WordPress is a highly versatile blogging platform used by millions of individuals and businesses. One of its best features is the ability to include externally created ‘plug-ins’ which can perform various functions on your blog. There are literally thousands of plug-ins that have been created for use on WordPress blogs. The following is a list of 18 of the most useful plug-ins for bloggers and small online businesses.
Google XML Sitemaps: Search engine optimization works best when your website or blog is easily indexed by search engine bots. Using Google XML Sitemaps ensures that your blog is properly indexed, increasing its web visibility.
Statpress: For all your statistics needs! Statpress collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browser and more.
Advertising Manager: Recognises a wide variety of ad networks, including Google Adsense. The plug-in manages and rotates ads on your blog. It can also be used to modify the positioning of advertisements within your blog.
Askimet: Provided by WordPress, this handy plug-in is skilled at catching out spam comments without scaring visitors off with annoying captchas.
Bookmark Me: Bookmarking has become one of the key marketing techniques used by successful bloggers and business owners. Bookmark Me makes it easy for visitors to bookmark your blog for future reference.
Subscribe Me: The Subscribe Me plug-in adds buttons that let your visitors share your content on social media sites such as Bloglines or Google Reader.
SRG Clean Archives: Not only does this plug-in make your archives toolbar look neater and more visually appealing, it arranges it so that it is more search engine friendly.
Simple Feed Copyright: With plagiarism a constant issue on the internet, it is useful to have a simple copyright message at the end of articles and posts. This can help to deter would-be plagiarizers.
No Self Pings: On a professional blog, it may be appropriate to block ping-backs from within your own site.
WordPress Related Posts: This plug-in will automatically insert links to related posts at the end of your article via WordPress tags.
SEO Smart Links: The name speaks for itself.
SEO Slugs: “Slugs” are the part of a web page address that give all or part of the page title. SEO Slugs automatically works out the best slug, by removing small, cluttering words such as “a” “the” “and,” etc.
WP-PageNavi: Gives your blog a more sophisticated paging navigation (ie, numbered pages instead of the standard “older” buttons).
Thank Me Later: Sends an automated email to those who comment on your blog, encouraging them to engage further with the blog. Various features of this plug-in can be manipulated to create a more people-friendly outcome.
WP-DBManager: All your database needs, including back-up, optimization, repair, restoration, and more.
BackType Tweetcount: A plug-in that combines the power of social networking with your blog.
WPTouch: Connect with your mobile audience using WPTouch. It automatically converts your theme into a phone-friendly theme for visitors accessing your blog from their mobile phone.
HeadSpace2 SEO: HeadSpace2 is an all-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site.
WP Super Cache: A convenient tool for owners of high-traffic blogs, this plug-in generates static HTML files from your WordPress blog. This reduces the demand on your server, making it faster to download.
