismet– If you do not want to delete 500 viagra comment spams per day from your blog dashboard you absolutely need Akismet. The 2nd most popular wordpress plugin does an amazing job of recognizing spam from real user comments saving you hours of time. It is free and unless you enjoy comment spam (there are actually people who do!) then you have to have this wordpress plugin. It is free. Over 9 millions downloads so far makes this the second most popular wordpress plugin. Here are some recent features added:

• A comment status history, so you can easily see which comments were caught or cleared by Akismet, and which were spammed or unspammed by a moderator
• Links are highlighted in the comment body, to reveal hidden or misleading links
• If your web host is unable to reach Akismet’s servers, the plugin will automatically retry when your connection is back up
• Moderators can see the number of approved comments for each user
• Spam and Unspam reports now include more information, to help improve accuracy

3. Google XML Sitemaps– This plugin is the 3rd most popular wordpress plugins develops a site map for your wordpress blog which helps the search engines better spider your site. It looks like SEO is hot. As of the writing of this post Google XML Sitempas has been downloaded a whopping 7 million times!

4. Contact Form 7– Contact Form 7 comes in at number 4 on the list of most popular wordpress plugins can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on. Believe it or not I seem to get more spam using contact forms than when I use an email link with a custom subject like ?Subject=Advertising Inquiry. I appear to be in the minority because over 6 million people have downloaded Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin.

5. NextGen Gallery- NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a slideshow option. It must be pretty good with over 5 million downloads. NextGen Gallery is number 5 on the list of most popular wordpress plugins.

6. WPtouch– 6th on the list ofmost popular wordpress plugins. If you want all those drones waiting for their lattes at Starbucks who are glued to their iPhones to be able to read your blog you need this plugin. Here is the official lowdown: “WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress website into an application-like theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects when viewed from the most popular mobile web browsing devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, Android mobile devices, Palm Pre/Pixi and BlackBerry OS6 mobile devices.” Count on more downloads for this baby since the entire planet is addicted to mobile technology. Some guy in China just sold a kidney to buy an iPhone. They are at 3 million downloads but if people are willing to sell their kidneys for mobile technology I see this one getting more popular. Especially if they come up with a Chinese version.

7. WP Super Cache- Do you want your blog to load fast? Sure you do. If your blog takes forever to load people will click away while in line at Starbucks trying see your mobile friendly blog design which has just been converted by using the previous plugin WPtouch. They want it and they want it fast so give it to them. You can bet your kidneys on it. Here is a little more technical explanation of WP Super Cache. I have it on this blog but sometimes I have to turn it off when I am designing posts. It keeps bringing up the cached post! “This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.” 3 million downloads.

8. Google Analytics for WordPress– Need to know where the traffic is coming from as well as lots more juicy details about your blog traffic? This plugin is for you. 3 million downloads.

9. WP PageNav– Want to replace the old ? Older posts | Newer posts ? links with some page links? This plugin provides the wp_pagenavi() template tag which generates fancy pagination links. 2 million downloads.

Did I miss one? Did I mess up? Let me know. I would also like to know about your favorite wordpress plugins and why you like them so much. Have you developed your own wordpress plugin? We would love to hear about it. They do not have to be that popular. Let me know in the comments area. Thank you, Matt.