Today I will take a look at all the best WordPress plugins I currently use on HowToMakeMyBlog.com. I will list them in order they are found in the WordPress 2.7 Plugins section. I will link to each of them and will explain why I use them and why I would recommend you to use them as well.
See step-by-step instructions on how to install WordPress and see also how to do the initial blog setup and customization.
Remove spam comments
Akismet – If you are listed in search engines and have a lot of traffic, you are bound to get massive amount of spam comments. This plugin makes your life much easier and saves you a lot of time. You need to get your free Api-key for this plugin.
Remove broken links
Broken Link Checker – Search engines do not like broken links. Your visitors do not like them either. This plugin scans your posts automatically, shows you broken links in WordPress dashboard and lets you easily unlink them.
Create contact forms
Cforms – If you need a contact form on your site, this plugin is simple to setup and works great. I use it for all contact forms on my blog, see it for example in my about Marko Saric page.
Thank commentators
Comment Redirect – I use this plugin to redirect visitors when they make their first comment on my blog. I redirect them to a thank you page where I thank for the comment, explain about my blog, and ask the reader to subscribe to my RSS newsfeed. Write a comment to this post, and see this plugin in action.
Remove unnecessary code
CSS Compress – I am not much into technical side of WordPress and CSS but I was told that this plugin removes all the unnecessary lines in the WordPress theme code, and that way makes the blog smaller and faster to load.
Combine all RSS subscribers
FeedBurner FeedSmith – I used the original WordPress RSS feed at the beginning of my blog, but then I moved over to Google services. So now I use this plugin as it detects all the old RSS subscribers and redirects them to my new RSS feed.
Make Google happy
Google XML Sitemaps – Google loves sitemaps and indexes sites/articles much quicker if you have a sitemap and you have it submitted to Google Webmaster Tools. Nice and simple way to ensure that Google finds and indexes your blog.
Optimize ping updates
MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer – WordPress automatically updates all your ping services, even if you just update or edit your article. If you edit your articles a lot, your blog risks of being banned from ping services for excessive pinging. This plugin solves the problem by only pinging your post when you publish it.
Confirm the unconfirmed subscribers
Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers – If you are using Feedburner email subscribe option, you know that some subscribers never confirm their subscription. This plugin lets you easily notify all the unconfirmed subscribers and inform them that they need to take additional step to approve their subscription.
Welcome your visitors
Referrer Detector – This plugin detects where your visitors are coming from and automatically displays the coresponding greeting. So for example when somebody visits my blog via Google.com, they get this message:
Welcome Googler! If you find this page useful, why not subscribe to the RSS feed for more interesting posts in the future?
Track what your visitors are looking for
Search Meter – This plugin tracks what your visitors are searching for in your “search” field. This way you can know what your visitors are looking for and what they find. Tracking this might help you make your blog design more usable and give you some topics to write about.
Notify visitors of new comments
Subscribe To Comments – This plugin allows your blog readers to subscribe to the comments on articles. Each time there is a new comment they will get an email notification. It helps getting visitors to return, getting more comments and building community around your blog posts.
Make Thesis easier
Thesis OpenHook – This plugins allows insertion of Thesis content hooks without editing the theme files. It is only for Thesis theme users. Read more on why I have chosen to go for a premium WordPress theme Thesis.
Remind new visitors to subscribe
What Would Seth Godin Do – This plugin displays a message to your new blog visitors. On howtomakemyblog.com I use it on the bottom of each post as a reminder to subscribe to my RSS news feed. Like this:
If you want to learn more about blogging please subscribe to HowToMakeMyBlog RSS feed or via email to receive all the latest articles!
List your most popular posts
WordPress.com Popular Posts – I use this plugin in the sidebar to show the 10 most popular posts on my blog. It is avery good way of showing your visitors your most popular posts, and it does improve usability of the site, plus improves your stats like pages viewed per visit, time spent on site and bounce rate.
Get your blog stats
WordPress.com Stats – I use this stats plugin because the WordPress.com Popular Posts plugin takes the data from this plugin to show the most popular posts by number of views. It does not count the views of logged in users, so your visits to your pages will not be counted. You need to get your free Api-key for this plugin.
Never lose any of your material
WordPress Database Backup – This plugins helps you keep a database backup of your blog. It is very simple and easy to use. You can set the plugin to make a regular backup of your blog and send it to you via email automatically. This way you will never lose the articles and archives you have written over the months/years in case of hacker attack or any other security vulnerability.
Speed up your blog
WP Super Cache – Another technical plugin. It will improve your blog’s loading time and will speed up your blog significantly. It helps your server handle a higher load without crashing, which can help in case you hit front page of Digg.com and start getting tons of traffic. Unfortunately the Digg.com part I still haven’t tested.
Create a Twitter field in comments
WP Twitip ID – This plugin adds another field to your blog’s comment form so your readers can add their Twitter ID’s when writing a comment. See this plugin in action on my blog in the comment field at the end of this article.
