Essential WordPress Plugins

WordPress is now the leading blogging platform, although to be honest it is much more now than just a blogging platform and can be used for a fully fledged website.

Assuming you are new to WordPress below is yet another list of essential plugins, if you are not new then you probably wont find much of interest here but you never know!

For Search Engine Optimisation:

All in One Search Engine Pack. Very easy to use and configure. I have actually invested in a theme called thesis, which is arguably the most search engine friendly of all the themes and has all of the all in one search engine pack essentially built in. You can either click the banner add on the right or my link here and buy it if it grabs your fancy. In exchange for buying it through me once your rights to a refund have expired I will give you a 17.5% rebate on the cost. I am working on a couple of enhanced thesis templates as an alternative bonus, but for now this is as good as it gets. For what its worth the support on the forums is second to none and this theme is incredibly powerful.

Google Analyticator. This one was more complicated. There seemed to be a lot of these available. After considerable research I decidedwas the one to go for. Pretty easy to install and configure and will even find your google afiliate link.

Google XML Sitemaps. You really need to have a sitemap to get your site indexed well from Google. This plug in will do it for you, and will update your sitemap automatically.

Spam:

Akismet This one goes without saying and is so good that it is included as standard with all new WordPress blogs. All you need to do is to insert your wordpress key and you should say goodbye to almost all of your spam!

Security

WP-DB Backup. This is an absolute essential and will back up your WordPress Database.

WP-Security Scan. Very useful and will let you know whether you have any security loopholes.

Not essential but useful:

Comment System:

Disqus seems to be a vast improvement on the standard WordPress Comment System. Again it is useful for reducing your spam and it has positive impact on search engine optimisation too.

Twitter:

I am a fan of Twitter. However there are a large number of plugins that will work with twitter. In the end I went for two:

WP-Twitter. This posts to twitter a link to your latest blogposts.

Twitter for WordPress: This simply includes your latest tweets to your WordPress blog. Very simple and all you have to do is add your twitter user name and how many posts you want to reference and away you go!

Hope the above help you in your quest to design the perfect wordpress blog. If you have any suggestions for additions or similar please let me know!

Once your blog is getting a bit more together there are a few more plugins that I would recommend. These will be featured in upcoming Plugin of the Week posts. They include Zemanta, WP-Hive and Transposh.

Please comment below and let me know... I would really appreciate it.

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Tagged as: Bonus, Database Security, Disqus, Grabs, Image, Search Engine Optimisation, Second To None, Security Loopholes, Templates, Thesis, Thesis Theme, Twitter, Website, WordPress, Wordpress Plugins, Xml