3 Essential Plugins for High Traffic WordPress Sites

Posted by Snap! on August 10th, 2007

We might as well list all the important plugins that make sites with high traffic stay afloat, but we decided to focus on just three very essential plugins that will be invaluable for your high traffic site.

I say “high trafficâ€? only because WordPress powered sites “as is” can work really well for most sites, but when your traffic increases, the equation changes with increased load on the server and need for better management.

The plugins are listed in no particular order:

Akismet/ Bad Behavior/ Spam Karma 2: As your traffic increases, so does your spam, the affinity of spammers to your site is not due to the popularity of your site alone, but imagine this scenario, if every 3rd comment is a spam, the more comments you have, the spam you will too. The simplest solution to stop comment spams in conjunction with the aforementioned spam blockers (that can be downloaded from wp-plugins.net or Codex) is to use a plugin like reCAPTCHA.

WordPress Database Backup: The newer version of WP has built-in backup via XML downloads, however that is not as good as the original plugin based sql download. The newer version of WP does not include it as a default plugin, but here’s a link to the original plugin managed by a new and reliable developer. Use this tool to back your database as often as you like, you’ll never realize how valuable it is, but let’s hope you’ll never need to go through the excruciating pain of restoring your DB ever!

WP Cache: This plugin does what the name suggests, caches WP files, and it does it in two phases. The first phase checks if the requested URL is already cached, if so it serves from the static file and finishes, the second phase stores the generated page in a static file for further request. Collectively it can reduce the load on your database server significantly and improve site load speed.

So there you go, 3 essential plugins for your WordPress site that all sites should consider installing.

Tagged: Akismet, Bad Behavior, Big City, Blogging Tips, CMS, Copyrights and Licenses, Keyboard Shortcuts, PimpDaBlog, Plugins, RSS Feeds, Resources, Spam Karma, Thumbnail viewer plugin, Tips, Top Plugins, WP Cache, WordPress, WordPress Database Backup, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials, reCAPTCHA, wpsnap

August 10th, 2007 // Share