Show related posts
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – I use this plugin to show a list of related posts from my blog archives after each article I write. It improves the user experience and increases the time user’s spend on site, pages viewed per visit and bounce rate stats. See it in action after this article where it suggests you what to “see more”.
Top Twitter Plugins
See my article on top 5 Twitter plugins you should install to your WordPress blog.
Extra plugins for those who do not use Thesis
Thesis WordPress Theme that I use on my blog has the following functions automatically built in, so I do not need to use plugins. But if you are using other themes, the following plugins will give you a similar look/effect.
- All in One SEO Pack – This plugin makes it easy for you to optimize your article titles and other meta tags.
- Google Analytics – This plugin makes it easy for you to insert your Google Analytics code and start tracking your blog visitors.
- WP-Note – This plugin lets you insert notes in your article to make them stand out. Kind of similar to the yellow colored notes I have twice in this article.
- WordPress Gravatars – This plugin lets you display Gravatars of your readers in the comments section and can put your Gravatar on top of your article to show who the article was written by.
Hopefully this list gives you enough plugins to research and experiment with. Good luck with your blog optimization!
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If you liked this article, you may also like:
Why I run my blog on Thesis Wordpress Theme
Thesis theme gives my blog a professional, clean, easy-to-read layout and SEO friendly design. Thesis makes it simple to make your own blog unique. See more details and get your own Thesis today.
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Great article,thanks for your info!
Awesome post! I just started my blog ! So this is very useful information
One more that you can add to the list is Redirector (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirector/)
It let’s you easily include a page in your blog that redirects people to any valid URL (can you say affiliate links no more????)
Excellent list. I currently use a number of these plugins (and a few others that are not on your list) but you had a few I was not familiar with. Your list is concise and very useful. Thanks Marko.
great post Marko. I was waiting for this and it will make my life easier with my new blog..
Thanks again and keep up the excellent work
Another great post Marko. There’s definitely a few here that I need to look into.
This is a good list. Especially the database backup plugin. This is one you never think about until you need it. Especially if you have years worth of content/articles.
Testing Comment Redirect.
Been subscribed to your blog for about a week, liking it so far.
Cheers,
James
I have been considering porting my blogspot site to WP for a while. And this sure does give me valid reasons enough to move
Hey Marco, Wow. There’s a lot handy plugins in this list. I use several already. I like Cforms a lot too. I’m going to try some of these, especially Referrer Detector. I’ve been looking at WP Twitip ID. It seems like there should be an easier way to let commenters enter their twitter ID, without having to modify the comments.php file.
Great list! Keep it up. Love your posts =]
Good info. can’t find twitip id in the 2.7 plugin search…
Thanks for all the comments!
@Shayne Packer – At the moment Twitip seems to be the easiest way. There is a nice video guide for how to install at http://www.fiddyp.co.uk/wp-twitip-id-plugin-add-a-twitter-field-to-your-comment-form-easily/ . For Thesis is even easier.
@Scott Williams – I guess doing it the old way and downloading the plugin, and installing it manually is the way to go with Twitip.
I am surprised to see your use of the MaxBlogPress ‘Ping’ plugin. I thought that WordPress had removed this problem way back with the latest 2.3 series releases… (I know that I had a wonderful problem with this and Google hated me for about 3 months because of it.
) I’ll definitely look into this.
@Shirley – I am not sure. I still use it and have used it for a long time. I can see WordPress still recommends it at http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services so it doesn’t really hurt having it installed.
Awesome list, I found some really useful stuff.
Although, I run WordPress 2.7 and the Subscribe to comments gives me errors before I even activate it. Does this happen for anyone else? =/
Hi. A number of articles on you site I have found very useful, including this one. Thanks !
Regards [ MRP aka thecandytrail ] – from one Thesis groupie to another.
thanks for using information.great post Marko. I was waiting for this and it will make my life easier with my new blog..
Thanks for the lists. I just installed some of the plugins with easy uploader http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-easy-uploader/. I didn’t have to go to my ftp and installed thes plugins. I just went to my wordpress admin panel and downloaded them.
Great info and nicely organized – thank you for your efforts!
great list indeed! Thanks
Hey! I’d loved this post. Thank you for share your ideas.
cool post, am using most of these already on my Cape Town hotels site. The only problem is Im afraid to upgrade from 2.5.1 to 2.7 as Ive got so much custom code in there…
i got a lot out of the suggestions in this post. some of these plugins i’d already installed (thank god for akismet!) but others were new to me, like the “what would seth godin do” — and i had to laugh at the name of it. anyway, thanks for the info!
I am using most of them. I was not aware of Comment Redirect. now, I will be using it too.
Very cool post, and an awesome blog overall. Thank you sir.
Thanks for this post – it’s very helpful.
Thumbs-up Marko
nice article
Thanks for the plugins, really great article. – Keep it up!
testing out your first comment redirect plugin. Most of the others I’m already using.
awesome list–very helpful. thanks!
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