scrambledmindsMixed up thoughts on the web world, photography and life.

WordPress is an amazing tool. It’s probably one of the easiest tools to use when if you want to “blog” or record your thoughts for the anonymous audience that is the web. This simplicity also means that there are certain things that have been left out, however the smart folks over there at Automattic made sure that WordPress can be extended by the community through themes and plugins. Today I wanted to give you the essential WordPress plugins that I’ve found to be the best at covering the most important holes. I’ve recently been getting into blogging a lot more and have found an interest in Internet Marketing so I’ve got a list that I’m now installing on every blog. Sorry for another essential WordPress plugins list but, to be honest, the other lists I’ve found haven’t really suited my needs (I really wanted to write crap here but I showed some restraint) or they were very out of date (as I’m sure this post will be in 6 months time). So here we go:

• Make your blog search engine friendly (Search Engine Optimised – SEO) – All in One SEO – donate if you like it.
• Make sure you back up! – WordPress Database Backup – Note that this will only back up what’s in your database, which is just about everything. It will not back up your files or anything else in the wp-content folder where WordPress is installed as far as I’m aware. I’ve also recently found another plugin (WordPress Online Automated Backup) that backs up to an online service in an automated fashion. I’m not sure if this backs up your whole blog either though but it’s much easier in concept as you don’t need to do anything after it’s configured.
• Check your stats – Google Analytics for WordPress – I’ve recently been learning of the wonders of Google Analytics and the power within. This tool is great for understanding who is visiting and doing what on your site. Massive!
• Update google when you post – Google XML Sitemaps – This gets the updated information to your greatest friend (and potentially all powerful overseer), Google so that your info is always up to date in search engine land.
• Let people share your content – AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget – This will add the little button at the end of the post that allows someone to post this link to digg, delicious, facebook etc. Social bookmarking is the term I believe. I love it when all I have to do is install a plugin. I hate coding. It’s a shame that I know the word coding and what it means.

I’ve included the relevant links to each of the plugin locations but I’d strongly recommend you use the new search and installation feature from within WordPress as this makes installation so much easier. These are installed over the default WordPress plugins which I think are also essential. Happy plugin fun!

*** Update 13 April 2009 ***
I’ve found another essential plugins for wordpress:

• Give people access to your RSS feed… and measure it! Feedburner Feedsmith. This lets you redirect the default feed address of your wordpress blog (http://www.myexampleblog.com/feed to your feedburner location by default so everyone gets the feed from the same place. You get to measure all the goings on with Feedburner this way