Critical Blog Plugins

In addition to customizing the look and feel of your blog, you can also choose to add plugins to your Wordpress blog that will enhance your website and work as extensions of the blog software that can make your blog more interactive as well as easier to manage.

In order to put these plugins to work for you, you simply download them from the developers website and upload them into your wp-content/plugins in the same way that you uploaded your themes.

And just like a theme, you need to activate each plugin from within your Wordpress admin center before it becomes active and visible on your blog.

Sometimes a plugin will require more than just activating it. For example, a popular plugin that helps blogs do better in the search engines requires that you configure the settings before using it.

If ever a plugin requires additional information in order to function properly, you will see a new link appear in your navigation menu (from within the "Plugins" area) that will give you more information about that specific plugin.

One example of a useful plugin is found at http://www.CodeBanter.com who features a free Wordpress plugin that will instantly add an autoresponder opt-in box to your blog. Since it's important to start building a list, integrating this plugin makes capturing subscribers a breeze.

We'll talk more about list building in a future chapter, but in the meantime, head on over to CodeBanter.com and download a copy of the plugin, so you have it ready for when we focus on building a targeted list of prospects.

Plugins are exceptionally useful, especially when optimizing your website for the search engines. I have created a swipe file of the top plugins that I add to every blog that I create, and I suggest that you add these to a folder on your desktop so that you can use these on your websites as well.

Here they are, in no particular order:

All In One SEO Pack

http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/

This plugin ensures that your blog is well optimized for the title, meta description, and meta keywords. It should be a required plugin with every installation of Wordpress.

Google XML SiteMap

With every blog you create you will want an auto-generated sitemap. This is important so that the search engines can get a clear guideline regarding the pages from your site that you would like indexed.

http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/google-sitemap-generator.3.1.2.zip

Related Posts Plugin

http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2006/02/02/wordpress-related-entries-20/

No Ping Wait Plugin

http://onemansblog.com/2007/04/15/no-ping-wait-wordpress-plugin/

Privacy Policy Plugin

Every blog you setup should have a privacy policy in place. This is to ensure that you inform your readers of what they can expect from visiting your blog.

It's also very good to have this page setup since a few affiliate programs do request that you have a privacy policy page in place if you are going to be advertising their products. http://www.synclastic.com/privacy-policy-1.0.zip

Google Analytics
This plugin is useful for reviewing the stats of your blog and viewing any patterns regarding your traffic. It has a wide range of features that will enable you to have a complete traffic breakdown:
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/google-analytics-for-wordpress.2.7.zip -

Once you have downloaded these plugins, upload them into your Wordpress wp-content/plugins directory.

Then, log into your Wordpress admin panel at http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin and click on "Plugins" to load the listing of plugins and the activation link that will appear next to each one. Make sure to activate every plugin, otherwise they will not begin to function until you turn them on.

You can also explore other plugins at http://Wordpress.org/extend/plugins/