If you’re new to blogging and WordPress, you might be struggling to customize your blog or find more ways for your sparks of genius (aka blog posts) to be found. Below is a short list of must-have plugins we use on self-hosted WordPress installations.
The plugins listed below assume that you do want your blog to be found. They also assume you have started a couple services that help you “push” your blog out to the world:
- Twitter: A feed for everyone!
- Bit.ly: Twitter posts are short by design. When your blog “pushes” a link to your Twitter account, you don’t want your new Tweet to get overwhelmed by the blog link’s URL. Unless you use another URL shortener service, signup for Bit.ly’s free account. They’ll issue you a special API key to enter into the plugins that work with their URL shortening service. Add click tracking to that and Bit.ly is a must have!
- Google Feedburner: Both Twitter and Feedburner are essential tools to help you widen your circle of influence and “push” updates to followers. They’re both free and very easy to set up. Google’s Feedburner service even has an email subscription service that will allow you to place “Subscribe” links on your blog and/or website, then subscribers can receive automatic email updates every time you post something new to your blog.
You can click the links below and go straight to that publisher’s website, or cut/paste the plugin title into your WP new plugin search box to install from your admin control panel.
1: Feedburner Feedsmith: This plugin is getting a little hard to find, but an absolute must have if you use Feedburner. There’s even a version out there that allows you to create feeds from any of your Categories. If you can’t find the plugin, email me and I’ll send you my copy.
2: All in One SEO Pack: This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for Wordpress SEO. It allows you to set both global and per-post SEO options. A real lifesaver if you care about SEO (and who doesn’t care about SEO??).
3: Google Analyticator: A must have if you use Google Analytics! Both automatic and manual connection to your GA account, plus great options to include/exclude admins when logged in. One of the first plugins we load on a new install of WordPress.
4: WP FollowMe: Nice little plugin that places a “Feedback” style tab on the left or right side of the page. Either leave the default Twitter blue, or modify settings so the colors match your blog.
5: TweetMeme Retweet Button: Ever wonder how the big blogs get that great Tweet/ReTweet badge into every post? Here it is! The TweetMeme retweet button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.
6: Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu: Not really a “must have”, but we sure like this plugin. It neatly rearranges the WP admin menu items in a horizonatal CSS top menu. Gives you a very clean admin area to work and create posts!
7: SexyBookmarks: OK, it’s a dumb name, but SexyBookmarks has proven time and time again to be an extremely useful and successful tool in getting your readers to actually submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites. Also works seamlessly with your bit.ly account.
8: Tweetly Updater: We LOVE this plugin!! It AUTOMATICALLY pushes a new blog post title (along with your bit.ly shortened URL) to your Twitter account as a new Tweet. It has options to auto-post only as new blog post published, or you can also make it post to Twitter whenever you modify and save an old post in your blog. Be careful with that option… You don’t want posts Tweeting every single time you make an edit to correct spelling!
9: WP-MalWatch: This one is fairly new, but very effective at keeping your Wordpress blog safe and free of injection attacks. If security is a concern to you, make sure you also set your file permissions correctly. You don’t want directories and files to be writeable to hackers.
10: AntiVirus: AntiVirus for WordPress is a smart, effectively solution to protect your blog against exploits and spam injections. A nice little scanner for your blog. Will even email you if it detects a problem! Scans your template files for injection attacks.
If you’d like help with your WordPress driven blog or website, call us at 214-356-4700 or visit us at CAKEwebservices.com.
February 13th, 2010 at 3:21 am
Thanks for the inclusion of MalWatch. Very early stage and we have a long way to go. I do want to clarify that MalWatch is intended to let you know if there is evidence that a hacker has been in your blog. We don’t do anything to block them or eradicate but there are some great plugins that do this. Stay tuned on How-To-Blog.TV for a lot more on this topic.
Erik, thanks for the kind words and support of our efforts.