WordPress plugins are a great way to add great functionality’s to your blog even if don’t know any coding. There are a whole lot of plugins out there which help you in adding various features to your blog.
Inside this video, I have shared the Top 7 WordPress Plugins That Can Enhance The Overall Graphics Experience Of Your Blog. It is not mandatory to use all these plugins on your blog. You can choose and install the right plugins which you feel would enhance the graphics experience for your blog readers.
1. SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc..
If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.
ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your images to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.
TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.
Smush It is a plugin which automatically smushes and removes unnecessary bytes from the image and graphic files that is uploaded to your blog. This optimization technique used is specific for image formats. The effects can be really surprising. They reduce the image size by 5-10% and even 30% sometimes without affecting the visual quality of the image. This really improves the loading time of the images on your blog and as a result improves the overall loading time of your blog.
Installing this plugin as easy as any other WordPress plugin. Once you install and activate this plugin, it smushes all the images that are uploaded to your blog. You can also go to your Media Library and smush your old images one by one by clicking on the Smush It Now option adjacent to each image.
PhotoSmash Galleries makes it easy for you to create appealing galleries in blog posts and pages that you and your readers can upload images to. It is very easy to install the plugin and to create galleries of various layouts on your blog. It is very flexible and its options will make your gallery look appealing.
You can find all the installation guide and features of this plugin at the link below:
Frontpage Slideshow plugin allows you to create awesome looking slideshows of your blog posts on the home page of your blog. It uses the images and graphics used in your blog posts and creates a slideshow on your blog home page.
Flickr Photo Album plugin allows you to pull your photos from Flickr and display them as albums on your WordPress blog. It is highly customizable and allows you to display albums that matches the look and feel of your blog.
Once the plugin is installed and activated on your blog, it adds a Flickr icon in the editing options of your blog. It also allows you to integrate with some of the third party applications as well.
Flickrpress WordPress plugin is more or less similar to the Flickr Photo Album but the difference is that you will be able to display individual photos in this as well along with the photo albums and widgets. You can also choose to show or hide your photos on the blog post and pages as well.
The photos are cached to reduce the loading time of the images on your blog. This also comes with the advantage that the images are stored on the Flickr server and saves a lot of space on your Web host.
LightBox 2 plugin allows displays your images in a cool light box whenever your users click on the image. It brings your images and graphics to life and looks very appealing when these images are displayed on your blog.
You can also create cool slideshows which will be again be displayed in the cool light box. This plugin is compatible with all the latest modern browsers.
Do leave a comment below and let us know what you feel about the video. Also let us know if you are doing anything different for the graphics on your blog.
Images not only bring in a lot of glamour and appeal to your blog, but will also help you in putting your message across to your readers more effectively. But you can’t just put in an image directly from your camera or from another website and make your blog look great. You need to edit and make sure it looks good, suits your blog and gives your readers a great experience.
In this video I have discussed about image editing in detail. Here is a sneak peak of what I have discussed in the video:
1. Why Is Editing Necessary
2. Different Photo Editing Software’s
3. GIMP – Download, Install And Use
4. Crop, Resize, Rotate And Export Images Using GIMP
Please leave a comment on how you edit your images and let us know if you are doing something differently. This will help will help us to learn from you and create more materials that can be helpful to everyone.
Optimizing your blog for your readers is the most important thing to focus, because at the end of the day the success of your blog depends on your readers. Readers make or break a blog. So its really important to optimize your blog for a very good reader experience and retain your readers on the long run.
The first and most important thing to do when it comes to optimizing your blog is to get the right theme design for your blog. Once you have the right theme, the next thing is to optimize your blog with the right plugins to give your readers a very good experience, engage them and also make sure they visit your blog again and again to check out your content. In this post I have shared the Top 8 Plugins To Optimize Your Blog For Your Readers.
1. W3 Total Cache Plugin
W3 Total Cache is the fastest and probably the most complete wordpress performance optimization plugin. This is one of the most important wordpress plugins when it comes to optimizing your wordpress blog for speed. This helps in retaining your readers by loading your site faster on a level that Google appreciates as well. W3 Total Cache, caches every aspect of your site and improves your server performance, thus improving the overall user experience of your site. This amazing plugin will help your site to withstand large amount of traffic without lowering the performance even if you are on shared hosting.
