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Wordpress has a lot of powerful plugins that will add extra functionality to your blog. There are more than 6k plugins available in Wordpress Plugin Directory when this article is written.
Different Wordpress plugins surf their own purposes, and installing too many plugins will slow down your system and increase the loading time. So, how should we choose the necessary plugins for our blog? Most of the new Wordpress users will ask this question.
In this article, we will list down 10 essential Wordpress plugins for a new blog. These are common plugins that will help you to secure your Wordpress blog, fight spam, and increase your search engine ranking.
1. Akismet
Akismet is a powerful anti spam plugin for Wordpress. It comes with your Wordpress installation, but you need to register at Wordpress.com in order to get your unique API key and activate the plugin. Some Wordpress users choose to review the spams, because sometimes Akismet will incorrectly marks a legitimate comment as spam.
2. Google XML Sitemap Generator
The Google XML Sitemap Generator will create a sitemap for your blog. The generated sitemap will compliant with Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com. Furthermore, this plugin can automatically notify the search engines about the updates of your blog.
3. All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack is a must have plugin if you want your blog ranks higher in search engine. After install this plugin, you can tweak your title, description, and also insert keywords for each of your articles. You can have this plugin to dynamically generates keywords for your posts too.
4. Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7, as its name explains, is a Wordpress plugin that easily lets users create a contact form. This plugin supports Ajax-powered submitting and CAPTCHA anti spam. However, the CAPTCHA module had been separated as Really Simple CAPTCHA plugin. With this plugin, you can have different inputs in your contact forms. For example, yuo can have checkboxes, selection boxes, radio buttons, textboxes, email inputs and etc.
5. Wordpress Related Posts
This plugin can automatically generates related posts via Wordpress tags. There are a lot of similar Wordpress plugins that able to generate related posts too, but i personally prefer this plugin because it is easy to use without much configurations. This plugin able to automatically insert related posts for RSS feed too.
6. Feedburner Feedsmith Plugin
If you are using Feedburner to host your feed, then you should download this plugin. The Feedburner Feedsmith plugin will automatically redirect your feed to Feedburner.com. So, it will slightly increase your Feedburner RSS subscribers counts. I can’t find the official page for this plugin, so i include the direct link to the plugin file. After the installation, just go to your Settings -> Feedburner to set your blog’s Feedburner address.
7. WP DB Backup
WP DB Bakcup allows Wordpress users to easily backup the database. This is essential so that you won’t lost your content even if your site get hacked. There are 3 different methods to backup your database:- save to server, download to your computer, and email. You may also schedule your Wordpress backup using this plugin.
8. Broken Link Checker
This handy plugin can performs checking on your outgoing links and list out those dead links. Dead links are dangerous because they will affect your search engine ranking.
9. StatPress Reloaded
StatPress Reloaded is a powerful plugin that able to track your visitors. It shows your daily visitors, pageviews, spiders and also feeds accesses. StatPress Reloaded also tracks the search terms, referrers and last pages. You may still need to install Google Analytics to do more complicated analysis, but this plugin provides you a quick view of your visitors and page views.
10. Antivirus for Wordpress
This cool little plugin will help you monitors and detects malicious code in your Wordpress system. You can enable the daily antivirus auto scan feature, the administrator will receive an email if the plugin detects any virus the the system.
Some useful and essential plugins here. Great one.
Thanks! Great list!!
Nice post with very useful plugins. Certainly the DB backup is handy!
I just started to design and use my own blog, so these plugins are great.
I agree with this list, but I think the best plugin ever, if you can figure out how it works, is csv 2 post!!!! http://www.furnacepartschicago.com/chicagoacparts/
Thanks, it’s a useful list, I just knew the function of Akismet after reading this. Newbie on wordpress.
Wow, I already use 8/10!
And I did not know about the anti-virus plugin. I’ll most definitely try it out as soon as I get the chance.
Thank you!
Nice post with very useful plugins.
Great list of plugins.. My favorite and of course a MUST HAVE is Google XML Sitemap Generator.. Does anyone know if you have to still add pings in the Settings/Writing/update services?
Thank you!
Hi Surfer Dude,
Google XML Sitemap will not ping all search engines for you. If you want to ping the search engine that are not in the list, then you should add them through the Settings/Writing/update services.
Nice list, All in one SEO rules !
very nice collection
thanks
I also write something like this. http://www.myhtmlworld.com/wordpress/first-plugins-after-wordpress-installation.html.
my suggestions
1. All in One SEO Pack
2. WordPress Database Backup
3. Google Analytics for WordPress
4. FeedBurner FeedSmith
5. Google XML Sitemaps
That’s pretty similar to my list only we use the WordPress Backup Plugin from cloudbacks since it backs up both the database and files.
I’ve had problems with the Feedburner plugin on the new version of WP – anyone else? Seems to break my permalinks in some cases.
Hi Andy Brudtkuhl,
Do you mean Feedburner Feedsmith plugin? I am using this plugin with 2.8.4 and have no problem at all. What is your permalink structure?
Nice list – I’m pleased to say I use pretty much all of them on the installation. Use cForms instead but a good list.
I just added a page on my blog “10 Tips to Clean, Optimize and Speed up your Wordpress Site” Check it at: http://retwt.me/xCMd
Thanks..!!! great job..!!!
Usefull for beginners, anti-virus is new for me
will try that one
Seen a lot of these lists lately, but you’ve got a couple of great plugins listed I hadn’t seen before – Thanks!
I personally prefer Headspace2 instead of AIO-SEO, and Wufoo forms instead of Contact Form 7.
Hi Cas,
Thanks for your input. Personally i think headspace2 and Wufoo are for more advance users while All In One Seo and Contact form7 are suitable for beginners right?
Very helpfull plugins , I am almost using most of the mentioned in my blog
Thanks Dicky
Hi Yasser,
Thanks! I am glad that these plugins help you.
Woot i had 8/10 of these plugins and just installed the missing two, thanks!
Never heard of the anti virus plugin…Has it ever caught anything for you?
Hi BWI,
So far i am consider myself lucky, it never caught any virus for me.
Great list! Very handy plugins. Thanks for sharing!
There was some WP super cache plugin that’s quite popular with users [it slows down loading time]!
I have most of these plugins, but there are a few really useful ones I don’t have, such as the anti-virus one. I’m not entirely sure what my all in one SEO pack does. Is there a way to know if it is increasing your SEO?Thanks a bunch for a nice list though!
Great blog and awesome tips! You guys keep me coming back, keep it up!
I use a bunch of those plugins. Thanks for the affirmation!
Check out some of my work if you care to:
More Wordpress plugins.
Great Useful plugins…this blog is really cool..i loved the beach wallpapers over here http://www.webdesignbooth.com/65-absolutely-beautiful-beach-wallpapers/
i was having 9/10 plugins listed above..getting the antivirus (really, heard it for the first time “Antivirus for Wordpress” LOL)…
Great list here. Thanks for the research and the posting. these are the kinds of tools that make Wordpress such an attractive platform for new websites.
Nice list, very useful – thanks!
Very useful I really liked the antivirus plugin, didn’t know that even existed. Thanks!
Useful list. I can recomment most of these plugins, too.
Thanks for compiling this list.
Nice list of plugins, I wrote a similar post if anyone wants to check it out, it has a few different plugins then this list
http://drawne.com/blog/articles/wordpress/wordpress-plugins-every-blog-should-have/
I would also add SEO Smartlinks to that list
never trust wp db plugin – it is easy to stole your database drops!
Hi mariusz,
Are you serious? I never found any problem with this plugin, and i had installed this plugin to all my client sites.