5 Essential WordPress Plugins

I have been setting up a lot of WordPress sites lately and it looks like there are more to come in the future. I have been working on streamlining my workflow. In doing so, I have put together a list of 5 essential WordPress plugins that I install immediately after the initial setup has been completed.

These WordPress plugins are more about solidifying the backend of a WordPress site and making WordPress management easier. These WordPress plugins are not meant to add flash and dash to a WordPress site, however, I might do a post on some my favourite plugins to do this in the future.

Akismet

Akismet is an easy choice because it is one of the default WordPress plugins, it just needs to be activated. It is also probably one of the best WordPress plugins for your site.

From the WordPress plugin description: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it.

Getting a WordPress API key for Akismet is as simple as visiting the API Key site and putting in your email address. The webservice will email you an API Key within a few minutes. Cut and paste it into the Akismet settings panel and you are up and running.

I find that Akismet almost eliminates all WordPress comment spam that gets posted to my WordPress site.

FD Feedburner Plugin

Feedburner is a vital service for anyone that has a site with an RSS or Atom feed. I could probably write a whole post on Feedburner alone, but for now I will assume you know what it is. If not, then I suggest you take a look at Feedburner.

The FD Feedburner Plugin is a simple WordPress plugin that redirects readers to your Feedburner feed that may have tried to subscribe to your original WordPress site feed.

Twitter Tools

A WordPress blog is usually a destination site. Links to destination sites are passed around via social networking sites, such as Twitter.

Twitter Tools allows for a tweet to be sent out to Twitter the instant a new post has been made on the site. This is also a great WordPress plugin because other WordPress plugin developers have created plugins that work with the Twitter Tools plugin. I also use the Twitter Tools – Bit.ly URLs WordPress plugin (it is part of  Twitter Tools) to shorten the links to the WordPress posts using Bit.ly.

Google Analyticator

If you are the least bit interested in tracking the stats from your blog then you are probably already using Google Analytics. If your not, then you should be.

In order for Google Analytics to work with WordPress you need to insert the tracking code into the template of your site. This means that you, first, need to know where to insert the code and, second, remember to do this again if you ever change your WordPress template.

Google Analyticator does all this for you. You will just need to authenticate with Google in the Google Analyticator settings panel. Done.

ShareThis

The ShareThis WordPress plugin places a button at the end of every post to allow readers to share the post on various social networks.

Before you can use this WordPress plugin you will need to go to the ShareThis website and setup an account. After your account is setup you will then need to get the button code to paste into the ShareThis settings panel.

SexyBookmarks

I have replaced the ShareThis plugin with the SexyBookmarks plugin. It essentially works the same way but it is easier to setup and it looks better!

You can see an example of this button at the end of this post. Don’t forget to share!

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Image Credit: WordPress.org

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