I came across this plugin recently, before which I relied on WP Super Cache for optimizing my blog for speed. But the WP Total Cache plugin out performs WP Super Cache, and I definitely recommend this plugin to every WordPress site owner. Installing this plugin is as simple as installing any other plugin for WordPress. The default options are enough to cache your WordPress site, but with little tweeks and proper configuration, this plugin will work like a charm.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of this amazing plugin, W3 Total Cache:
Akismet (Automatic Kismet) is another must have plugin for every WordPress site owner. As your blog grows, you will see the number of spam comments growing as well. Spam is one of the most important concerns of every site owner. You definitely need something to counter attack the spam and Akismet is the right weapon for that. Akismet WordPress Plugin which is popularly known as the Spam Buster, checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. This makes your life a lot easier to manage your blog’s comments.
Akismet is one of the two default plugins that comes pre-installed with WordPress. It is not activated by default, and to activate it, you need to get your Akismet API Key. You can get this Akismet API Key by registering for a free WordPress.com user account.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of the Akismet Plugin:
Thank Me Later is one of my favorite plugin when it comes to automation. It automatically sends a thank you email to those who leave a comment on your blog. This plugin helps me to thank my readers and commentators and further engages them with my blog and social media.
The best thing about Thank Me Later WordPress Plugin is that it is highly customizable. It allows you to create multiple e-mail messages and to send the message after a pre-defined amount of time, making messages appear more unique and people-friendly. It gives you the opportunity to keep alive a connection with the visitor after they have left your blog.
You can download this plugin and also find the installation steps at the link below:
Subscribe To Comments WordPress Plugin (as the name says) is a plugin which allows your readers and commentators to subscribe to ongoing and the future comments of a particular blog post. Many times there are blog posts which generate a lot of discussions and debates. And lot your users would definitely like to stay updated on the ongoing discussions and debates. Subscribe To Comments Plugin is the plugin which does this simple yet very important job for you. It allows your commentators to check a box after commenting and they would get the notifications on the further comments on their email.
It is one of the most popular WordPress Plugins for the simple reason that it nurtures a community around your blog by notifying and encouraging your commentators to come back and stay engaged on your blog. This plugin doesn’t spam your users and lets them to be in complete control. Another great thing about this plugin is that it is simple to install (just like any other wordpress plugin) and it doesn’t require any theme modification, until and unless you are using a very old version of WordPress (older than WordPress Version 1.5).
Once this plugin is installed, there will be a small check box below the comments area. All your users can see this check box, and users who are not subscribed to the post comments can select to subscribe to the post whereas users who are subscribed to the post’s comment, sees a link to manage subscription in which it shows all the posts they are subscribed to. They can easily unsubscribe to any post from there which is a great way to allow your users to manage their subscription without having them register.
Brian’s Threaded Comments is another cool plugin that will help you and your blog users (readers and commentators) to navigate your blog comments a lot easier. It also makes your comments section cooler than before and attracts more comments from your users.
Imagine if a commentator comments on your blog post and there are around 10 replies to that comment including yours. Now every time you or your readers want to read the whole discussion, it becomes difficult for them and yourself as well, because the comments are scattered all around your comments area. This is where the Brian’s Threaded Comments kicks in and makes life a lot easier.
This plugin allows your users to reply to each comment on your blog in a threaded fashion. So instead of having to look for every persons comment and then address them individual at the end, you and your users can now address each person directly below their comment. It also makes your comment stand out by highlighting your comment in a different color, so that everybody will know who the site owner is, right . In other words, this plugin allows you to not only reply to a post on your blog, but also to reply to a reply to a post… and on and on, creating what’s called a threaded, or nested comment collection.
You can see how the structure works in our blogs comments area (but first leave a comment below this blog post, so that you can see my reply in threaded fashion).
What Would Seth Godin Do is a plugin named after the famous internet marketer Seth Godin, who is the author many internet marketing books. You can find many of his books on amazon.com. Here is a link to Seth Godin’s Books On Amazon.
What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin allows you to customize the message that is displayed to your visitors on their first visit (or first x visits) to your blog. Then once they have come back a couple of times you can display them a second message. This plugin does this via a cookie which is checked each time a visitor visits your blog. And the message is changed with the cookie count. This means you can customize a welcome message for each visitor depending upon the number of visits they have made. It is a very simple yet very useful tool to make your visitors click on your message and convert your one time blog visitor into your regular blog reader by making him subscribe to your RSS Feed or following you on Twitter.
Contact Form 7 plugin is one of the best ways to allow your blog readers and visitors to reach you easily and professionally. This plugin helps you to create awesome looking contact forms on your blog. By installing the Contact Form 7 plugin, it means that you don’t have to list your email on your site anywhere, hence reducing the chance that spam trawlers will pick up your email address and send you a bunch of spam messages.
