WordPress Plug-ins you cannot live without!
One of the many things we love about WordPress is the flexibility to add functionality to blogs and websites, simply by installing a plug-in. With WordPress, you don’t need to be a web developer or know anything about how to write code, in order to have a fully functional, automated website – quickly and simply. Thousands of web developers have already taken their time and skill to develop a huge selection of free (and paid) plug-ins that are yours for the taking – all you need to do is download, install, and the plug-in is a new, fully functioning part of your WordPress website or blog.
What is a plug-in?
A plug-in is a piece of scripted code that adds a specific functionality to your website. For example, if you want a calendar function on your website, you would install a calendar plug-in to your WordPress website – usually placed on the side column (also referred to as a ‘widget’). There are plug-ins that enable your WordPress website to have membership capability (like we have on our own Sweet Spot Training Centre website), plug-ins to provide you with added security for your website and files, and even some fun plug-ins – like “Hello Dolly” – a plug-in that posts a random line of that classic theatre song “Hello Dolly” by Louis Armstrong to your dashboard, just to make you smile J Personally, being internet marketing specialists, we absolutely LOVE the SEO (search engine marketing) capability that some of these WordPress plug-ins provide. They really make it very fast and easy to boost WordPress web sites… with these SEO plug-ins, our WordPress sites get listed in Google within 3-5 days – instead of waiting the typical 3-6 months for Google to find it, while other SEO and marketing plug-ins push our websites to top spots in search engine listings and bring in a ton more web visitors/traffic than they would otherwise.
How do I install a plug-in?
Basically there are 2 ways to install a plug-in – 1) from the plug-in panel on your WordPress dashboard and 2) – downloading a plug-in to your computer and then uploading it into the plug-in panel. Both methods of installing a plug-in are quite simple. WordPress.org – the organization that hosts the WordPress application has a catalogue containing hundreds of themes (also known as ‘skins’ or the ‘look and feel’ of your website) and plug-ins. The nice thing about finding plug-ins (and themes for that matter) on WordPress.org is that you know they have been tried, tested, and that they contain relatively clean code (since WordPress.org is very particular about what they allow) so you can feel confident that plug-ins from this site should not give you any problems. This may not be the case for plug-ins you download from sites other than WordPress.org, so be sure to know what you are installing and who you are installing from before you do so.
All the plug-ins listed here are FREE, while a few of them offer additional functionalities for a small fee (these fees go directly to the developer and helps to pay for their time in developing these little gems for us to use).
Once you locate a plug-in, you will notice a link to the developer site. Most plug-in developers have a website with a full description of their plug-in, installation instructions and trouble-shooting. Many will also permit you to post questions on their site that they will try and answer however, remember that these developers have given their time and skill to create free products, so always be grateful and gracious. And, if you find one of their free plug-ins to be very helpful to you, it’s nice to send the developer a note of thanks on their website, telling them how much you love their plug-in or better yet, make an optional monetary ‘donation’ to show your appreciation.
To learn the two methods for installing WordPress plug-ins, watch this video.
Here are Your FREE Plug-ins for WordPress that you MUST HAVE
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Plug-in |
Description |
Where to download |
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Akismet |
Akismet is a very important spam filter you must have! Akismet checks all incoming comments to see if they look like spam or not and will separate them into a comments or a spam folder for your review. You will need an API key to activate it – this only takes a few minutes to set up and is well worth the time. With Akismet, this plug-in will keep your WordPress blog or website spam-free. |
WordPress.org |
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All in One SEO Pack |
Out of the box SEO for your WordPress blog. This is such a fantastic plug-in for BOOSTING your website ranking |
WordPress.org |
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Free Traffic Getting SEO Plug-in |
This free traffic getting SEO plug-in finds the best SEO WordPress plug-ins available for WordPress and optimizes them so you don’t have to. This plug-in is only available on the developers site and was a real gem to find! It will guide you into downloading other fantastic SEO plug-ins (listed below), further optimize your site with the click of a button, and offer tips for getting more traffic and higher rankings. |
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cbnet Ping Optimizer |
cbnet Ping Optimizer will prevent your WordPress site from being tagged as a ping spammer. Without this plug-in, your WordPress website has the potential of being tagged as a spammer site and taken off search engine lists like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, MSN, and others. |
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Google XML sitemaps |
This plug-in will automatically generate a special xml (web code) sitemap of your website that helps search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing Ask, etc. to better index (categorize) your site. This allow you to show up in searches that apply to your area of business. |
Part of the Free Traffic Getting SEO Plug-in
Also available on WordPress.org |
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WordPress Database Backup |
The WordPress database backup plug-in enables an automatic back-up of your wordpress files (your website) so you never have to worry about losing your website. |
WordPress.org |
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Secure WordPress |
This plug-in provides your WordPress website with added security, to prevent hackers from gaining access to your web files. |
WordPress.org |
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Ultimate Google Analytics |
This plug-in works with Google to track the number of visitors to your website. It will also track back-links to your website |
Part of the Free Traffic Getting SEO Plug-in
Also available on WordPress.org
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Socialite |
