The wordpress plugins I use - SEO, cache, statistics

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Thanking plugin authors

This is in response to a blogpost on the wordpress blog where people are saying that wordpress is a thankless community. Well, I thought instead of complaining I'd do a lens on the plugins I do use. Thanking the plugin authors with links to their plugin pages.

I will keep it updated as well.

And a special thanks to Thematic for creating the child theme system I build all my blogs on.

Wordpress supercache 

This is a plugin that I ALWAYS use, on whatever blog or website I'm building on wordpress. There's no getting around the necessity to speed up your blog and save on server time by caching your pages. Especially the often seen pages and blogposts.

The WP Super Cache plugin.

Wordpress help - a book :) 

WordPress Complete: A comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to set up, customize, and market your blog using WordPress

WordPress Complete: A comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to set up, customize, and market your blog using WordPress

by: Hasin Hayder

Just what the title says: step by step guide on setting up and customizing your blog. This book really helped me get a handle on starting my first wordpress blog. Online help just won't cut it when you're starting out.

Avg. Customer Rating: Amazon Rating

Amazon Price: $33.25 (as of 11/29/2009) Buy Now

Related posts plugin 

I used another related posts plugin at one point, but it slowed things down too much. This one does the job well without too much hassle at the server end.

Related Posts Plugin.

Statistics - wordpress stats & google analytics & feedburner 

On my blogs I use both: wordpress stats which is based on the stats wordpress is collecting anyhow, and Google Analytics. Especially when you're migrating a blog it's good to have both up, because they will break in different ways in the migration process. Temporarily of course, but still. Always good to have a back up anyhow.

I like that with the wordpress plugin I can see my recent visitor numbers at a glance. With google analytics it's more about long term stuff, keywords analysis and stuff like that. Also useful, but I'm not obsessed enough to check it regularly. Good to have when I'm in analysis mood though.

Another google plugin I could not do without is the feedburner plugin. I can't really remember why we aren't supposed to stick with the wordpress feed, but the big advantage I do see to using feedburner is statistics: I know how many readers are subscribed to my feed. That's important information. I know what readers they're using and where they're from.

Regular readers are a very different subset of your general traffic. People who subscribe are much more devoted to what you have to say, so make sure you know as much about them as you can...

More about our favorite wordpress plugins 

Favorite Twitter Plugin for Wordpress?
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Calling all Wordpress.org users! Take the poll and tell us what your favorite Wordpress plugin is. Don't see your favorite listed? Leave a comment on this post and tell us which Wordpress plugin is your favorite and why you can't live ...
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Wordpress allows bloggers to easily add any functionality to their blog using various Wordpress plugins. Bloggers can also easily add advertisement banners, ... then you have to manually edit your theme to put the ad code and then head over to your favorite calender app to set an alert to remind you when to take the ad down. These all are time consuming tasks. WP125 plugin can help you manage your ads more effectively, leaving you with more time to write new posts. ...
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Popular posts 

On any blog that's really a blog it's just good service to readers to show what your most popular posts are. It shows your readers your best work, and gives your readers an idea of what you have to offer other than what you wrote this week or this month.

Yearly archive 

This is a real find. The Simple Yearly Archive plugin just lists all the blogposts you've written in a year by year list. Very good for getting all your blogposts a link only two steps away from the main page, which is good SEO. And of course your readers get to see all you've written. I also like that the number of comments can be shown next to the blogposts, so the dynamic of online discussion is visible.

SEO plugins: tags, rel no follow etc. 

A real SEO wants to have full control over their metatags, making sure that google doesn't index archived pages (because you've made sure all content is available through tag or category pages) and so on. The Meta Robots wordpress plugin by Yoast does just that.

It does NOT fix the title tags and description tags, so it's a bit misnamed I think. However the following plugin DOES do that: All in one SEO pack.

I use both of course.

Handling spam - akismet 

One of the plugins that almost everybody uses, the Akismet comment spam filter. I don't know what I'd do without it. And the miracle is: hardly any useful comments get caught in the filter. I don't know how they do it and hope they keep it up.