The best part about this plugin, is that it makes it extremely easy for your blog visitors to get in touch with you directly, without knowing what your email address is. And besides, the implementation of this plugin is just beautiful, and it really looks the part. I have installed this plugin on my blog in case you want to check it out for yourself. You can see it in action here:
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin is the most recommended plugin when it comes to backing up the data of your blog. Having our entire business and blogs on internet is always in the risk of data loss. Who knows when the server hosting your blog might go off or anything might go wrong. Always having a back up of the data of your blog makes you feel secure and keeps all the hard work that you had put in creating that content insured. And since you have all your data backed up, you will easily be able to get your site online with alternate arrangements, just in case if anything goes wrong and minimizes your loss.
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin allows you to back up the data of your blog to your email, server and your computer. You will be able to select the data that you would like to back up and keep your work safe. If you are backing up the data to your email, you can select the data that you would like to back up and schedule a time. Once you have scheduled the time, the backup will be automatically sent via email to your email address. I use this method to back up the data of my blog.
You can download the WP–DB–BackUp Plugin at the link:
Don’t forget to share your comments and suggestions below, I would love to hear about the plugins that you use on your blog. And do share this post on Twitter and Facebook and spread the love.
W3 Total Cache Plugin
W3 Total Cache is the fastest and probably the most complete wordpress performance optimization plugin. This is one of the most important wordpress plugins when it comes to optimizing your wordpress blog for speed. This helps in retaining your readers by loading your site faster on a level that Google appreciates as well. W3 Total Cache, caches every aspect of your site and improves your server performance, thus improving the overall user experience of your site. This amazing plugin will help your site to withstand large amount of traffic without lowering the performance even if you are on shared hosting.
I came across this plugin recently, before which I relied on WP Super Cache for optimizing my blog for speed. But the WP Total Cache plugin out performs WP Super Cache, and I definitely recommend this plugin to every WordPress site owner. Installing this plugin is as simple as installing any other plugin for WordPress. The default options are enough to cache your WordPress site, but with little tweeks and proper configuration, this plugin will work like a charm.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of this amazing plugin, W3 Total Cache:
Akismet (Automatic Kismet) is another must have plugin for every WordPress site owner. As your blog grows, you will see the number of spam comments growing as well. Spam is one of the most important concerns of every site owner. You definitely need something to counter attack the spam and Akismet is the right weapon for that. Akismet WordPress Plugin which is popularly known as the Spam Hammer, checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. This makes your life a lot easier to manage your blog’s comments.
Akismet is one of the two default plugins that comes pre-installed with WordPress. It is not activated by default, and to activate it, you need to get your Akismet API Key. You can get this Akismet API Key by registering for a free WordPress.com user account.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of the Akismet Plugin:
Thank Me Later is one of my favorite plugin when it comes to automation. It automatically sends a thank you email to those who leave a comment on your blog. This plugin helps me to thank my readers and commentators and further engages them with my blog and social media.
The best thing about Thank Me Later WordPress Plugin is that it is highly customizable. It allows you to create multiple e-mail messages and to send the message after a pre-defined amount of time, making messages appear more unique and people-friendly. It gives you the opportunity to keep alive a connection with the visitor after they have left your blog.
You can download this plugin and also find the installation steps at the link below:
Subscribe To Comments WordPress Plugin (as the name says) is a plugin which allows your readers and commentators to subscribe to ongoing and the future comments of a particular blog post. Many times there are blog posts which generate a lot of discussions and debates. And lot your users would definitely like to stay updated on the ongoing discussions and debates. Subscribe To Comments Plugin is the plugin which does this simple yet very important job for you. It allows your commentators to check a box after commenting and they would get the notifications on the further comments on their email.
It is one of the most popular WordPress Plugins for the simple reason that it nurtures a community around your blog by notifying and encouraging your commentators to come back and stay engaged on your blog. This plugin doesn’t spam your users and lets them to be in complete control. Another great thing about this plugin is that it is simple to install (just like any other wordpress plugin) and it doesn’t require any theme modification, until and unless you are using a very old version of WordPress (older than WordPress Version 1.5).
Once this plugin is installed, there will be a small check box below the comments area. All your users can see this check box, and users who are not subscribed to the post comments can select to subscribe to the post whereas users who are subscribed to the post’s comment, sees a link to manage subscription in which it shows all the posts they are subscribed to. They can easily unsubscribe to any post from there which is a great way to allow your users to manage their subscription without having them register.
