There always seems to be some common WordPress problems that need you to dive into the code and hack away, here is a sample of plugins to help stop the hacking!
Exclude Pages
‘This plugin adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages (which includes, and is usually limited to, your page navigation menus).’
Advanced Category Excluder
‘The main goal was, to enhance WordPress’s functionalities, to hide some unwanted categories, from defined parts of the blog.
ACE can override your search results, your RSS feed listing, your category listing, your recent post, and recent post widgets and also your entry page, or even hide whole categories of posts from web crawlers if you want to. This is great, for SEO reasons, for content separation, for grouping information, and handle them as real sub pages.’
My Page Order
Not happy with the order of pages in your navigation?
‘My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages.’
Google Analytics for WordPress
No more fumbling around in footer.php to add your Analytics code!
‘The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin.’
Page Links To
‘Page Links To is a plugin that allows you to make a WordPress page or post link to a URL of your choosing, instead of its WordPress page or post URL.’
Page Management
Another page management I found with drag and drop interface not tested and not yet updated to WP 2.8 so try at your own risk.
‘Customise the order your pages are listed in and manage the parent structure with this simple ajax drag-and-drop administrative interface with an option to toggle the page to be hidden from output. Great tool to quickly re-arrange your page menus.’
WP Ajax Edit Comments
This one is sort of in the same theme as the title but I class this as give the chance for the user to correct their mistakes before you have to!
‘Allows users and admins to edit comments on a post. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments.’
Advertising Manager
And complete comprehensive and free plugin to manage all your ads.
‘This plugin will manage and rotate your Google Adsense and other ads on your WordPress blog. It automatically recognises many ad networks including Google Adsense, AdBrite, Adify, AdGridWork, Adpinion, Adroll, Chitika, Commission Junction, CrispAds, OpenX, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN, and WidgetBucks. Unsupported ad networks can be used as well.’
My Link Order
‘My Link Order allows you to set the order in which links and link categories will appear in the sidebar. Uses a drag and drop interface for ordering. Adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.’
Broken Link Checker
‘This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found.’
Small addition to the post: you know alot of people hack about in the code to add php to the sidebar, why not just use exec-php and add the php into a text widget for the sidebar….
