Top 16 Essential Plug-ins For Every WordPress Blog

We all know that the best blogging platform existent @ the moment is WordPress. It makes designing/optimizing a blog/site easy-breezy majorly due to it’s use of plug-ins unlike it’s fierce competitor, Blogger.

Most newbies to blogging with wordpress, do miss out when it comes to what they can achieve in little time, with the right wordpress plug-ins thus my compiling this list of top 15 wordpress plug-ins EVERY wordpress blog must have.

Thanks for Jason Acidre for serving as a catalyst in getting this post ready within a short time .

Without much preambles, let’s begin.

NOTE: For certain wordpress plug-ins to function without a hitch, all themes must have the tag <?php wp_head(); ?> in header.php before </head>.

Also the tag <?php wp_footer(); ?> must be present in footer.php before </body>. Please take note.

SECURING YOUR WORDPRESS INSTALLATION FROM HACKERS AND DATA LOSS

1. Limit Log-in Attempts: This plug-in when configured properly alerts you of any failed attempt to log into your admin area. While alerting you, it also prevents any further log-in attempts from that IP for a number of minutes which you can set as you please.

2. Secure WordPress: Helps hide your wordpress version from hackers, prevents directory listing of your themes and plug-ins folders, deactivates tooltip and error message at login of WordPress and a lot more.

3. WP-DBManager, WordPress Database Backup and WP-Optimize: there will be times when you’ll probably need to restore your site for many reasons, hacking being one of them. A database backup saves you a lot of work and that’s basically what the first two plug-ins do. They help create a backup of your database. Wp-Optimize helps to keep your database fast, compacted and free of useless files. Check out my article @ QuickOnlineTip on How To Backup and Restore WordPress Database.

You might also want to check out these past posts on securing wordpress: How To Secure WordPress Blogs Via Htaccess File and How To Secure WordPress Blogs With Plug-ins.

KEEP YOUR WORDPRESS INSTALLATION FREE OF SPAMMY COMMENTS

4. Akismet: This is the default anti-spam plug-in for wordpress and despite what some folks might say, I still think it does a fabulous job. Please read: Red Alert! Akismet Might Be Deleting Your Comments.

5. Wp-Spam Free: I added this plug-in after I noticed that captchas weren’t really compatible with most cache plug-ins. In addition to protecting you from spammy comments without the need of a captcha which frustrates some readers, it comes with a free, light contact form. Check out my review and configuration of Wp-Spam Free: How To Install and Configure Wp-Spam Free.

OPTIMIZE YOUR WORDPRESS INSTALLATION PROPERLY FOR THE SEARCH ENGINES

6. All In One SEO: There are so many SEO plug-ins out there but right from the start, I’ve been with this plug-in and I ain’t letting go of it because it’s simple, straight-forward and most importantly it gets the work done. Amongst other things, it helps you create a separate post/page title for the search engines so you can improve your click through rate in the SERPS. It also helps prevent the indexing of your category, tag and archive pages which can allegedly get you penalized by Google for duplicate content. Below is a capture of part of my All In One SEO configuration:

IMPROVING INTERACTION BETWEEN BLOG AUTHOR AND READERS

This is one place I find most blogs lacking. They simply don’t encourage commenters to come back and build on conversations. Using the two plug-ins below, you can be rest assured that your commenters will most probably return to continue a conversation on your blog.

Remember, a blog with a nice comment count signals a serious blog to new readers/visitors thus they will most likely hang around for life and probably invite others to share in what you have to offer .

7. Subscribe To Comments: this plug-in simply lets your commenters subscribe to future comments on your blog posts. For example, if you were to leave a comment on this post with the Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail box ticked, future comments on this post will be sent to the email address with which you left your comment. Not to worry, if the comments become too much (I wish ), you can always unsubscribe using the link contained @ the end of the email notification you’ll receive.

8. Comment Reply Notification: While the Subscribe To Comments plug-in notifies you of all future comments made on a post, the Comment Reply Notification notifies of ONLY replies made to comments you personally left on the post. This way, your email doesn’t get cluttered with comment notifications. Both plug-ins are active on this blog .

