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There are soo many wonderful plug-in’s and widgets to use in the world of WordPress and blogging. How do you know which ones are good and which ones are just average? The only way to tell is to give them a shot or ask your friends. As a rule I try to do any code myself, but if there is already a plug-in that does it better I’m up for using it. Here are my TOP recommendations for WordPress plugin’s.
Askimet – This plugin comes default with WordPress. Before I enabled it I was getting all kinds of spam comments from people in places like Scandinavia and Russia. After I picked up a virus on the linkback I have had this one on ever since.
All in One SEO Pack – SEO plugins are great. It’s true that WordPress already does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to SEO, but this plugin will give you a slight advantage. The main reason that I like to use this is when it comes to submitting to Facebook and Digg.
After you fill out the title, description, and tags. Those exact words will show up in every URL submission automatically. So it saves me lots of time and standardizes the way I want my articles to show up in other places.
Google Analyticator – This is a nice little plugin that handles all of your Google Analytics needs. You can install the code directly into your theme if you want, but this one makes it easy to get your Analytics up and running.
WP-Cache - This takes your PHP files and caches them into a static html file updated every few hours. It can decrease your page load times dramatically and save you from a crash in case of giant traffic spikes.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This plugin takes all your articles, tags, and categories, and finds out which articles are related to each other. Then serves them up in a nice list at the bottom of each post.
It’s important to offer readers more related content once they arrive on your blog, or else they might just go on their way.
To install these plugin’s you only need to go to your WordPress wp-admin zone. Click on “Plugins”. Then on the top right enter in the name of the plugin you are looking for in the “Search Plugins” field. After that just click install and WordPress does the rest for you.
I use Akismet, WP Super Cache and YARPP out of these. SEO and Analytics are taken care of by HeadSpace.
1I use all of those plugins, apart from WP-Cache. One small mistake I think “It can increase your page load times dramatically”.
2I think it's different from blog to blog. For instance when I have lots of widgets and ads on my page, the wp-cache makes a big difference. Your page is pretty clean so i'm not sure it would have a big impact.
So are you using all in one seo then? I was trying to answer you question from yesterday and get a blog post out of it at the same time :/
3Yeh, I noticed that Matt, thanks. I'm probably going to keep on using the seo plugin for the moment. I might test it for a week without at some stage and see how search referrals compare.
4Isn't 1 week a bit less to test SEO. Effects may change even months to appear. SEO isn't short term!
If you have problems with All in One SEO, try HeadSpace, it's more feature rich!
5Well, one thing it surely does is decreasing load on server! If you get a huge wave of traffic from let's say Digg, WP Super Cache may be life saver!
6I love the WWSGD plugin (what-would-seth-godin-do). It recognizes new visitors and displays a temporary box inviting them to subscribe to your blog. It's been working out well.
7Really? You find it increases your page times? I have found the opposite. But maybe that's just me.
I've written a few plugins (which I use), but recommend as well the Photo Dropper plugin. It's scours flickr for creative commons photos to use in blog posts.
8No you were right. That was just a typo. I think I must have been asleep at the keyboard when I wrote this one.
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