CrazyLady asked me the other day what Plugins I used and I immediately thought.. hey! What a great post idea for SkinnyMinnMedia. It also gave me a chance to take a plugin assessment. Sometimes I think we install this stuff on our blogs and then just forget about them until something goes wrong. At least I do. :) Anyway… here goes….

Comment Email Responder

This is a favorite of mine for the pure fact that it saves me time. I never saw the reasoning behind responding to a comment on the blog but not emailing the commenter. Most people who leave comments don’t have time to return to each blog post they read that day and if they asked a question I as the blog writer need to respect that. So I used to reply on the blog for others to see my response, then copy the commenter’s email and manually email them the same response. No more! With this plug I simply click on an icon by the comment I’m responding to and when I post a response to the blog it auto sends that same response to the commenter. Genius!

Subscribe To Comments

Since I’m on a comment kick I’ll share the Subscribe To Comments plugin I use. Not only does it add a valuable service to your readers (allowing them to subscribe) it gives you great feedback like which of your posts have the most subscriptions? and Who are your top subscribers?

WordPress Related Posts

I use this plugin over on GreenLiteBites to pull posts (recipes) that have the similar tags (ingredients) and I love it! It’s an easy way to add simple access to older content that may be relevant to reader.

WP-PageNavi

Most wordpress themes have the standard previous/next post navigation making it painfully slow to hop back in time. However, with this plugin you can give your readers the ability to jump into the past. This is another plugin I have installed on GreenLiteBites, scroll to the bottom of the main page to see the pagination. Notice it is completely customizable to match color and style of your blog.

WP-UserOnline /

Ok, this last one is purely for my own amusement. It simply displays (anywhere you want) how many people are on your site at any given time, what they are looking and where they came from. It’s fascinating! I love peaking at it after I post a link to twitter or facebook. So fun! :)