I do develop my own functions and plugins, but for some tasks there are really nice plugins in the WordPress repository that will do the job awsomely or better.

These are WordPress plugins that I use now and then…

 

Gallery

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/
NextGen is a really well done, has a huge userbase and is thusfar the most throughoutly tested and used plugin for galleries. Almost all WordPress users run into this plugin at some point. I think its great but still its not the lightest on ressources for your installation.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lazyest-gallery/
A great alternative to NextGen gallery

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/magic-gallery/
I can see this one getting more and more support

 

Media Player and Viewers

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/shadowbox-js/
Great for displaying images and content inside modalboxes.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/media-element-html5-video-and-audio-player/
Awsome video plugin!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpaudio-mp3-player/
The most smooth way of adding your own mp3 files to a post – its beautifull and effective!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/soundcloud-shortcode/
Soundcloud is an online music sharing site. Soundcloud hosts your files and you can create playlists of your tracks. Then share them on your site with this easy to use plugin!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/soundcloud-is-gold/
Another soundcloud.com plugin – this is really cool for setting player settings without handwriting options to control stuff like width and colors.

 

Social plugins

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/embed-facebook/
When you want to display stuff from Facebook; pictures (albums), events, group pages.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-comments-for-wordpress/
Great when it comes to letting facebook users write comment on posts or pages.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-and-follow/
Adding Share and Follow when you want a floating bar on the right side, Insert a “like” box or any other sharing platforms out there.. this plugin does the trick really well.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sharebar/
Makes it really easy to add a sharebar that follows the page down when the visitor scrolls on a long page.

 

Caching

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hyper-cache/
I have become a fan of this plugin for its simplicity and ease of use – and for one special feature, disable caching on certain areas!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/
W3 Total Cache is the prefered plugin when I do caching.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/
Super Cache is equally good.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flexicache/
FlexiCache is a close runnerup. I like it but I still prefere W3-Total-Cache.

 

Backup

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/updraft/
Simply amazing backup plugin – I did a few tweaks to include custom tables and a dashboard notification. You can save files locally, FTP them to an offsite location and on a CDN.

 

User Rating

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gd-star-rating/
Whenever you want to let users rate posts, pages or comments with stars, hearts or give the thumbs up!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-postratings/
The more simple version of a rating system, this one only for posts.

 

Other

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/skeleton-key/