Must have plugins for Wordpress

July 08th 2006 Posted to articles

There are a lot of great plugins available for WordPress, but here is a short list of plugins I use when starting out. This should be sufficient to get you started. If you would like to see more plugins, click here. Anyone recommend any other plugins? Let me know.

Plugin installation is very easy…usually you just download and upload the plugin files to your wp-content/plugins directory, then activate them from the Plugins category on your dashboard. Some plugins require a few extra steps, so be sure to read the documentation of each plugin for details. Here are the plugins I start out with:

  • Bsuite - Gives blog stats, shows incoming search terms, tracks top stories, etc. After installing, I edit the single.php file (go to Presentation, Theme Editor, then click on “Single Post” to edit single.php). Click here for instruction on how to get search terms and other options to show up on your blog.
  • Google Sitemaps - Helps make your blog more search engine friendly to Google. Download and activate. Once you have added a few posts, go to Options, Sitemap and then click on “Rebuild Sitemap”.
  • Sociable - Adds little social bookmarking icons to the bottom of your blog posts. This is useful for promoting your stories later. Only use if you have an article worthy of submitting - like this one :) . You might want to adjust your sociable settings after you install as the default install includes over 20 icons.
  • WP-ExtremeVideo - Awesome plugin that allows you to embed videos from YouTube and Google Videos.
  • WordPress Database Backup - Must have plugin that may come after your default WordPress install. Activate this one and use it. You don’t want to have to re-enter all of your posts should you lose your data.
  • WP-Cron - This plugin will make your database backups automatic. I set it up to email my backup to my Gmail account daily so I don’t have to think about it. After you install and activate this plugin, go to the Manage menu, then click on Backup and you will see the option at the bottom for your backup preferences. If you don’t have a Gmail account, I recommend you get one. I believe you still have to have an invite to get one, so if you need an invite, email me and I’ll invite you. The reason I recommend them is because they give you over 2GB of space. If you already have enough email space you may want to use your existing account instead…it’s up to you.
  • SimpleTags - Allows you to add Technorati tags to your posts. Makes you look cool.
  • Adsense Deluxe - An awesome plugin that allows you to put your Google Adsense code into your blog. If you haven’t signed up for Google Adsense, make sure you have a site that is complete and likely to be approved by Google before you apply. Click the button below to sign up for Google Adsense


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