If it’s your first time to build a website using WordPress, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the huge number of available plugins.
Some are useful, some are not. Some are nice-to-haves, while some are truly essential.
But how do we know which WordPress Plugins to keep?
To make things easy for you, here’s a list of:
9 Initial WordPress Plugins You Must Have (Starters)
1. Akismet
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/
Plugin Description: Akismet checks comments made to your blog to see if it’s spam or not. It can also capture the spam so you can review it later on.
They’ve recently added a PRO feature to this plugin but it’s not really required. You can still run it using the WordPress.com API. You can get your API here http://en.support.wordpress.com/api-keys/ to use this plugin. You already get this plugin when you install WordPress so all you need to do is activate it and place your API keys.
2. Broken Link Checker
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/
Plugin Description: This plugin monitors your blog by looking for broken links. You will get notified via email if they find any broken links (hence the name).
This plugin is really a must have! Many times I’ve mistyped affiliate links and it’s a good thing the plugin notified me to correct them. I would have lost potential income if the plugin wasn’t there.
3. Cbnet Ping Optimizer
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cbnet-ping-optimizer/
Plugin Description: “Pinging” is when your WordPress blog notifies other service sites such as Google and Yahoo every time you publish a post. Your “Ping” tells these services that you have new stuff in your blog that they should check out.
The problem is that WordPress will also send pings to these services even if you make simple updates to your blog. Sending too many pings will get you blacklisted and be considered a spammer. This plugin will ensure that you don’t “ping” the services to often, while still taking advantage of “pinging”.
4. W3 Total Cache
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/
Plugin Description: W3 Total Cache plugin improves your site visitor’s experience by improving your server performance. It greatly reduces download times making your site load faster.
This is another “must have” plugin for every wordpress blog. The problem is that it’s a bit technical to setup.
5. WordPress SEO by Yoast
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/
Plugin Description: “WordPress SEO by Yoast” is probably the most complete SEO plugin for WordPress available. It shows you a snippet preview of how your posts will look like in search engine listings. With this preview, you can optimize your page titles, meta descriptions and keywords.
When you install WordPress SEO plugin, it is recommended that you remove the following plugins: “All in One SEO”, “RSS Footer” and “WP No Category Base”.
6. Plugin Name: Secure WordPress
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secure-wordpress/
Plugin Description: Simply put, this plugin help to secure your WordPress site. It prevents back-door accessing to your site.
7. Sexy Bookmarks
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/
Plugin Description: This plugin gives your readers easy-access buttons to submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites.
Aside from reading your posts, you want your readers to share them to others. The large buttons should encourage them to share your work, thereby promoting your site.
8. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/
Plugin Description: This plugin adds a CAPTCHA anti-spam field to the different forms within your WordPress site. If a site visitor wants to post a comment, they need to key in the code shown on the image. This primarily prevents spam from robots.
The SI Captcha Anti-Spam plugin works well with Akismet. I used to clean up spam on my blogs on a daily basis. After I installed the two plugins, I’ve only gotten 1 spam since then.
9. StatPress
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/statpress/
Plugin Description: This is a great plugin to check statistics about visits to your site. It collects information about visitors, search keywords, feeds, browsers etc. This plugin is great for non-techies or find Google Analytics too complicated to manage.
I always do a quick check on my visits to see how many visitors I’ve had and the kind of keywords they used to get to my site (in case they used Google)
With these 9 plugins, I hope it’s able to kick-start your WordPress site. I know that some of the plugins are quite technical and difficult to setup, that’s why I’m working on a full tutorial for these plugins. Stay tuned for that!
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