Nearly everything you’ll need to do on Wordpress someone’s been there and done it first. One of the great things about Wordpress is that there’s so many plugins available and they’re so easy to install on your theme.
Here’s 10 (+bonus) plugins that I used on my Wordpress theme that should aid both you and your readers.
1. Popular posts
Over time your most popular and useful posts will slowly fade away into your archives. Use this handy plugin so you can showoff your top posts to new readers in your sidebar.
2. Redirection
Highly recommended. Takes a log of any 404 (page not found) errors on your site and then you can add 302 redirects for these errors, ensuring that future users don’t come across the same errors and search engine bots are directed towards the correct url. Particularly useful if you change the structure of your site and all your old incoming links break.
Edit: It lets you add 301 redirects (i.e. permanent redirects) rather than 302 redirects
3. Sideblog
I introduced a sideblog into my site so I could refresh my content daily without the need for having to write long articles. It’s good to share other sites you come across.
4. Similar
If a user enjoys reading one of your articles, chances are they’ll enjoy your related articles. Keep them reading on your site as long as possible by recommending similar posts.
5. Code Auto Escape
This handy plugin is for writing articles or tutorials that include code snippets. Everything you write between the code tags will be escaped, so you can just copy and paste the code from your editor.
6. Gravatars 2
Add a face and some personalisation to your user comments by adding Gravatars. Users can associate gravatars with their email address by uploading a photo on gravatar.com.
7. Sociable
Sociable adds the tiny icons to the end of your post that allows your users to share and promote your article via external networking sites. It is fully customisable so you can decide what icons you want listed.
8. Subscribe to comments
This is a good way to get conversations going on your blog. Allowing a user to subscribe to comments means that every time someone comments, they get notified, which can potentially get you another comment from them.
9. WP-Pagenavi
The default pagination with Wordpress isn’t great so dicky it up a bit with this sweet plugin.
10. Akismet
Stops *most* of the spam that comes through as comments on your blog.
You will need an API key to activate Akismet on your blog. To get this, signup to Wordpress.com and your API key should be emailed to you. Alternatively, login to Wordpress.com and select ‘Edit Profile’ from ‘My Account’. Your API key should be displayed on this page.
Bonus: Amazon Showcase
Sign up for an associates account on Amazon then for every book you refer to someone, you will get a percentage of the sale in your pocket. This showcase plugin allows you to easily show your favorite books and links them through to Amazon with your referral ID.
Go one step further and setup an aStore so you can show your users all the books you recommend.
Further Reading
About the author
Hi I'm Lee, a freelance web designer and masters student from Belfast Northern Ireland. Like this article? Feel free to follow me on Twitter.
Tags: Blog, plugins, Wordpress
Great list! Not all of them will be useful to everyone, but I think everyone can find something here that will boost the effectiveness of their blogs, for sure.
And who is that handsome fella in your example of gravatars?
You could also use TypePad AntiSpam instead of Akismet, it works great!
Nice! I’ve installed the subscribe to comments because you pointed it out - thanks!
Excellent sharing!
good articele, for me the number one plugin “All in One SEO”, that’s the number one priority
Great list! Thought we’d let you know about Kaltura’s Interactive Video plugin. This is not just another video embed tool - the plugin enables you to enhance your blog with a full video experience. Upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix video content, enable video responses, manage and track your video content and much more…
Check it out and download it here: http://corp.kaltura.com/wordpress_video_plugin?general&campaign=wordpress-comments
Showcase your blog, see examples and pictures of the plugin and get support in our forum: http://community.kaltura.org/viewforum.php?f=4
thanks..
Great list! As for me I prefer addthis.com plugin instead of “7. Sociable”.
thanks! gravatars was just what i have been looking for (:
Hi Lee,
Nice roundup of useful plugins. Might try one or two of them out myself.
BTW I think that should be a 301 redirect rather than a 302.
Blog looks really good as well.
cheers,
Michael.
@Michael: You’re absolutely right, nice catch! Should be 301 redirects (i.e. permanent). Have edited the post to reflect this. Thanks for pointing that out.
Thank you so much for this list. I was aware of almost all of them, and use some already, but was happy to find out about the Code Auto Escape plugin. I definitely needed that one. Keep up the great work and I love the look, feel, usability and texture of your website. Strangely, I find myself craving a chocolate bar right now. I wonder why? LOL.
thanks a lot