Top Popular and Promising Wordpress Plugins..

I feel like now everybody knows and uses all those popular plugins, which everybody mention on their blogs and repeat many times without big sense. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to feature not so well known, totally new or just useful plugins you’ve probably never seen before. All plugins are very carefully picked, this is absolutely not some random list.

I also added WordPress site monthly download statistics to let you know how popular these plugins are, but don’t underestimate new plugins. Just scroll through the list and maybe you’ll get several new features on your blog to make life easier. Hope you like this!

1. WP Greet-Box

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url.
For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Having these targeted suggestions will help your blog increase exposure, loyal readership, and reader interaction

Downloads 39,232

2. My Page Order

Gives you manual control over the order of your Wordpress pages by letting you easily set an explicit order. Works with subpages too. Now with built-in Widget support.

Downloads 93,157

3. Stray Random Quotes

Stray Random Quotes helps you collect and display random quotes everywhere on your blog with many features. The plugin is so flexible that it can be used to display random words of all sorts: taglines, “leave a response” messages, footer or header sections etc.

Downloads 21,667

4. No Self Pings

Prevents WordPress from sending pings to your own site, for example there are times when you want to link directly related articles like Part 1, Part 2, by default site will get pinged by itself.
Really self explaining so this time I didn’t add any screenshot to this one.
Downloads 12,539

5. GD Star Rating

GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and also add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. Plugin includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. Plugin also supports multi ratings.

Downloads 87,474

6. SEO Smart Links

SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.
Further SEO Smart links allows you to set up your own keywords and set of matching URLs. Finally SEO Smart links allows you to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window.

Downloads 59,285

7. Broken Link Checker

This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found. Pretty useful in long run especially if you have lots of content on your blog.

Downloads 63,951

8. Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging.

Downloads 347,793

9. Post Ideas

Manage and keep track of your blog article or post ideas. I usueally save my links on notepad, but this is a great way how to start writing article or just collect your ideas doing a little research. Set priority, sort ideas, everything is up to you.

Downloads 1,769

10. HeadSpace2 SEO

HeadSpace2 is an all-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site, click through the link to see many features. Pretty popular plugin already, but I think in most cases underestimated, since there are All in One SEO Pack.

Downloads 190,535

11. Eventr – Event Registration Plugin for WordPress

Use this plugin if you want to use your blog an an event management tool. This will let people signup for the event – it can also show a list of all the attendees. Once the event is done, you can just deactivate the event – and no more signup will be allowed.

Downloads 2,776

12. FV Community News

Many blogs out there can only produce a couple articles a week while their visitors ask for loads more. It’s sometimes a good idea to add related articles from other blogs to your sidebar. Adding them manually takes lots of time we don’t have. With this new Community News plugin you allow your visitors to add articles to the sidebar. Complete with moderation panel and a settings page, you can sit back while you have full control about the look and articles that being posted.

Downloads 4,679

13. Sphere Related Content

The Sphere Related Content plug-in displays an icon link at the end of your blog posts. When a reader clicks on the icon link, Sphere finds blog posts and media articles related to your content. See it in action on over 1 billion article pages on popular media sites and blogs like the WSJ, New York Times, TechCrunch and Real Clear Politics. See it live on intowit website.

Downloads 29,274

14. Welcome Visitor

Welcome-visitor is a wordpress plugin, which will welcome visitors ( who come from others sites, e.g. google search, yahoo! serach or your friends’ links), and ask them to bookmark your site or to subscribe your rss feed. It will help you to get more readers and more attention!

Downloads 2,565

15. Role Scoper

Role Scoper is a comprehensive enrichment for access control in WordPress, giving you CMS-like control of permissions. Assign reading, editing or administration roles to users or groups on a page-specific, category-specific or other content-specific basis.

Downloads 7,184

16. Live Countdown Timer

Widget that will enable you to show a beautifull live countdown timer for an event, where y ou can choose from different designs. Requires JavaScript Enabled (for the countdown to work) or it will not work.

Downloads 882

17. Sliding Panel

The Sliding Panel plugin adds a panel that opens and closes to the top of your WordPress-powered blog. If you’re in need of an area to house more content yet not get in the way, this is the ideal plugin.
The plugin is built off the wonderful jQuery library and is fully widgetized, so you can add any content you want. If you want a login form. Add it. If you want welcome text. No problem. Category list? You’re covered.
This plugin is for WordPress 2.8+ only.

Downloads 723

18. Adsense Stats

Adsense Stats is a widget for WordPress to display detailed statistics about your Google Adsense earnings without requiring login into your Google account.

Downloads 280

19. WP Wall

WP Wall is a “Wall” widget that appears in your blog’s side bar. Readers can add a quick comment about the blog as a whole, and the comment will appear in the sidebar immediately, without reloading the page.
All comments are internally handled by WordPress so that means you have normal comment moderation, SPAM protection and new comment notification.
WP Wall is fully customizable with a CSS file and included graphics.

Downloads 58,722

20. Different Posts Per Page

“Different Posts Per Page” plugin will allow you to modify the number of posts shown in home, category, archive or search page. You can even set the order of posts by ascending or descending order.
There’s more settings if you prefer more control over your blog. You can set custom number of posts for other pages as well like: Author, Paged, Feed, Date, Month etc.

Downloads 24,408
*updated!

21. Page Link Manager

Page Link Manager is a WordPress plugin that adds an administration panel that allows you to pick which page links are included in your site’s navigation. Adding it to your WordPress installation is as easy as ever
Downloads 26,609
Maybe you have some more new, but promising plugins in mind? Share them with us!