If you’ve been blogging for any time at all, you know all about the best SEO plugins, Tweet buttons, and stats plugins. If not, you can take a look at my Top 5 Recommended WordPress Plugins, then come back and learn all about some additional plugins that will make your life easier!

Microkid’s Related Posts Plugin

When Yet Another Related Posts Plugin stopped working for me, I went on a search for something similar. I started doing some research and learned that most related post plugins, YARPP included, consume a lot of resources and slow down your website. I even heard stories of people’s blogs being shut down by their hosting companies due to the overuse of resources. So, I knew I wanted something that would allow me to pick the posts manually, and have them ‘hardcoded’  into each post instead of having the plugin generate the list of posts each time a post was viewed.

I came across Microkid’s Related Posts Plugin and it sounded like something that might do the trick… I’ve been more than happy with it!!

In a matter of seconds you can pick posts to link to, right from the post editor. You can even select posts that are currently in drafts and the links will show at the end of your post, once the draft posts are published. You simply type a word or phrase into a little search box, and tell it to search titles, content, or both. The tool is ajax based so it’s snappy and doesn’t need to reload the page.

You can read more about the best related posts plugin on my blog, or download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

WordPress Editorial Calendar

This particular plugin is very new! I was privileged to be one of the beta testers and I’ve been using this plugin since! If you write posts ahead of time and schedule them you know the frustration of coming back in to post some breaking news and then trying to rearrange the scheduled posts. Editors of multi-author blogs also struggle with the scheduling of so many posts.

This calendar layout shows which posts are scheduled for each day of the month, and allows you to drag and drop posts to rearrange the posting schedule! With color coded labels it’s easy to see what’s published, scheduled, or in draft. You can also start posts from the calendar view.

Read about the ultimate WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin on my blog, and download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Event Calendar Plugin for WordPress

Another over-due, long desired plugin, the Calendar Plugin for WordPress is fabulous for local blogs, authors/speakers, and business sites. You may have previously tried this plugin and were probably disapointed, but rest assured, it’s been revamped and is now an awesome tool! You can show the full calendar of events on a page, and have a sidebar widget to show upcoming events. You tell it how many days out to show, whether it should show who posted the event, how much info to show, and you can even customize the colors and add categories to help people find the events they’re interested in. This is so much nicer than pulling in a Google calendar, and is quick and easy to update since it’s right in the blog dashboard.

You can view the full calendar in use at DetroitMommies.com, read about this fabulous event calendar plugin on my blog, and download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

What’s on Your Plugin Wish-List?

We all have unique sites or blogs with individual challenges. If you could have a plugin that would solve one of your headaches, what would that plugin do? Perhaps I can help you find it!