Brian’s Threaded Comments is another cool plugin that will help you and your blog users (readers and commentators) to navigate your blog comments a lot easier. It also makes your comments section cooler than before and attracts more comments from your users.
Imagine if a commentator comments on your blog post and there are around 10 replies to that comment including yours. Now every time you or your readers want to read the whole discussion, it becomes difficult for them and yourself as well, because the comments are scattered all around your comments area. This is where the Brian’s Threaded Comments kicks in and makes life a lot easier.
This plugin allows your users to reply to each comment on your blog in a threaded fashion. So instead of having to look for every persons comment and then address them individual at the end, you and your users can now address each person directly below their comment. It also makes your comment stand out by highlighting your comment in a different color, so that everybody will know who the site owner is, right . In other words, this plugin allows you to not only reply to a post on your blog, but also to reply to a reply to a post… and on and on, creating what’s called a threaded, or nested comment collection.
You can see how the structure works in our blogs comments area (but first leave a comment below this blog post, so that you can see my reply in threaded fashion).
What Would Seth Godin Do is a plugin named after the famous internet marketer Seth Godin, who is the author many internet marketing books. You can find many of his books on amazon.com. Here is a link to Seth Godin’s Books On Amazon.
What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin allows you to customize the message that is displayed to your visitors on their first visit (or first x visits) to your blog. Then once they have come back a couple of times you can display them a second message. This plugin does this via a cookie which is checked each time a visitor visits your blog. And the message is changed with the cookie count. This means you can customize a welcome message for each visitor depending upon the number of visits they have made. It is a very simple yet very useful tool to make your visitors click on your message and convert your one time blog visitor into your regular blog reader by making him subscribe to your RSS Feed or following you on Twitter.
Contact Form 7 plugin is one of the best ways to allow your blog readers and visitors to reach you easily and professionally. This plugin helps you to create awesome looking contact forms on your blog. By installing the Contact Form 7 plugin, it means that you don’t have to list your email on your site anywhere, hence reducing the chance that spam trawlers will pick up your email address and send you a bunch of spam messages.
The best part about this plugin, is that it makes it extremely easy for your blog visitors to
get in touch with you directly, without knowing what your email address is. And besides, the implementation of this plugin is just beautiful, and it really looks the part. I have installed this plugin on my blog in case you want to check it out for yourself. You can see it in action here:
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin is the most recommended plugin when it comes to backing up the data of your blog. Having our entire business and blogs on internet is always in the risk of data loss. Who knows when the server hosting your blog might go off or anything might go wrong. Always having a back up of the data of your blog makes you feel secure and keeps all the hard work that you had put in creating that content insured. And since you have all your data backed up, you will easily be able to get your site online with alternate arrangements, just in case if anything goes wrong and minimizes your loss.
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin allows you to back up the data of your blog to your email, server and your computer. You will be able to select the data that you would like to back up and keep your work safe. If you are backing up the data to your email, you can select the data that you would like to back up and schedule a time. Once you have scheduled the time, the backup will be automatically sent via email to your email address. I use this method to back up the data of my blog.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy that every blogger and internet entrepreneur will implement, irrespective of their niche. It is obvious that everybody wants to be on the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing. That’s where most of the traffic and money is. But search engine optimization is very complicated and expensive as well. Especially for individual entrepreneurs who build their business on budget.
Blogging is one of the best ways to get noticed by search engines. And if you are full time blogger, you know how important SEO is. Well, we are lucky that with blogging platforms like WordPress, it is easy to optimize your blogs for search engines without much complication and costs. In this blog post I have discussed the Top 7 Steps That Can Optimize Your Blog For Maximum Search Engine Exposure. These are the steps that I have been following and I must say I am getting some awesome results with them.
The first and most basic thing you need to do, is to install the right blog theme for your blog and then optimize it with the right plugins.
1. Right Blog Design
Having the right blog design is one of the most important things for long term blogging business. Lot of bloggers settle down for a free blog design (wordpress theme) that they get on the internet. But they fail to understand that these free themes are not professionally coded most of the times and would definitely affect your blog in the long run.
Disadvantages of using a free theme for your blog:
Would make your blog look unprofessional
Would make your readers difficult to consume your content
Because of the poor coding, they get relatively lower rankings on the search engines
Very less options for customization and support
And lots more…
No matter how ever good your content is, people will not consume it if you have not presented it properly. Nobody, not even you would like to read a crabby blog, right?
Investing in your blog design is a very wise decision, after all it is the most important thing that search engines and your readers would notice. And getting the right blog design is very easy nowadays. Just go into WooThemes.com or any of the premium Word Press theme sites and invest in a well designed THEME. I always say WooThemes.com, but there’s loads out there.
