Wordpress Plugins

Wordpress plugins I like

As new Wordpress plugins are created, updated or improved upon I test them out and, if they do what they say on the tin, then I add them to my/your Plugins Folder.

So these are the plugins that are currently on this blog and on my clients’ blogs ( although I don’t always activate them straight away for clients that would be up to them).

.

Do leave a comment below if you have a tried and tested WP plugin that belongs in my folder.

1 ) For the all important business of backing up I really like WP-DBManager for not just backing up but also repairing your blog’s MySQL database.

2 ) Subscribe To Comments. Keep conversations going by giving a visitor, who is good enough to comment on your blog, the option of being informed via e-mail when someone else replies to that thread.

3 ) Official Statcounter Plugin. I love Statcounter.com for the best free blog and site stats. There used to be an occasional issue putting there code into a WP blog. Not anymore - add the plugin and just add your 3 Statcounter strings of info and Enable. Fab!

4 ) What Would Seth Godin Do. I think we’d all agree that getting return visitors, subscribers to your blog is the most important thing you can do. Someone might LOVE your blog but if you don’t give them a way ( or multiple ways) to find you again - so what! This plugin reminds visitors to sign up to your RSS feed and be informed the next time you post. You choose how many times your RSS reminder message appears - on this site it’s for the first 2 visits.

5 ) All In One SEO Pack. Simply the best in my opinion. If, like me, you come from a web site background this allows you to Meta Tag your Blog just like you would a web site. Page title, description, keywords and so on. I’ll be writing a stand alone page for Wordpress blog SEO soon and this plugin plays a major part in that.

6 ) Feedburner. Simply the best way to get all your RSS feeds optimized. Once done you can pull in your e-mail subscriptions and loads more. Bit of a learning curve when it comes to sending info ( mails, newsletters) to your subscribers which will be covered in a future post.

7 ) Google XML Sitemaps. Make sure Google indexes you fast ( and re-indexes you regularly).

8 ) Akismet. Comes as standard and don’t even think about not using it. A brilliant Spam trapper! You’ll need to get an API key ( a string of numbers) by setting up a Wordpress account - easy to do !

9 ) MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. If like me you are constantly editing and re-editing posts this is essential as it stops your blog pinging and re-pinging the RSS aggregator sites every time you correct a typo. Don’t be treated like a spammer just for adding content to old posts!

10 ) Audio Player. I’ve used this on other blogs and it’s great - put audio directly into your blog posts.

11) AddThis Social Bookmarking. There are lots of cool plugins out there that do the same thing but I prefer this one that allows a visitor to Bookmark and/or share the post.

12) Adsense DeLuxe. Adsense within blog posts is proven to be the best for click return - Adsense Deluxe, once set up, means you type in just a tiny bit of code into, say, the middle of your post and Bingo! the ads will appear without all that tiresome cutting and pasting od Adsense code.

13) CommentLuv. Another incentive for your visitors to leave a comment on a post you’ve made ( can be tied in with the ‘Subscribe To Comments’ plugin above no problem). Basically when someone leaves a comment it will contain a link to their own blog and the most recent post they’ve made.

14) Global Translator. By clicking on a flag on your blog a visitor can translate your site into any one of, to date, 22 languages. This is one of those plugins you like or you hate but I find it does get my blogs into foreign search engines.

15) Wordpress Automatic Updater. I’ll tell you! Updating to a new version of Wordpress used to be a ‘heart in mouth’ experience. No longer thanks to this fab plugin!

16) Wordpress Contact Form. Yeah, I know there are fancier versions than this contact form but this one’s been fine for me so far so why change? I’m putting it below so you can tell me about a better one ( don’t forget to tell my why)….

More on the way…..


Highlighted fields are required.
Your Name:
Your Email:
2 + 2 =
Your Website:
Your Subject:
Your Message: