WordPress is often praised for having such a high volume of plug-ins – upwards of 20,000 –that anyone can grab and stick onto their website. The only problem with the massive number of plug-ins is how to filter them. Good news: I have created a plug-in filtering plug-in. Just stick your plug-ins into my plug-in, and it will sort out the bad apples. But I won’t bore you with that now. Let’s just do this manually.
#1 – SEO for Dummies
Adding internal links to a site can be incredibly time-consuming, but it’s crucial for keeping visitors engaged with your site, as well as helping bring in traffic from Google and Bing. SEO Smart Links does this process for you – it’s like your very own monkey with a typewriter, with no need for pounds of bananas.
#2 – Snazzy Social Media Panel
Supposedly Twitter, Facebook, Google +, and LinkedIn are relevant aspects of the Internet. I live under a rock, and one of the other bugs told me about it. TNW Social Count will both pop the major social media icons onto your pages and give you statistical details in your control panel.
#3 – Comment Integration
Wouldn’t it be great to have a central location for your comments – feeding them in from all the various social networks? That way the conversation can all flow together, housed on your site, rather than existing in pieces, like breadcrumbs being eaten by a stray donkey. Livefyre is your solution.
#4 – Speedy
Want to speed up your page loads? This caching tool is a good plug-in to test. Note that it may actually slow down your website. It’s designed, of course, to make your site run faster. It can, however, slow down the loading time of your uncached material. But… It’s super: WP Super Cache.
#5 – Analytics to the Max
Google Analytics is helpful for building any website – so consider adding it directly into your WordPress site so you can analyze all your data in one place. This plug-in, aptly named Google Analytics for WordPress, goes beyond run-of-the-mill Analytics functionality and is especially designed for WordPress usage.
Conclusion
But that’s not all! Glade is also an excellent WordPress plug-in. Oops, that was the Glade talking. Those are a few fantastic plug-ins that can get you started or expand and improve your WordPress site. If you have other plug-ins that you find similarly valuable, or if you have any thoughts on the ones I’ve listed, feel free to comment below.
Sources:
1 http://www.business2community.com/blogging/top-5-wordpress-plugins-2012-0178692
2 http://www.overdigital.com/2012/10/15/my-personal-7-essential-wordpress-plugins/
3 http://yoast.com/top-wordpress-plugins/
4 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-links/
5 https://github.com/thenextweb/TNW-Social-Count
6 http://www.livefyre.com/
7 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/
8 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/
9 http://weblogbetter.com/2012/08/10/why-should-i-comment-on-blog-posts/
by Kent Roberts and Richard Norwood