I would personally recommend Thesis, StudioPress and WooThemes, because they are the best in the business and they know what they are doing. These themes are professionally designed to give your audience and search engines a very good experience.
You can find the different blog design companies and the price in my blog post –
Once you have selected the right theme, the next thing would be optimizing your blog with the right plugins for maximum search engine exposure.
2. The XML Sitemap Generator Plugin
The XML Sitemap Generator plugin is one of the more intense plugins to install. But it’s really worth it.
It creates a special kind of sitemap (called an XML sitemap) of your whole blog that is easily readable by search engines like Google.com and
Yahoo.com. And this in turn makes it easier for these search engines to list all your blog pages and posts inside their search results.
So, this is a definite MUST HAVE plugin!
You can get the XML Sitemap Generator plugin here:
The All In One SEO Pack, as the name itself says, is a plugin which does a bit of everything for you from helping choose the best post title and keywords, to helping you avoid duplicate content and more. It is one of the most popular plugins ever for WordPress.
It is a must have plugin for every blogger, unless you have a strong WordPress theme like Thesis which has these options inbuilt with the theme. Most of the bloggers that I know use this plugin to take care of all the SEO for their blog. So don’t forget to install this plugin.
You can get The All In One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin here:
Platinum SEO Pack plugin is said to be the upgraded version of All In One SEO Pack plugin. This plugin is has all the features of the All In Once SEO Pack and lots more. I would suggest you to use either this or All In One SEO pack plugin on your blog. Here are some of the important features of this plugin:
Features of Platinum SEO Plugin:
Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines
Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically
Helps you avoid duplicate content
Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page
Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others. However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack
You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not satisfied with the current permalink, change it through Settings–>Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about loss of Page rank or Google penalty. Platinum SEO plugin will take care of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location. This is a new essential feature, not present in All in one SEO.
Add meta description and meta keywords tags to WordPress Categories and WordPress Tag pages.
Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir meta tags to any post/page. These options are not available in All in one SEO Pack.
You can get The Platinum SEO Pack WordPress Plugin here:
Depending on your theme, this is likely the most crucial plugin you will need to install into your WordPress blog. Some themes (like the Thesis theme for example) takes care of the same kind of issues that this plugin takes care of.
But in most cases, the SEO Title Tag plugin will be “gold” for your blog in the weeks, months and years to come.
Basically, what it does is turn all the titles of your posts into search engine friendly titles. In other words, using this plugin, search engines will be able to easily pick up on the keywords you use inside the titles of your blog, and therefore increase your chances of getting ranked on the top pages for search engines like Google.com.
SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress plugin which will automatically update all images on your blog with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.
ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. This attribute describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.
TITLEattribute play lesser role but is important for visitors. This attribute will automatically display the text (title) when mouse is over the image.
If you are into the whole social media thing (and you should be if you’re reading this!), you’ll really want to install the Sociable plugin.
Once installed, it creates a list of icons linked to all the popular social bookmarking sites so that your readers can easily bookmark your blog posts in case they want to come back to your site and find specific information easily again.
Once again, installing this plugin will help you drive traffic back to your site and helps you in increasing your rankings as well. So it’s definitely a keeper!
That pretty much wraps it up for optimizing your blog for maximum search engine exposure.
There are a number of other things you can also do to help optimize your whole blog for search engines. For now, the above plugins will be a great foundation to build on and will help you set up your blog correctly for search engines right from the start.
SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc..
PhotoSmash Galleries makes it easy for you to create appealing galleries in blog posts and pages that you and your readers can upload images to. It is very easy to install the plugin and to create galleries of various layouts on your blog. It is very flexible and its options will make your gallery look appealing.
Flickrpress WordPress plugin is more or less similar to the Flickr Photo Album but the difference is that you will be able to display individual photos in this as well along with the photo albums and widgets. You can also choose to show or hide your photos on the blog post and pages as well.
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Top 8 WordPress Plugins That Will Optimize Your Blog For Your Readers
Optimizing your blog for your readers is the most important thing to focus, because at the end of the day the success of your blog depends on your readers. Readers make or break a blog. So its really important to optimize your blog for a very good reader experience and retain your readers on the long run.
The first and most important thing to do when it comes to optimizing your blog is to get the right theme design for your blog. Once you have the right theme, the next thing is to optimize your blog with the right plugins to give your readers a very good experience, engage them and also make sure they visit your blog again and again to check out your content. In this post I have shared the Top 8 Plugins To Optimize Your Blog For Your Readers.