Every time you create or update your blog posts, this powerful plug-in will automatically add an update with a back-link to your full post, to your Twitter, My Space, Facebook, Yahoo, MSN and Linked In accounts. |
WordPress.org |
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Simple Captcha |
If you plan to have open comments on your posts and pages, then this plug-in adds a simple captcha to your comments section, so anyone wanting to leave a comment will need to type in the simple captcha code before it is accepted. Using this plug-in will eliminate spammers from posting junk on your site and will reduce the total number of spam. |
WordPress.org |
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Sociable |
This charming little plug-in adds links to the bottom of your posts/pages to a huge assortment of social book marking sites like FaceBook, my space, linked in, msn, and over 100 others. For example, when a visitor likes your post, he can click the FaceBook icon to post a snippet of your post (with a back-link to the full article) on their Facebook profile. You choose the icons you want to include and where you want them. An excellent SEO plug-in. |
WordPress.org |
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Recommended Specialty Plug-ins |
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ClickBank Hop Ad |
If you have a ClickBank account, this plug-in allows you to post ClickBank text ads as a widget. $ |
ClickBank.com |
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Calendar by Kieran O’Shea |
There are many calendar plug-ins available for WordPress. What makes this calendar plug-in so special is the added functionality it offers, including events management. Take a look at our calendar to see this plug-in live and in action. |
WordPress.org |
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Contact Form 7 |
It is not recommended to post your email address directly onto your website, as it will be picked up by crawling spy bots and will result in you getting a lot of junk mail and SPAM in your email inbox.
What IS recommended is a contact form. Contact forms allow you to manage incoming questions and correspondence while protecting your email address. There are many contact form plug-ins available for WordPress – however please note that some will require customizing. We found Contact Form 7 to be one of the simplest to install and use – just plug-in. |
WordPress.org |
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Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress |
Dean’s FCKEditor replaces the standard WordPress text editor and offers more than 3 times the text editing options –making it really simple to customize the text on your pages and posts just like using Microsoft Word, to underline, bold, edit font size, colour, style, more tags, etc. |
WordPress.org |
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Google Analyticator |
Another plug-in for Google analytics, this plug-in adds the necessary Google script (code) to your web pages, so you don’t have to, and provides you with your website statistics, such as the number of visitors to your website. |
WordPress.org |
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MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer |
This plug-in saves your WordPress blog or website from getting tagged as a ping spammer. |
Part of the Free Traffic Getting SEO plug-in
Also available on WordPress.org |
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MemberWing Membership Website Free Edition |
MemberWing plug-in converts any WordPress blog or website into a powerful membership site. The plug-in also contains good built-in SEO features to improve your site ranking with search engines, and content protection to keep your files safe from hackers and non-members. Create up to 4 membership levels, allowing you to develop member lists that you can use to promote to.
If you want to offer more membership levels including paid memberships, you have the option of buying the upgrade to the full plug-in that allows more membership levels, integrates with pay pal and other shopping carts, and offers more functionality and SEO options at a nominal price. $ |
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Page Mash |
This plug-in is quite handy for sorting, hiding and organizing your web pages. (While we typically include this plug-in in all our WordPress websites, there are a few themes it doesn’t seem to work in. When that occurs, we install the Page Link manager (below) although this Page Mash is definitely our first choice. |
WordPress.org |
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Page Link Manager |
Page Link Manager plug-in adds an admin panel, allowing you to choose which pages appear in the site navigation. |
WordPress.org |
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Permalinks Moved Permanently |
When a permalink isn’t found, this little plug-in checks to see if a post with the requested slug exists somewhere else on your blog, rather than immediately show an error page to your visitor. Having this plug-in can save your WordPress website from losing visitors. |
WordPress.org |
There may be other plug-ins that you want, specific to your needs and the functionality you want to build in your WordPress blog or website, so be sure to take some time to look through the hundreds of available plug-ins for WordPress, available from WordPress.org
Updating a plug-in:
As the WordPress development community updates the latest version of WordPress on a regular basis, improving the security and functionality of the WordPress application, plug-ins also need to be updated on occasion to comply with the latest WordPress version. Plug-in developers also update their plug-ins to compete with all the other plug-ins available, adding even more functionality and ease of use, so users will choose their plug-in over the competition.
Even if your website is low maintenance and does not require much updating, you should make a point to go into the dashboard of your WordPress website every 3-4 weeks to check that your version of WordPress and any of your installed plug-ins need to be updated. The WordPress dashboard makes it very simple to be able to identify, at-a-glace, if there are any plug-ins that require updating by inserting a small number (ie [2]) beside the plug-ins option in your WordPress dashboard, telling you how many plug-ins require updating. Anytime you see a number beside the plug-ins option, click to open your plug-in screen and follow the directions on the page to update the plug-ins – which is done by clicking a link that reads “install update” – it’s really that simple!
Be sure to stay tuned for…..
Andy P.
A good marketing strategy is the key to success. Thank You
.