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The must have plugins for your wordpress blog (for beginners)

Guest post by: Barbara Saul

Article Overview: Several times each week we hear from an expert on the "top ten WordPress plugins" or the "WordPress plugins every blog MUST have" and "Your blog will self-destruct without these ultimate, top, best 67 WordPress plugins". OK, I made that last one up, but you get the picture. For a new blogger or someone just setting up their first wordpress blog it can be daunting, here I hope to remove some of the pain and make it easier to have an effective wordpress blog.

The must have plugins for your wordpress blog (for beginners)

Several times each week we hear from an expert on the "top ten WordPress plugins" or the "WordPress plugins every blog MUST have" and "Your blog will self-destruct without these ultimate, top, best 67 WordPress plugins". OK, I made that last one up, but you get the picture.

There are some standards that appear on most of these lists, but it can get a bit daunting, or you may feel a little like a kid in a sweet shop and want all of them (which is tempting, I know - but keep in mind that it's best to deactivate them all whenever you upgrade WordPress, and then reactivate one by one).

I suggest you start with these basics before anything else:

Akismet - this is installed with WordPress as standard, for a very good reason. Take the time to activate this and get your API key.

While you're about it, I've started adding in the WordPress.com stats - you'd may as well, as you have the API key (just do it and you'll see what I mean).

I generally also install Google Analyticator, for in-depth information on what your website visitors are doing.

WordPress Database Backup is another essential - install and set this to backup regularly. I have mine emailed to me once a week.

CryptX is a good tool - this then means you don't have to faff about or worry about protecting your email addresses - this plugin does it for you.

Exclude Pages from Navigation offers you the option of having live pages that are not included in the navigation (but no doubt you'd already worked that out...!)

As a Twitter user I always include the TweetMeme Retweet Button - though I will review alternatives next week and do a post on the ways to share your postings

You may like to include a sitemap - the Google XML Sitemaps will take care of that for you

And if you're expecting comments on your blog posts, it might be nice to have them threaded by the Wordpress Thread Comment plugin

So why have I not included links to all of these? The simplest way to install a plugin is within your WordPress Dashboard - Plugins, Add New and search for the above.

You will soon notice that there is a plugin for just about anything you might want to do with your WordPress. Take your time and explore - you can always deactivate anything that you find to not be useful for you.

And look around at new plugins now and then - wonderful geeks are always looking to create better functions for us.

If there is a specific desire, as well as searching WordPress, do a search on Google - not all plugins are listed with WordPress (though I personally trust the latter more readily) and you may find a gem.

Feel free to ask too - if I don't immediately know of a solution, I can often ask the questions that can uncover what is needed.

Barbara Saul, Blogmistress

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Article Tags: better wordpress, blogger, wordpress blog, wordpress plugins
Referred by: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com



Related Forum Posts
Re: Which is the best for beginners? - [quote="apu":1tztov79]Which is the best online business for the beginners to start ? Will it be okay to start with setting up a blog or website.Please make some recommendations.[/quote:1tztov79] Start with affiliate marketing if you don't want to create a product and just want to worry about getting traffic. You can do this through creating a blog, which is usually something easier for beginners to do compared to learning about search engine optimization.
Re: how do I get started with Wordpress blog? - bump.. I agree with the comments made by christew. Self-hosted (your domain and a downloaded copy of Wordpress from wordpress.org) is best for the serious business owner looking to build a presence online using a blogging platform. I usually use wordpress to create a blend of Static pages (to look like a traditional website) and have a blog component where new content is posted atleast once a week for my clients. Wordpress is very user friendly and has a very shallow learning curve if you are only adding content to it. If you are looking to add functionality (aka plugins) the learning curve is not bad even for someone starting off but sometimes you may need the functionality to look and behave slightly different than "out-of-the-box" and you may need some knowledge of HTML.
Re: how do I get started with Wordpress blog? - The main difference between blogger and Wordpress is that wordpress is open source. Since it is also the most popular blogging platform it has thoasands of people working on it, adding new features, extra options, which are easy to add and implement to your site. Blogger is very simple and super easy to use out of the box, but at the same time it is inflexible and becomes cumbersome when you want to do more with your site. I've seen a lot of site owners switch from blogger to wordpress once there site has grown, and this process is not easy and you then have to learn a new blogging platform. Also blogger being indexed quicker is largely myth. There's a grain of truth in it but the effect is so small its not worth the consideration. If quick indexing, free and a hosted domain (e.g yoursite.blogspot.com or yoursite.wordpress.com or blogplatform.com/yoursite) are your main choices for getting a blog then blogger is not your best choice. Vox is usually better for this due to the massive internal linking from the main authority domain (vox.com) - just add a few friends etc. to build some internal links from vox.com to your site. Xanga and Orble are other choices.the downside is these platforms have less freedom than blogger, and put in their own ads. In terms of ranking wordpress blogs tend to do a lot better than all platforms since they can be finely optimized with the right theme and SEO plugins. My advice if you are serious about an online presence is start with the best (wordpress), using your own domain as it will be the best choice in the long run and lead you to success more quickly.
Re: Poll: Blogger or Wordpress Blog? - Similar question was given in another thread and I gave this answer: [quote:1g1fyvrg]The main difference between blogger and Wordpress is that wordpress is open source. Since it is also the most popular blogging platform it has thoasands of people working on it, adding new features, extra options, which are easy to add and implement to your site. Blogger is very simple and super easy to use out of the box, but at the same time it is inflexible and becomes cumbersome when you want to do more with your site. I've seen a lot of site owners switch from blogger to wordpress once there site has grown, and this process is not easy and you then have to learn a new blogging platform. Also blogger being indexed quicker is largely myth. There's a grain of truth in it but the effect is so small its not worth the consideration. If quick indexing, free and a hosted domain (e.g yoursite.blogspot.com or yoursite.wordpress.com or blogplatform.com/yoursite) are your main choices for getting a blog then blogger is not your best choice. Vox is usually better for this due to the massive internal linking from the main authority domain (vox.com) - just add a few friends etc. to build some internal links from vox.com to your site. Xanga and Orble are other choices.the downside is these platforms have less freedom than blogger, and put in their own ads. In terms of ranking wordpress blogs tend to do a lot better than all platforms since they can be finely optimized with the right theme and SEO plugins. My advice if you are serious about an online presence is start with the best (wordpress), using your own domain as it will be the best choice in the long run and lead you to success more quickly.[/quote:1g1fyvrg]
Re: how do I get started with Wordpress blog? - [quote="jvprosperity":k5g18y4e]If you are looking to add functionality (aka plugins) the learning curve is not bad even for someone starting off but sometimes you may need the functionality to look and behave slightly different than "out-of-the-box" and you may need some knowledge of HTML.[/quote:k5g18y4e] But even if you don't have HTML & PHP knowledge wordpress is so widely used and easy to work with you'll be able to pick up a developer to handle maintenance, new features etc. at low costs. There's very good wordpress developers out there that charge $10/hr in developing economies.


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