1. W3 Total Cache Plugin
I came across this plugin recently, before which I relied on WP Super Cache for optimizing my blog for speed. But the WP Total Cache plugin out performs WP Super Cache, and I definitely recommend this plugin to every WordPress site owner. Installing this plugin is as simple as installing any other plugin for WordPress. The default options are enough to cache your WordPress site, but with little tweeks and proper configuration, this plugin will work like a charm.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of this amazing plugin, W3 Total Cache:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-install-and-setup-w3-total-cache-for-beginners/
http://zemalf.com/1443/w3-total-cache/
To download W3 Total Cache Plugin and to know more about the features and benefits of this plugin, visit: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/
2. Akismet Plugin
Akismet is one of the two default plugins that comes pre-installed with WordPress. It is not activated by default, and to activate it, you need to get your Akismet API Key. You can get this Akismet API Key by registering for a free WordPress.com user account.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of the Akismet Plugin:
http://wordpressvideos.tv/wordpress-tutorials/using-the-akismet-spam-plugincontrolling-spam-wordpressvideos-tv
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/akismet-101-guide-for-all-wordpress-users/
3. Thank Me Later Plugin
Thank Me Later is one of my favorite plugin when it comes to automation. It automatically sends a thank you email to those who leave a comment on your blog. This plugin helps me to thank my readers and commentators and further engages them with my blog and social media.
The best thing about Thank Me Later WordPress Plugin is that it is highly customizable. It allows you to create multiple e-mail messages and to send the message after a pre-defined amount of time, making messages appear more unique and people-friendly. It gives you the opportunity to keep alive a connection with the visitor after they have left your blog.
You can download this plugin and also find the installation steps at the link below:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thank-me-later/
4. Subscribe To Comments Plugin
It is one of the most popular WordPress Plugins for the simple reason that it nurtures a community around your blog by notifying and encouraging your commentators to come back and stay engaged on your blog. This plugin doesn’t spam your users and lets them to be in complete control. Another great thing about this plugin is that it is simple to install (just like any other wordpress plugin) and it doesn’t require any theme modification, until and unless you are using a very old version of WordPress (older than WordPress Version 1.5).
Once this plugin is installed, there will be a small check box below the comments area. All your users can see this check box, and users who are not subscribed to the post comments can select to subscribe to the post whereas users who are subscribed to the post’s comment, sees a link to manage subscription in which it shows all the posts they are subscribed to. They can easily unsubscribe to any post from there which is a great way to allow your users to manage their subscription without having them register.
You can download the Subscribe To Comments WordPress Plugin and can also find the installation steps at the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
5. Brian’s Threaded Comments Plugin
Image From WeeklyBlogging.com
Brian’s Threaded Comments is another cool plugin that will help you and your blog users (readers and commentators) to navigate your blog comments a lot easier. It also makes your comments section cooler than before and attracts more comments from your users.
Imagine if a commentator comments on your blog post and there are around 10 replies to that comment including yours. Now every time you or your readers want to read the whole discussion, it becomes difficult for them and yourself as well, because the comments are scattered all around your comments area. This is where the Brian’s Threaded Comments kicks in and makes life a lot easier.
This plugin allows your users to reply to each comment on your blog in a threaded fashion. So instead of having to look for every persons comment and then address them individual at the end, you and your users can now address each person directly below their comment. It also makes your comment stand out by highlighting your comment in a different color, so that everybody will know who the site owner is, right
. In other words, this plugin allows you to not only reply to a post on your blog, but also to reply to a reply to a post… and on and on, creating what’s called a threaded, or nested comment collection.
You can see how the structure works in our blogs comments area (but first leave a comment below this blog post, so that you can see my reply in threaded fashion).
You can download this plugin at the link:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-thread-comment/
6. What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin
What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin allows you to customize the message that is displayed to your visitors on their first visit (or first x visits) to your blog. Then once they have come back a couple of times you can display them a second message. This plugin does this via a cookie which is checked each time a visitor visits your blog. And the message is changed with the cookie count. This means you can customize a welcome message for each visitor depending upon the number of visits they have made. It is a very simple yet very useful tool to make your visitors click on your message and convert your one time blog visitor into your regular blog reader by making him subscribe to your RSS Feed or following you on Twitter.
