WordPress Plugins - My Top 15 Plugin Picks 1

WordPress Plugins – My Top 15 Plugin Picks

Have you gone looking for plugins lately? There are a bazillion, and one of them (and I don’t trust it is an exaggerated variety!). Knowing which you need in your weblog may be very perplexing. Worse, when you start downloading and installing dozens of plugins, you don’t truly recognize what they may be for and/or how to use them.

I permit you to make smart plugin alternatives for your blog.

WordPress Plugins – Choose Wisely

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Plugins upload capabilities and functions in your WordPress blog above its core capabilities as is with an ‘out-of-the-field’ installation. Plugins are one of the things that makes WordPress so effective, due to the fact there is a plugin for almost the whole thing (and once a person creates a plugin, so my WordPress will supply me my morning espresso – I’ll proclaim WordPress a hundred% best ;); however, just due to the fact there are so many plugin choices, does now not suggest you have to download and install them all. So how do you select?

You Start via Identifying a Need

If you locate you need a specific feature or function for your weblog, you search for a plugin to fill that need. Not before.

So the plugins you could use might be absolutely one-of-a-kind than the ones I would possibly use; due to the fact, our desires are specific.

Know and Understand Your Plugins

If you’ve got recognized a need, then looking for plugins to fill that need is the first part of understanding and know-how why you’re installing a specific plugin. You will locate many ‘Top Recommended Plugins’ lists on the internet, and there may not be anything incorrect with the one’s lists. However, you want to recognize and apprehend the cause and feature in the back of a plugin earlier than download and deploy it. If you do not, you definitely aren’t going to be using that plugin to its complete potential; or worse, it may slow down your weblog or not be compatible with any other plugin you are using.

Don’t blindly set up plugins except for miles filling a need you have on your blog.

Plugin Maintenance

Every time you want to upgrade your WordPress, there is constantly a chance that one of your set up plugins will not be compatible with the improvement. For the extra popular plugins, their builders are usually on the pinnacle of these items, and an improvement is made to be had in no time. However, now not all plugin developers preserve updating the plugin. If this is the case, you’ll need to discover any other compatible plugin to do the identical thing your now old plugin did.

Too Many Plugins?

There is no set range of advocated plugins, apart from most effectively using the ones you need. However, remember the fact that many plugins use loads of sources, and some may be definitely sluggish down your blog’s loading time. If you discover which you’re using a resource hog plugin, try and find a ‘lighter’ opportunity that provides comparable function/capabilities.

My Top 15 Recommended Plugins – and Why They are Useful

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Ok, now that I’ve given you the lowdown on plugin choice and things you want to have in mind; I do have a listing of 15 plugins that I, in my opinion, use, and I’ll percentage with you their feature so that you can determine if they might also be useful to your weblog. If you don’t need or need the characteristic/function of any of those plugins present – do not install them. Simple as that. 🙂

Akismet: that is one part of my two-part spam-preventing device on my weblog to combat comment unsolicited mail. This plugin sincerely comes hooked up on every WordPress weblog; you just want to activate it with an API key you get from WordPress.Com.

All in One search engine optimization Pack: the excellent plugin that allows you to set unique weblog to publish and page titles (i.E. Key-word word unique titles that have to be unique to each post and/or web page you write) and set meta descriptions and add meta key phrases as well.

Articles: this plugin lets me pick out ‘featured’ posts a good way to display on a separate web page on my weblog for brief and clean reference. Not similar to a sitemap, as simplest the one’s posts you select may be seen, so an awesome manner of holding your maximum famous posts multi-function easy to discover the place.

Audio Player: a nice plugin that makes it very brief and easy to feature an mp3 audio to a post or web page. Great for including interviews or audio sound bites on your web page. I opt for this plugin over the integrated audio player in WordPress.

Comment Redirect: this plugin will redirect all first-time commenters on your weblog to a web page or put up of your choosing. I even have a page created where I thank them, as first-time commenters, for journeying my weblog – you may even provide them an unfastened downloadable document on this page, invite them to join your mailing list (consist of an opt-in form on this web page!) or whatever you want. Make them sense, unique, and appreciated!
Dagon Design Contact Form: by way of a long way, the exceptional and easiest to apply and set up contact shape I’ve located. It includes a captcha to govern contact shape unsolicited mail by using bots.

Dagon Design Sitemap: this is a human-friendly sitemap, made to make it simpler for your weblog visitors to locate all your posts and pages in a single spot. Has an area to enter the location of your XML sitemap (see under)
Google XML Sitemap: this is a sitemap for search engines. Yes, it would help if you had both a human-friendly sitemap and this XML sitemap, so it works properly with the Dagon Design Sitemap listed above.

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Sexy Bookmarks: this is a social bookmarking plugin to add social bookmarking icons underneath every post and/or page on your website so your blog traffic can go without difficulty Stumble, Digg, Tweet, and so on… Your site content material. This is high-quality for the traffic era!

Similar Posts: provides a listing of similar or associated posts at the cease of your blog posts. Subscribe to Comments: It allows site visitors to observe any new remarks on a particular blog publish.
Thank Me Later: I will send a fully customizable observe-up ‘thanks’ email to anybody who has previously commented on your blog but has not been lower back. Great for reminding folks about your blog and getting go back site visitors.
Twitter Tools: allows you to combine your blog and Twitter account. This is the device I use to automatically ship a tweet out once I post a new post on my weblog. You also can upload your today’s Twitter activity in your blog sidebar.

WP Database Backup: this a really available plugin that everyone certainly wishes to apply. Not handiest will this plugin backup your database, you can agenda regular database backups with this plugin and have the one’s backups emailed to you. I surprisingly advise which you deploy this plugin and schedule at the least day by day backups of your blog. Do not count on your net host is doing regular day by day backups of your website.
WP Super Cache: when you have a blog that receives a LOT of visitors, or you may probably get a surge of site visitors (like thru Digg, Stumbleupon, or a trending topic), you want this plugin. It will save you from crashing your bandwidth at some point of excessive traffic surges.