Six WordPress Plugins You Must Have
(Written by guest contributor Tim Golen)
WordPress is by far the most popular content management system on the Web right now. Every day new plugins are being developed, improved, or added. Plugins are a way for you to add additional functionality to your blog according to your needs. I will be discussing some of the most beneficial plugins that you should install on your WordPress site.
Akismet – This plugin comes installed by default and there is a reason for that. This plugin will help prevent comment spam and track-back spam on your site. While it comes installed by default, it’s not enabled by default. You need to grab an account at WordPress.com in order to get an API key to activate the Akismet plugin.
Google Analyticator – If you’re not using analytics on your site to analyze your traffic patterns, then you should be. With this plugin it’s easy to incorporate Google’s free analytic service into your site as well as giving you a nice analytic overview on your WordPress dashboard. I check mine daily to see what content on my blog is hot and to see areas where I need to improve.
Advertising Manager – If you plan on putting ads on your site (like Google AdSense), then you won’t want to have them coded manually into your WordPress template. With this plugin you can manage any number of ads from a lot of different ad networks. It gives you ad widgets that you can use on your site as well as tags that you can use to display ads in your posts. If you’ve got a theme with multiple widget areas, then this can be a real benefit. There are lots of ad plugins out there, but I’ve found this one to be the most simple and elegant solution.
All-in-One SEO Pack – You’ve got WordPress, you’ve got content, now you need traffic. You need to have your content available to search engines like Google and Yahoo. This plugin gives you the tools that you need to optimize your content so that search engines can index your pages properly and give you good traffic. I like the options to use your post excerpt as the meta description, and your post’s tags as meta keywords.
WPTouch iPhone Theme – This plugin will instantly make your site optimized for mobile browsers, while keeping your normal theme for people browsing your site on their PC. If you don’t use a heavily customized theme, then this plugin will be perfect to you. My only complaint is that once you begin to customize your WordPress installation, it can quickly become non-functional.
Wishlist Member – If you want to protect your content through paid subscriptions then there is no better plugin out there. This is also a great way to turn your site into a money maker. You’ll need to purchase this plugin, but if you use it properly you should be able to make back the money in no time.
If you use these plugins, you’ll be well on your way to having a great content driven website. It doesn’t stop there however; you’ll also need a great theme for your site. We’ve developed an outstanding premium WordPress theme at http://socratestheme.com/ which will help you to instantly monetize your site. I’d go check it out.
