Essential Wordpress Plugins

Written by Constance Q. Xavier Monday, 11 April 2011 12:32

It's no secret that Wordpress is the most popular platform for self publishing today. Millions of people use it to write simple blogs, or to write huge web sites filled with astonishing content. Whether you are a world famous publisher, or simply writing posts about your daily life, you likely are using Wordpress.

It's no secret that Wordpress is the most popular platform for self publishing today. Millions of people use it to write simple blogs, or to write huge web sites filled with astonishing content. Whether you are a world famous publisher, or simply writing posts about your daily life, you likely are using Wordpress.

One thing that makes Wordpress so powerful is its plugins. These are small programs that you can install to give your site additional functions. There are thousands and thousands of these, and you can use them to do anything from playing a song when somebody comes to your site, to keeping out the spammers. In this article I'll go over the essential plugins, and why you need them.

The most important one to get is Akismet. This is free (although they accept donations), and does a great job of limiting the amount of spam you get, sometimes even eliminating it altogether. Even if you think you won't have a problem with spam, you should get this anyway. As your blog grows and attracts more visitors, you will naturally attract more spam.

Another plugin you should consider getting is Google Sitemaps. A site map is a basic layout of your site, but without all the graphics. It's useful for Google spiders, as it helps them to figure out exactly what your site is about. That can help your site get indexed quicker, which means people can find it sooner in Google's index. Every time you add another post, Google Sitemaps will automatically update.

Another plugin that is one of the most popular is called "All In One SEO Pack." This makes your site more SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, Friendly. It does this by the way it handles your blog titles, and keywords, and other things. It also adds a couple extra boxes under each post on the administrator side, to input additional information about that particular post. This information is only viewable by the search engines, so they have a better idea of where to list your site. This, in turn, makes it easier for people looking for certain information to find your site.

The last recommended plugin is something called "Share This." This basically adds a small button at the end of each post, and lets readers easily book mark your site on any of the social bookmarking sites. That way when you write a particularly interesting post, people will read it, book mark, it and then in turn share it with others. This plugin will increase the chance of your site going viral, and attracting hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of hits.

Of course, these are just the beginning. There are thousands of other plugins out there that can do any number of things. These will get you started so you keep away the spam, rank higher in the search engines, and attract more visitors.