You can download this plugin from the link:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/what-would-seth-godin-do/
7. Contact Form 7 Plugin
The best part about this plugin, is that it makes it extremely easy for your blog visitors to get in touch with you directly, without knowing what your email address is. And besides, the implementation of this plugin is just beautiful, and it really looks the part. I have installed this plugin on my blog in case you want to check it out for yourself. You can see it in action here:
http://www.prajwalshinde.com/contact (Do send me a message. I would love to hear from you)
You can get the Contact Form 7 plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
8. WP –DB–BackUp Plugin
Image From Stuad.com
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin is the most recommended plugin when it comes to backing up the data of your blog. Having our entire business and blogs on internet is always in the risk of data loss. Who knows when the server hosting your blog might go off or anything might go wrong. Always having a back up of the data of your blog makes you feel secure and keeps all the hard work that you had put in creating that content insured. And since you have all your data backed up, you will easily be able to get your site online with alternate arrangements, just in case if anything goes wrong and minimizes your loss.
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin allows you to back up the data of your blog to your email, server and your computer. You will be able to select the data that you would like to back up and keep your work safe. If you are backing up the data to your email, you can select the data that you would like to back up and schedule a time. Once you have scheduled the time, the backup will be automatically sent via email to your email address. I use this method to back up the data of my blog.
You can download the WP–DB–BackUp Plugin at the link:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
Here is a step by guide which explains the installation and backup steps more clearly:
http://www.wendycholbi.com/2009/10/wordpress-plugin-wp-db-backup/
Do refer to our video guide How To Install WordPress Plugins To Your Blog if you have any difficulty during the installation of any WordPress plugin.
Don’t forget to share your comments and suggestions below, I would love to hear about the plugins that you use on your blog. And do share this post on Twitter and Facebook and spread the love.
W3 Total Cache Plugin
W3 Total Cache is the fastest and probably the most complete wordpress performance optimization plugin. This is one of the most important wordpress plugins when it comes to optimizing your wordpress blog for speed. This helps in retaining your readers by loading your site faster on a level that Google appreciates as well. W3 Total Cache, caches every aspect of your site and improves your server performance, thus improving the overall user experience of your site. This amazing plugin will help your site to withstand large amount of traffic without lowering the performance even if you are on shared hosting.
I came across this plugin recently, before which I relied on WP Super Cache for optimizing my blog for speed. But the WP Total Cache plugin out performs WP Super Cache, and I definitely recommend this plugin to every WordPress site owner. Installing this plugin is as simple as installing any other plugin for WordPress. The default options are enough to cache your WordPress site, but with little tweeks and proper configuration, this plugin will work like a charm.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of this amazing plugin, W3 Total Cache:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-install-and-setup-w3-total-cache-for-beginners/
http://zemalf.com/1443/w3-total-cache/
To download W3 Total Cache Plugin and to know more about the features and benefits of this plugin, visit: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/
Akismet Plugin
Akismet (Automatic Kismet) is another must have plugin for every WordPress site owner. As your blog grows, you will see the number of spam comments growing as well. Spam is one of the most important concerns of every site owner. You definitely need something to counter attack the spam and Akismet is the right weapon for that. Akismet WordPress Plugin which is popularly known as the Spam Hammer, checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. This makes your life a lot easier to manage your blog’s comments.
Akismet is one of the two default plugins that comes pre-installed with WordPress. It is not activated by default, and to activate it, you need to get your Akismet API Key. You can get this Akismet API Key by registering for a free WordPress.com user account.
Below are the two links which will guide you through the installation and proper configuration of the Akismet Plugin:
http://wordpressvideos.tv/wordpress-tutorials/using-the-akismet-spam-plugincontrolling-spam-wordpressvideos-tv
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/akismet-101-guide-for-all-wordpress-users/
Thank Me Later Plugin
Thank Me Later is one of my favorite plugin when it comes to automation. It automatically sends a thank you email to those who leave a comment on your blog. This plugin helps me to thank my readers and commentators and further engages them with my blog and social media.
The best thing about Thank Me Later WordPress Plugin is that it is highly customizable. It allows you to create multiple e-mail messages and to send the message after a pre-defined amount of time, making messages appear more unique and people-friendly. It gives you the opportunity to keep alive a connection with the visitor after they have left your blog.
You can download this plugin and also find the installation steps at the link below:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thank-me-later/
Subscribe To Comments Plugin
Subscribe To Comments WordPress Plugin (as the name says) is a plugin which allows your readers and commentators to subscribe to ongoing and the future comments of a particular blog post. Many times there are blog posts which generate a lot of discussions and debates. And lot your users would definitely like to stay updated on the ongoing discussions and debates. Subscribe To Comments Plugin is the plugin which does this simple yet very important job for you. It allows your commentators to check a box after commenting and they would get the notifications on the further comments on their email.
