7 Wordpress Plugins No Blog Should Be Without

  Written by Cenay Nailor on Oct 25, 2008 1:46 am

Read More: Technology  |  Website Development

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Posted this to my blog tonight, when I realized that newbies would probably appreciate the breakdown of WHY to use a particular plugin as much as the actual link where to get them. If I'm wrong, feel free to pile wood under my chair, light it, and bring marshmellows to the bonfire.

Was recently asked a couple of questions about plugins, both in the forums and via my own blog, so I took a little time to list 7 of my favorites and the reasons I use them.

All In One SEO Pack.
This plugin requires a little extra from you at the time you create your post, but heaps benefits on your blog-head all throughout the life of your blog posts. Basically, it allows you to use the normal, short post title (keyword rich of course), and then specify a second title to be used at the browser title. For example, let's say you wrote a post and titled it: 7 Ways To Reduce Blog Spam. In your SEO title, you would put something like: 7 Ways To Reduce Blog Spam | A step-by-step guide to eliminating blog spam. If the difference and benefit of this step isn't immediately obvious, you need a little more education on SEO. It also allows you to create a short description that Google (or other search engines) will use to display the *summary* of the link they are displaying. Make this the reason they should click the link to read. In other words, the benefit to them. Finally, it adds a section for keywords. It will add these keywords to the meta tags of the page.

CommentLuv.
My next recommendation is about getting folks to comment. This little plugin does something wonderful for you and your readers. It rewards them in a way they can understand for commenting on your blog. When they include the URL in the comment section, CommentLuv parses out their last blog post (if the link is a blog) and includes an anchored text link to their last post. Again, the benefits here should be obvious. If they know they are gonna get a one-way link to their blog, they are more likely to comment.

SEO Post Link
This little gem will take a long title, and shorten it to just the keywords for the perma-link. For example, the title What Everyone needs to know about blogging for dollars, and why they should be doing it today will create a terribly long *pretty link* with the entire title (separated by dashes instead of space). SEO Post Link will shorten the *link* to something like domain.com/category/blogging-for-dollars. It does this by removing the unnecessary words and focusing on the keywords.

Subscribe To Comments
This plugin places a checkbox beneath the comment area to allow them to subscribe via email to the comments on that particular blog post, without them having to complete any additional fields. Once checked, and their comment is complete, this plugin will email everyone who has it checked whenever anyone new comments on the blog post. This encourages your visitors to return by reminding them about the post. Curiosity will cause a good many to come back to see what additional comment was added, just in case someone said something about them!

Wordpress Tweaks
There are a LOT of tweaks in this little gem, too many to cover and do it justice. One of the main sets of features I like about this plugin is that you can control if the NOFOLLOW tag will be added to comments, or if you want to auto-open in a new window/tab.

Homepage Excerpts
Love this one! Normally, when you set your blog up to include the full text for the first one of two posts, and then excerpts on the rest, Wordpress has an annoying habit of not formatting the text. It even goes so far as to strip off the formatting you have in there! This plugin allows you to display excerpts and keep the all important formatting.

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