May 8

15 Essential wordpress plugins

wordpress-plugin

when installing plugins to your wordpress blog, it is very important to note two things, it should not hard your existing theme, then it should not slow down your blog for its visitors and bottom line is to improve your blog in terms of search engine optimization, navigation ease for visitors, speed for the blog itself

below is the list of wordpress plugins I use in every set-up of my wordpress blogs, kind of default plugins for me.

  • All in One SEO Pack – seo configuration for your blog
  • Auto Post Thumbnail– generates thumbnail / features image for your blog posts first image, this is very handy if your themes uses featured image / thumbnails.
  • Bing 404  – when a visitors lands with 404 page, he will be provided with possible urls to visit from your blog with the help of bing api
  • Contact Form 7– simple contact form generator
  • Crayon Syntax Highlighter– code highlighter
  • Google Analytics for WordPress– to keep track of your blogs using google analytics.
  • Google XML Sitemaps– very important if you want the blog to be seo friendly.
  • PubSubHubbub– very essential plugin if you write original content and there is a possibility of contents theft, this one will report who wrote this article first.
  • Spam Free WordPress– it will provide auto generated password that needs to be manually copied and pasted to write a comment, very effective in fighting the spam bots.
  • Subscribe To Comments– name explains it all.
  • W3 Total Cache– most trusted WordPress performance plugin. improves the speed and user experience of the site
  • WordPress SEO– again another SEO plugin, not so essential but it is better.
  • WP-Optimize- helps you to keep your database clean by removing post revisions and spams
  • WP-PageNavi– if you have too many blog posts, you need better navigation system in place, this plugin does the job.
  • WP Facebook Open Graph protocol – Adds proper Facebook Open Graph Meta tags and values to your site so when links are shared it looks great in facebook, g+ and linkedin.