How to start blogging part two - basic must have plugins and tools for WordPress

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If you still haven’t installed WordPress, check out my first post - How to Start Blogging - Auto Installing WordPress on BlueHost. This post discusses the most important plugins every blog should have and because we Installed WordPress on part one, we will continue with WordPress must have plugins. These plugins are essential for every blogger, some of them should be installed even before your first post.

All the plugins are easily installed, just follow the instructions on the plugin page and you shouldn’t have any problems what so ever. If there’s a plugin that needs more than 20 minutes of your day, it isn’t listed here, no matter what it does or how it does it.

1. Aksimet stops comment spamming - when you’ll start blogging and your sites traffic will start to grow, you’ll get more and more spam, until it will be undefetable. Aksimet is the best tool to stop comment spamming and after you’ll start using Aksimet, you won’t believe how simple it is to stop spam.

2. Bad Behavior stops spambots from visiting your site - this plugin stops spammers from harvesting your site for e-mails, posting false referrers and also from being visited by a spambot that it’s job is to basically - spam your site. This is another good step against spammers that you should take, before posting your first post.

3. FeedBurner lets you track your RSS feed subscription statistics - now that you started blogging and you have a RSS feed, you’d want to know how many people subscribed to it and a few statistics about them. Just go the the FeedBurner site and enter your WordPress RSS feed URL and FeedBurner gives you an alternate RSS URL that you should replace with the one WordPress gives you (you can use the next plugin for this).

4. FeedBurner Feed Replacement will replace WordPress RSS feed with FeedBurner - if you’ll install this plugin before you start posting, it will make your life much easier, but even if you forgot to install it, now is the time! This plugin will replace all subscription made to the WordPress RSS with the FeedBurner feed and forward all future ones, giving you the ability to track your subscription statistics.

5. Evermore will give you the option to display short previews of your post on your homepage and categories - I’ve been searching for a plugin like this for a long time and it’s perfect. You can decide on how many paragraphs the preview will show, how many characters and add the “Read more” at the end of each of the post preview.

6. Google Analytics will give all the statistical information you’ll need - track how many users visits your pages, how many page views, how many unique visitors, see where your users are coming from, what keywords they search to find you, create your own customized goals and optimize your blog using the results. This is really a must have tool for any serious blogger.

7. Ajax Comments will give your comments a cool web2.0/ajax look - this plugin is more for the look and feel of the site and less for it’s usability, but it’s really good, easily installed and does exactly what it’s supposed to be - shows the added comment without refreshing the page. Simple, yet very powerful.

8. Related Posts will show related entries by keywords - after you’ll have more than a few posts, some of them will probably be related to each other, some only by category and some by the keywords. You can see exactly what Realted Posts does on this page (scroll down, beofre the comments and after Google’s Ads).

9. Google Sitemaps Generator will build a sitemap for Google - you don’t need to know what it means, you all need to know that you need it. Basically speaking, it helps Google go through your site and therefor it’s good for appearing in search results. If you don’t want the search engines to know your blog exist, you don’t have to install it.

10. Sociable lets you add icons to many bookmarking sites - you know these little buttons at the end of every post? In my case it’s - digg, del.icio.us, BlinkList, Reddit, Furl, YahooMyWeb, simpy, feedmelinks and Ma.gnolia. This little icons gives your users the ability to instantly keep a bookmark of your site in their favorite bookmarking site and also post your article on sites like digg and Reddit.

11. WordPress Database Backup is really important - if you’re going to play a lot with your plugins, themes and your blog in general, you’d might want to install this first. This plugin will backup all your pages, comments, posts, categories and links to either your site’s server, your e-mail or your personal computer.

12. Static front page displays a specific page on your homepage - the default for WordPress is to show your last post on top of the front page, but if you want to have a specific page shown permanently on the front page, you’ll need this plugin. It’s extremely easy to use and it’s a great way to organize all your posts data for your readers.

Have another plugin that I forgot to mention and it’s simply a must have? Please add your comment.

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Comments

One Response to “How to start blogging part two - basic must have plugins and tools for WordPress”

Pierro on July 21st, 2008 8:24 pm

Howdy;

my Name is Pierro and im from Germany.
Nice blogpost .
Maybee you can help me.
I look for the WP plugin “Evermore”. But the download link of this site it dont works for me. Do you have any idea, how can i get it ??

Salut

** do you need a WP plugin to
“sub. the comment” !!!!!!!

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