New Media Services
WordPress Plugins For Your New Blog
WordPress is pretty much ready out of the box, but there are many plugins which expand its functionality.
Below I highlight the WordPress plugins I install on all my new blogs, and I explain why these are my top picks.
1. Akismet – a spam fighting plugin designed and maintained by WordPress itself.
2. WordPress Stats – a feature rich plugin which gives you detailed visitor stats right on your wp dashboard. Also designed and maintained by WordPress.
3. All In One SEO – this plugin performs basic onsite SEO on your blog automatically. A must have and a great time saver.
4. SEO Post Title – fixes the post title, to show blog address at end of post, not the beginning
5. Subscribe To Comments – allows readers/visitors to receive updates to comments via email
6. Physic Search – shows what readers are searching for when they come to your blog. One of my favorite Wp plugins.
7. Google XML Sitemap – this creates a content roadmap for Google
8. Privacy Policy – adds a Google compliant privacy policy to your site (this one really only applies if you plan to use Google Adsense on your blog)
9. Top Commentators – a widget placed in sidebar that shows your top commentators, fully customizable
10. Sociable – an easy social bookmarking and sharing widget
11. Contact Form – creates a secure and accessible contact form for your blog
12. WP Polls – a widget that allows for the easy creation and insertion of polls on your blogs sidebar, or inside posts
13. Simple Tags – this plugin facilitates the insertion of tags within the “write a post” admin area
14. Twitter For WordPress – a plugin that allows easy integration of your Twitter stream
These are my top picks for WordPress plugins on a new blog.
You don’t want to add too many, as this may slow your blog down. So it’s always a toss-up between choosing a cool plugin and finding someone who can do the job via the WordPress code instead.
But the WordPress community makes this real hard, as there are lots of very cool plugins available.
