The behind of the scenes of any wordpress blog is where all of the magic happens. Not only is it where you create your blog content, but it’s also where you can play around with your blog theme and wordpress plugins.
Now that we have a blog installed and started writing out first pages of content we should start focusing on making sure our site navigation, links, tracking and everything else is good. Fortunately all of this can be done through the use of the free wordpress plugins that we listed below.
Must Use WordPress Plugins
The following plugins are all free to download and use. The screenshots below are from the actual plugin in use on TechSupportJobSource.com. To install any of the recommended plugins below on your blog, simply search for them on the “Add New” Plugins page within WordPress. (or we can install them for you – click here)
Contact Form Plugin
Every blog should have a contact form and there’s no easier way set one up than with the “Contact Form Plugin”. Once installed, all you need to do is place [contact_form] on any page of your blog and a full contact form will appear.
Shareaholic Social Plugin
Making your blog posts shareable through social networks is one of the best ways to get new traffic and get spread among the social networks. There are a lot of social plugins out there, but one I like and have been using is called “Shareaholic”. When installed the plugin allows you to pick and choose which social buttons you’d like to add to your site and add them in a nice row at the bottom (or other locations) of your post content. You can also add different images and features to draw more attention to the social buttons.
Related Posts Plugin
Another thing I like to add to the bottom of all my blogs is as “Related Posts” section. Once a reader is done reading your blog, wouldn’t it be great to give them some other related options instead of leaving your site? I like this plugin because it shows the image from the post as well.
AddThis Follow Widget
I wanted to add in some of my social networking pages to the side bar of the blog. To do this I used the “AddThis Follow Widget”. After installation, you can select which social networks you want to link to, along with choosing different locations for the buttons to appear.
WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast
Even though wordpress is quite amazing and ready to go right after install, you can still use the help of “WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast” to better index and title your blog posts and pages. After installing the plugin you can manage all of the titles and settings for various pages through out the blog.
There are plenty of other great wordpress plugins out there, but we don’t want to go too crazy with adding too many at the moment. The more plugins you add to your blog, the more likely you are to slow it down.
When a blog is just in the beginning phases you won’t have too much of a need for plugins beyond the ones we recommended here. As the blog continues to grow in size we will introduce new free and premium plugins to the site.
** Join in on the create a blog case study –> Click here to start your blog!
Great plug-ins, Zac, all useful, although in answer to adding more plug ins slowing your WP site, I would recommend the CSS Compress, which will compress files and keep your blog loading fast…and it’s free!…:)
Dan Reed recently posted..2013 | A New Beginning
Great plugins mentioned here. Are you guys using just one share plugin on this blog or multiple plugins? Which ones?
Kevin recently posted..Body Transformation: Suzanne Adonis Lanting
Good question. We are using a variety of plugins on BloggingTips.com, many of which are mentioned above. I will make sure to write a whole post on this.
Zac Johnson recently posted..Create a Blog – Must Use WordPress Plugins
Really all are very useful plugins. After I read this post I installed AddThis Follow plugin to my blog. Thank you for sharing
Chitra Lekha recently posted..Travel & Outdoor Safety Tips for Babies and Toddlers
Great list. Thanks for sharing.
I do have my personal best FREE plugins too, thus, thought it is nice to share it over here too as comparison : http://someplus.com/2012/09/my-top-10-free-wordpress-plugins-slides/
Richard Ng recently posted..Facebook’s 2012 In Numbers
I use most of these plugins in my existing blog Except a few. BTW: Thanks for sharing this list of must have plugins.
Sadek recently posted..Karbonn S1 Titanium Smartphone Launched
all are fine but wp cache is missing here it’s need to add
what you say admin
Gajendra recently posted..how to shout as loud am a blogger
You can include ‘Jetpack’ and caching plug like W3TC in this list. Both are really useful.
Plaban Manna recently posted..BlackBerry Q10 announced with QWERTY + Touch design running BB10 OS
Nice. Thanks for sharing. This article will be very useful for a newbie like to begin with.
When I started I didn’t know what to do or how to do. I use to ask everyone which is best and what plugins to be used.
For beginners this guides ill be very useful.
Shathyan Raja recently posted..Price of Samsung Galaxy S 4 in US, UK and India