Day 21: Installing and Adding Plugins to your WordPress Blog
Posted on June 24th, 2009 by Jim under 30-Day Blogging
We’re back after a quick recess and hitting it into the final stretch of The Net Fool’s Build-A-Blog Workshop. After day 20, we now have an ad system in place on our blogs with the power of OIO Publisher. Now, we need to explore our options in other plugins… namely the ones that I would recommend every WordPress blog owner to have installed on their websites.
Adding & Installing Plugins
Let’s first discuss how to install new plugins into our WordPress blog. We’ve talked through the system of using FTP to upload files to our website. With this in mind, adding new functionality to your blog is really a matter of downloading new plugins, unzipping the files on your computer, and uploading them to the “/wp-content/plugins/” folder on your blog. Once the files are in there, WordPress will automatically recognize it, and allow you to configure your options right in your Admin panel… easy! 
If you need a hand, check out the guide posted on WordPress.org.
Your First Batch of Plugins: Necessary Additions
Now that we know our way around installing plugins, I am going to recommend a few to you to try out. Tomorrow, we will cover plugins that improve the looks and function of your website to your visitors. Today, we will be going over add-ons that I consider essentials for any blog or any type.
Plugins you simply need to have:
Akismet: The top-dog spam blocker for your blog… plus it’s free!
All In One SEO: My personal favorite SEO tool for WordPress. Optimize your blog for Google better than ever before (we will configure this in a few days!)
Google XML Sitemaps: Let Google pick up your website quicker than ever before to increase the amount of traffic to your blog
ShareThis / Sociable: Use one of the following plugins to add an easy link to social networking websites that can blast your traffic to the heavens
WordPress Automatic Upgrade: Download this plugin to automatically get upgrades for your plugins and WordPress installation… makes life even easier!
WP Super Cache: Allow your visitor’s browsers to save some information about your blog to have things load faster than ever before
WordPress DB Manager: Everyone needs to back up their site! Create database backups with the click of a button
WWW Redirect: Force browsers to use a “www.” at the beginning of your url, and automatically convert web addresses to this default. This dramatically increases your search engine placements, and is a must for every blog
This batch of 8 plugins should be on every blog that you ever make, as they add new functionality to your website and will increase the amount of views that you get overall. Tomorrow, we’ll get into some great plugins for adding new features to WordPress.
-The Net Fool
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Thanks for sharing this valuable info. You had given all the steps which are needed for plugin a wordpress blog. Its very good for newbie like me who had not much experience with it.
Great list of plugins. I did not know about WWW redirect. I’ll install it soon.
If you use Twiiter there are a number of very good plugins such as Tweetmeme
Luca´s last blog ..How Utility Poster Helped Me Rank On Page One Of Google Search
Great list of plugins, some of them are really useful
What about feedburner feedsmith?
fas´s last blog ..Lose weight with the help of green tea
Feedsmith is 100% essential… but that is why we already walked through the installation of it when we set up our RSS feeds earlier in this Build-a-Blog contest
Thanks for the reminder Fas!
I have a question about the All in One SEO plug-in. Wordpress itself now lets you enter keywords, so do you still need the SEO plug-in? I mainly used the plug-in so I could enter my keywords, but now Wordpress provides a space for that.
Thanks.
The way that WordPress handles SEO is still horrible… actually horrendous. All In One SEO actually rebuilds how your website is seen by Google so that you will have your website picked up faster; this is something that adding a keyword alone cannot do! We will talk about why this is all important on Day 23
Thanks Jim for clarify this. I don’t know wordpress’s this quality. I will keep it in my mind.
Thanks for that list, this plugins are really needed. I heard somewhere though that you should have to many plugins installed because it could mess with you blog. Is there any truth to that?
nmpnicholas
Thanks for the list, I clicked on a few of the links in the comments of people in the workshop they look great . I am having trouble with the redirect plugin it says there are too many redirects probably a simple problem, if anyone else had this problem and solved it your info would be much appreciated
Johnny Roof´s last blog ..Simple Ways to Make Your Project Go Well
I have installed 2 plugins in my WordPress website to allow me to use Google Analytics and StatCounter. It looks though as if neither one gets any data from my website. I had used StatCounter exclusively until last week and it worked just fine, until I added the Google Analytics plugin. Are both scripts preventing each other from working properly?Any Ideas on what should be done?
this is really useful information, great post. Thank you.
great post, like most, continue this way.
I agree with most of those plug-ins being MUST NEED for your wordpress blog. I never actually used the WWW Redirect plug-in though. Definitely going to check that out. Thanks for the information Jim, always very informal.
Physio Scene´s last blog ..Ten Classic Marketing Mistakes Made by Private Physical Therapy Practices and How to Avoid Them
Well, Jim, it’s kinda nice post. As much as I have read you, you could have researched a bit & found multiple options for some of these significant plug-ins. I would say, it would have just been more impressive.
Chris Peterson´s last blog ..Make Your Business Look Graceful!