WordPress PlugIns
WordPress is a revolutionary platform that simplifies the steps of creating a web site and allowing bloggers to concentrate on what they do best - create blogs. You can host WordPress on your own site or obtain a free WordPress site at wordpress.com.
One of the greatest features of WordPress is the way it can be customized to suit your specific requirements. Two of the features that allow this personalization are Themes and PlugIns.
WordPress Themes control the way your blog or website looks (some people refer to these as "templates"). I discuss choosing and using new WordPress Themes on another lens:
WordPress PlugIns provide additional functionality for your site, and there are literally several hundred to choose from. Browsing through the catalog of PlugIns on the WordPress PlugIn list can be somewhat overwhelming, as they list over 1500 of them.
This lens will focus on some of the best PlugIns for WordPress, PlugIns that you should seriously consider adding to your site. All of these PlugIns are Open Source, which means they are essentially free. I'll provide a link so you can download them and try them out for yourself.
If you need assistance installing these PlugIns be sure to check out my lens:
I'm sure that they're are many more PlugIns out there that should be added to this list. If you know of one please add it to the Links Plexo at the bottom of this page and I'll be sure to take a look at it.
1 - Site Essentials
The PlugIns you simply MUST have!
WordPress Database Backup
Your WordPress website is driven by a MySQL database. If something bad were to happen to this database you would lose your entire web site, and that would truly be a tragedy. This PlugIn prevents that from happening, it performs a periodic backup that can be saved to your web server, downloaded to your computer or even e-mailed to your account.
You can get this essential PlugIn at http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup.
2 - Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Get your site or blog noticed!
It should be noted that there are also WordPress configuration settings that will greatly improve the SEO aspect of your site, specifically changes made to the way your URL's are formatted. I discuss this on one of my other lenses:
SEO Title Tag
This PlugIn optimizes the "Title Tag", an important section of an HTML document to both search engines and humans (we see it as the text in the title bar of our web browser). By default the title tag will be identical to the name of your WordPress post, this is not really the best arrangement for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO Title Tag will improve the contents of the title tag, thus increasing your sites value to the major search engines.
SEO Title Tag can be downloaded for free at http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin.
Headspace
This PlugIn allows control of another part of the HTML code that makes up your website. In particular this PlugIn controls the HTML "Head" parameters. It is here that you can create "meta tags", descriptive lines of text that help search engines and other services find and index your website.
This PlugIn can also be freely downloaded at http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace.
Google Sitemap Generator
A few years ago Google created a standard service that allows webmasters to submit information about their site in the form of an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) document called a "sitemap". Submitting a sitemap to Google will allow their search engine "spiders" to crawl your site more efficiently, and that has to be a good thing. This PlugIn will do the job for you.
You may download the Sitemap Generator at http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator.
3 - Performance Improvements
Supercharge your site!
WP-Cache
This PlugIn creates a "cache" on your WordPress web server. The cache improves the performance of your site and allows more pages to load simultaneously. This can come in very handy when your site becomes so popular that thousands of visitors log in at the same time.
Download this free PlugIn at http://mnm.uib.es/gallir/wp-cache-2.
4 - Interactivity
Get interactive with your visitors!
Subscribe Me
This PlugIn lets you add subscription links to common RSS Readers. You have probably seen this on several sites and may not have been sure what they are for. RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds allow users to "subscribe" to your site, and they will receive an update every time you post new content. Some experts see RSS as becoming as important as both e-mail and web browsing in the not-so-distant future, so this would be a good feature to have on your site.
The Subscribe Me PlugIn can be downloaded for free at http://www.semiologic.com/software/widgets/subscribe-me.
5 - Monetization
Make money with your site!
6 - Multimedia
Add Sound and Video to your site.
YouTube Brackets
YouTube videos are a great way to keep visitors entertained on your site. This PlugIn takes all of the hard work out of embedding YouTube into your site without breaking up the layout.
Download this free PlugIn at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/youtube-brackets.
How Easy is WordPress to Use?
Is WordPress as simple as they say it is?
This poll is to find out if the folks at WordPress have done their homework. WordPress is supposed to be an easy-to-use blogging platform. Do you think WordPress is easy?