It is one of the most popular WordPress Plugins for the simple reason that it nurtures a community around your blog by notifying and encouraging your commentators to come back and stay engaged on your blog. This plugin doesn’t spam your users and lets them to be in complete control. Another great thing about this plugin is that it is simple to install (just like any other wordpress plugin) and it doesn’t require any theme modification, until and unless you are using a very old version of WordPress (older than WordPress Version 1.5).
Once this plugin is installed, there will be a small check box below the comments area. All your users can see this check box, and users who are not subscribed to the post comments can select to subscribe to the post whereas users who are subscribed to the post’s comment, sees a link to manage subscription in which it shows all the posts they are subscribed to. They can easily unsubscribe to any post from there which is a great way to allow your users to manage their subscription without having them register.
You can download the Subscribe To Comments WordPress Plugin and can also find the installation steps at the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
Brian’s Threaded Comments Plugin
Brian’s Threaded Comments is another cool plugin that will help you and your blog users (readers and commentators) to navigate your blog comments a lot easier. It also makes your comments section cooler than before and attracts more comments from your users.
Imagine if a commentator comments on your blog post and there are around 10 replies to that comment including yours. Now every time you or your readers want to read the whole discussion, it becomes difficult for them and yourself as well, because the comments are scattered all around your comments area. This is where the Brian’s Threaded Comments kicks in and makes life a lot easier.
This plugin allows your users to reply to each comment on your blog in a threaded fashion. So instead of having to look for every persons comment and then address them individual at the end, you and your users can now address each person directly below their comment. It also makes your comment stand out by highlighting your comment in a different color, so that everybody will know who the site owner is, right
. In other words, this plugin allows you to not only reply to a post on your blog, but also to reply to a reply to a post… and on and on, creating what’s called a threaded, or nested comment collection.
You can see how the structure works in our blogs comments area (but first leave a comment below this blog post, so that you can see my reply in threaded fashion).
You can download this plugin at the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-thread-comment/
What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin
What Would Seth Godin Do is a plugin named after the famous internet marketer Seth Godin, who is the author many internet marketing books. You can find many of his books on amazon.com. Here is a link to Seth Godin’s Books On Amazon.
What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin allows you to customize the message that is displayed to your visitors on their first visit (or first x visits) to your blog. Then once they have come back a couple of times you can display them a second message. This plugin does this via a cookie which is checked each time a visitor visits your blog. And the message is changed with the cookie count. This means you can customize a welcome message for each visitor depending upon the number of visits they have made. It is a very simple yet very useful tool to make your visitors click on your message and convert your one time blog visitor into your regular blog reader by making him subscribe to your RSS Feed or following you on Twitter.
Go ahead and download this plugin from the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/what-would-seth-godin-do/
Contact Form 7 Plugin
Contact Form 7 plugin is one of the best ways to allow your blog readers and visitors to reach you easily and professionally. This plugin helps you to create awesome looking contact forms on your blog. By installing the Contact Form 7 plugin, it means that you don’t have to list your email on your site anywhere, hence reducing the chance that spam trawlers will pick up your email address and send you a bunch of spam messages.
The best part about this plugin, is that it makes it extremely easy for your blog visitors to
get in touch with you directly, without knowing what your email address is. And besides, the implementation of this plugin is just beautiful, and it really looks the part. I have installed this plugin on my blog in case you want to check it out for yourself. You can see it in action here:
http://www.prajwalshinde.com/contact (Do send me a message. I would love to hear from you)
You can get the Contact Form 7 plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin is the most recommended plugin when it comes to backing up the data of your blog. Having our entire business and blogs on internet is always in the risk of data loss. Who knows when the server hosting your blog might go off or anything might go wrong. Always having a back up of the data of your blog makes you feel secure and keeps all the hard work that you had put in creating that content insured. And since you have all your data backed up, you will easily be able to get your site online with alternate arrangements, just in case if anything goes wrong and minimizes your loss.
WP –DB–BackUp Plugin allows you to back up the data of your blog to your email, server and your computer. You will be able to select the data that you would like to back up and keep your work safe. If you are backing up the data to your email, you can select the data that you would like to back up and schedule a time. Once you have scheduled the time, the backup will be automatically sent via email to your email address. I use this method to back up the data of my blog.
You can download the WP–DB–BackUp Plugin at the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
Here is a step by guide which explains the installation and backup steps more clearly: http://www.wendycholbi.com/2009/10/wordpress-plugin-wp-db-backup/
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