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. Read more…