Social media buttons 

There are several social media plugins out there. I added this one after a reader asked me about it. It's the Add This plugin. Fully customizable so the first social media sites that get shown are the ones your readers are likely to visit.

Feed customization 

Feeds usually come without much help. I want the feed to at least link back to my own blog, giving me proper credit. The Better Feed RSS plugin also makes it possible to add buttons so people can add your post to their favorite social media sites. I have to admit, I don't use that option. But since my feed is going online all over, I do make sure I have that link back to the original post at the bottom.

NextGen Gallery Plugin 

When I first saw how this plugin would look, I could not believe how beautiful it is right out of the box. I used this on a client website and she was very happy as well. The Next Gen. Wordpress gallery plugin.

Breadcrumbs 

A real help in SEOing your blog are breadcrumbs. They add the keywords of the category of your blogpost to the page as well as repeat the title. Both good. So how do you implement this? You use another plugin by my countryman yoast, the breadcrumb plugin. Unfortunately, unless you're using one of the child theme ready themes, like thematic (I use thematic) or Hybrid or Thesis, you'll have to edit your source code. I didn't and it worked like a charm. I did have to edit my CSS file to make it look good though.

My blog - where I use most of these plugins 

featured lens All Considering - spiritual blog

I started this blog when I quit college - as an outlet for my thoughts about religion, spirituality, life and spiritual growth and self discovery. Below you will find out what I have ended up writing about, what recent posts I made and more.

More about blogging 

featured lens Success at Blogging tips

This lens is a collection of tips I've found myself giving people who blog in an attempt to do squidoo promotion.

featured lens Vox - blogging made simple and (more) social

I recently found Vox through a web search. It turned up for a search term it had not business turning up for. This is always a good sign in SEO (search engine optimization). It means they are doing a few things right - otherwise they wouldn't have tu...

featured lens Introduction to blogging videos

This lens is a video tutorial on how to blog. That is: the best youtube videos about how to setup a blog, manage a blog and market it in the blogosphere.

More acknowledgement lenses 

featured lens Thank you lensmaster

I started the thank you lensmaster - squidoo reviews blog to honor all those lensmasters that have helped me. This lens is dedicated to that blog and to all those lensmasters who have helped me, yet who haven't been interviewed (yet). BTW: som...

featured lens Spiritual friends - thanks for supporting my spiritual blog

Sharing with you all a collection of blogs - in various languages - that have supported my blog by featuring it in their blogroll or simply linking to it. I'm very grateful to each one of them for showing their appreciation. It's an interes...

About SEO, Squidoo and online networking 

featured lens SEO for squidoo - getting found in google: search engine optimization

SEO - search engine optimization - has many different facets. This lens goes over the main ones - especially how they effect making successful lenses on squidoo. An elaborate version of this lens, with details about blogging, twitter and more, can...

featured lens How to do Keyword Research for squidoo

It is an under statement to say that keywords are important for getting your squidoo lenses (or any webpage really) found in google or another search engine. If you are going to be making a lens to make money, you had better find out two things: wh...

featured lens If you want to become popular on squidoo...

In some ways squidoo is like a popularity contest. I've done pretty well here with as I write more than 760 fans. So I feel qualified to write this lens about the subject.

featured lens Spirituality's Lensography of lensographies

What can I say to introduce myself. I'm an online addict who has two spiritual blogs, one spiritual website and so on. I'm interested in Religion, Spirituality, Webdesign, Search Engines (aka Google), Science fiction, Fantasy literature, the environm...

featured lens Katinka's Squidoo Answer Deck

Learn how to get your lens found in google, how to make your lenses look good, how lensrank is calculated and more. I felt it was time to put all my lenses helping lensmasters be more effective together in a lensography. I've put this off for a long...

What plugins do you use that I didn't mention? 

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Thanks for all your support!

A big thank you to all of you who've supported my online work by:

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