WordPress is a terribly easy platform to use, but it requires installing some additional plugins to activate the functionality that you need to make your site run smoothly. Adding plugins is only an option if you are using the self-hosted installation of WordPress from WordPress.org and not the hosted option at WordPress.com.
Here is a list of 10 plugins that I believe are necessary for your site. This is only a small list as there are thousands of plugins available that can perform almost any task that you can think of. All of them do not work perfectly and mainly this is due to them being open source and anyone can create a plugin, but they do not always work correctly. Especially if you are on a version of WordPress that is higher than the plugin was created for. Fortunately, most of the developers are very good about upgrading their plugins to work with the latest version of the software.
The ten essential WordPress Plugins are:
Akismet comes installed with your WordPress installation and only requires an API key for activation. Akismet prevents your blog from being overwhelmed with spam as it checks the commenters information against their database to determine if it is spam or not. You still have to go in and manually approve/disapprove spam though. If you do not have Akismet active, you will quickly find out how much spam your blog will receive very quickly. This plugin is a must have.
Tweet This
This plugin adds the “tweet this” widget to each of your post so that your visitors can share your story with their twitter followers if they are so inclined. This plugin works well and what I like most is that you can set which URL shortening service that you want to use. TinyURL is used as the default, but the plugin supports several other options.
All in One SEO Pack
All-in-One SEO pack is the most widely use SEO plugin for WordPress blogs. It adds fields to your admin panel where you can easily add custom title, description, and keyword tags to each of your posts. It also has an option where you can have the plugin use your tags and categories as your meta tags. This is definitely a must-have to get your site optimized for the search engines.
Brian’s Threaded Comments
Have you ever seen a comment on a blog that you wanted to respond to, but there would be twenty other responses between your response and it would not be clear that you are responding to that commenter? This plugin solves that problem so that you can respond to someone else’s comments and the comment will be listed right below the previous comment. This is a great plugin for making your comments section more conversational.
Comment Relish
Comment Relish sends a short e-mail to users who comment on your blog for the first time to say thank you. You can customize your message to say whatever you like so that it matches your writing style and fits your readers. The downside is that if you have a lot of comments, it can cause your site and server to run more slowly. For smaller sites, it should not be a problem.
Feedburner is a RSS platform that lets you customize how your feed will appear, monetize your feed, and track readership statistics for your feed. Every blog should have a feed and since Feedburner(owned by Google) is the best RSS platform, this plugin should be used.
Google Analytics for WordPress
Instead of simply adding Google Analytics through your theme editor, this plugin makes it simple to add the code, but also gives the functionality to allow you to track extra search engines, click outs, and downloads. It makes some of the stats understandable for people that may not be very knowledge about Google analytics.
Google XML Sitemaps
Generates an XML sitemap for your blog used by search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. What’s an XML sitemap, you ask? Basically it’s a file that tells the search engines which pages on your site are most important and which they should crawl on a regular basis.
Allows commentators to receive e-mail notifications of new comments on an article (checkbox option in the comments form) on which they have posted a comment.This is a great way to get people back to your site and continue the conversation.
WP Contact Form III
Adds in a simple contact page on your blog with a form for name, email, website, subject, and message. This one isn’t as fancy as the other contact plugins out there but it’s simple and easy to use and most importantly works properly. You also have the option of adding multiple forms to your site using this plugin.
This is just a short list of plugins that I have found very useful. I use many more and may detail them as well at some point. By visiting the WordPress Plugins directory, you should b able to find any plugin that you need. If not, discuss it in the forums and most likely there is someone out that will develop it pretty soon.
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