MAKE YOUR BLOG EASY TO INDEX AND CRAWL BY CREATING A SITEMAP FOR HUMANS & SEARCH ENGINES

By now I’m sure most of you know the importance of visibility in the search engines. Search engine traffic simply ROCKS over traffic from Digg and most social media sites because depending on what your site is all about, search engine visitors are the most likely ones to take actions such as clicking on ads and buying your products which in return puts money in the bank if you’re blogging for money.

Making your site easy to index and crawl by the search engines goes a long way in improving your search engine rankings.

9. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator: There are visitors who will most definitely be interested in viewing a round up of the posts on your blog.  This plug-in creates a page or pages with links to every post and page on your blog arranged according to categories. You can see the plug-in in action @ my post archives page. This sitemap is useful to both search engines and humans.

10. XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress: The standard sitemap for search engines is the XML type and this plug-in creates one for your blog and updates it automatically each time, you create a new post or page on your blog. It also helps notify Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo of updates made to your blog. Here’s what the sitemap look like: StrictlyOnlineBiz Sitemap.

TRACK VISITOR STATS ETC TO MONITOR HOW WELL YOUR TRAFFIC IS DOING

If you’d like to know how good your blog is doing in terms of visitors to the site, you’d have to sign up for a tracking service such as Google Analytics. Here’s  a great tutorial on Google Analytics for Beginners. Note that there are other tracking services available on line but Google’s the best in my opinion .

11. WordPress.com Stats: this plug-in functions as the stat tracker on wordpress.com free blogs. It now works with self-hosted blogs and tracks things like daily page views, top traffic referrers, top click throughs and top keywords. To make sure that you’re not tracking your own visits to your blog, please ensure that you uncheck Count the page views of registered users who are logged in.

12. Google Analytics for WordPress: Installing Google Analytics on your blog is as easy as pasting the tracking script before the </body> tag in your footer.php BUT I recommend using a plug-in so that when you’re making modifications to your site, you wouldn’t be erroneously tracking your own visits. This plug-in can be configured to track downloads, outbound clicks, Adsense stats and much more. Just make sure to leave the Ignore Users option set to Editor. You can find this under advanced settings.

MAKE YOUR WORDPRESS SITE INSTALLATION AS FAST AS IT CAN EVER BE

Search engine visitors are sometimes impatient in their search for information and will most times leave your site, if it takes more than 10 seconds max  to load. Your best bet is to make your site as fast as possible  through the help of plug-ins and htaccess hacks.

NOTE: If your webhost is a mess, no miracle cache plug-in can save you. Thus I suggest you get quality web hosting like Hostgator’s.

13. W3 Total Cache: I won’t say much about this plug-in as I’ve done so in the past. Just check out my posts on installing this plug-in: Make Your Blog 10x Faster With W3 Total Cache Plug-in Setup Guide and How To Install W3 Total Cache (Quick Update).

14. WP Widget Cache: this plug-in assumes the function of making sure that your sidebar widgets load as fast as possible by caching the data contained within them. This data can be made to refresh itself each time changes are made to Categories, Comments, Posts and Tags.

AVOID BEING TAGGED A SPAMMER FOR PINGING EXCESSIVELY

15. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer: Each time you post an update on your site, wordpress allows you alert certain sites of the fact that your blog has been updated and needs to be crawled again. Unfortunately, wordpress pings these sites repeatedly each time you edit your posts and this could get you tagged as a spammer. This plug-in helps prevent that.

MAKE YOUR BLOG ACCESSIBLE VIA MOBILE DEVICES SUCH AS THE IPHONE

Take it or leave it, with the advent of hi-tech phones such as the iPhone, most folks are comfortably browsing the web via their mobile phones and the number of mobile browsers is gradually increasing by day.

16. WordPress Mobile Pack: I’ve tested a few wordpress mobile plug-ins and of the lot, WordPress Mobile Pack is the easiest to configure and work around.  Please read StrictlyOnlineBiz Goes Mobile With WordPress Mobile Pack.

If you encounter problems configuring these plug-ins, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll help you out .

Cheers and Happy Blogging with the Mighty WordPress .

1. How To Secure WordPress Blogs With Plug-ins
2. Top 3 Dofollow WordPress Plug-ins For Dofollow Blogs
3. SOB’s Top 5 WordPress Plug-in Alternatives
4. Top 7 Tweaks For A Faster WordPress Blog
5. Maximizing Commentluv, Keywordluv & Dofollow Plug-ins