Basics: Essential WordPress Plugins for the Business Blog
I’ve recently create several business blogs in close secession, all of which were heavily dependent on plugins. It occurs to me readers of this blog might find useful my list of plugins I usually install for business-oriented blogs.
One thing to consider even before you install WordPress is whether there is any particular plugin your blog must have. If this is the case, scrutinize the plugin’s web documentation for any mention of what WP versions with which it has been tested. Rarely, a plugin will not function properly with a later WordPress version. Still, you are generally better off with the latest version of WordPress on a new install. If you should require an earlier WP version, check my previous how-to post on this.
Here is the list of essential plugins I use of my new business WordPress installs. All are available as free downloads from WordPress.org:
- Akismet This one ships with new versions of WordPress and is your basic defense against comment spam.
- All-In-One SEO Pack This is the most widely used optimization package. It manages everything from meta tags to post descriptions. Don’t think that this will automatically push you up the search ladder, though—it won’t. Be sure to customize permalinks to show title text and, always optimize each post with keywords.
- AZIndex This is great for any informational site. It creates a comprehensive index of all you posts or pages on it’s own page. I like features that make websites function more like books and magazines.
- Easy Contact There are several good (and not so good) form plugins available. I like this one because it lays the boxes out neatly and allows a confirmation email to be sent to the user.
- Google Analytics for WordPress Many WordPress users just paste their Analytics code into the footer of their theme. The problem is if you change themes, you loose the code, too. This plugin keeps it around no matter what.
- WP SuperCache I always install this, but only enable it if I think the site may receive a large amount of traffic. It will keep your site from crashing if you luck onto page 1 of Digg, but it also can be at conflict with some other plugins.
- Recently Popular Rather than showing the usual “Recent Posts” on the sidebar, this plugin/widget will filter popular posts by hours/days/weeks/months.
- Robots Meta This is a useful SEO plugin that lets you fine tune meta tagging, but the thing I like most about it is that it gives you handy access to the robots.txt and htaccess files from boxes in your dashboard settings.
- RSS Footer This allows you to make sure you have site info in your RSS feed, thus insuring credit if your entry is published elsewhere from it’s feed.
- Search & Replace A huge timesaver, this one’s saved me many hours of work. It will find any string of text in your blog and replace it with anything you wish (or nothing). You can confine the search to content, titles, comments, or any of a dozen other criteria.
- WP Super Edit This adds many button features to WordPress’ rather sparse entry editor. While I must use WP’s editor at times, I normally edit offline in the free Windows Live Writer, which offers onscreen underlining of misspelled words and other MS Office-like features.