I spewed about some themes earlier. It’s time to let loose about some plugins. This is mainly covering the backend or behind the scenes plugins. I’ll get to the plugins that make your blog space look all snazzy in a later posting.
Probably the two most important plugins, for me especially, after my web hosting snafu are:
- WP-DBManager by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan: It manages you WP database, allowing you to optimize, repair, backup and restore your database. You can schedule your backups and the database optimization. Backups are stored on your site and can also be emailed to you, if you so choose.
- WordPress Backup by Blog Traffic Exchange: Like WP-DBManager, except this will backup your uploads, current theme and plugins directory. Backups are stored on your site for easy download or can also be emailed to you.
The next plugin you don’t even have to download, as it comes prepackaged with WordPress:
- Akismet, the spam killer. A must for any blogger who gets sick of the usual mess of spam comments littering your comments administration. An API Key from WordPress.com (signup is free) is all that is needed to get this working. Set it and forget it. It catches nearly every spam comment and those that it doesn’t delete outright, will end up in the spam section of your comments for you to review for yourself to decide if its good or bad.
Some Google related plugins and a little Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
- Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold: While it has Google in the title, the sitemaps this plugin generates comply with Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com as well. Always a good thing to make it easier for the most popular search engines to crawl your website.
- Google Analytics for WordPress by Joost de Valk: Easily adds your Google Analytics tracking code to your blog. Also can tag and segment your outbound clicks so you may see where your traffic is going.
- All-In-One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert: SEO is the name of the game and this will take care of just about all you need, right out of the box. Extensive options for you to set to your liking, if you’d rather not use the presets.
I’ll finish off with just 2 more plugins:
- Maintenance Mode by Michael Wöhrer: A simple plugin that displays a splash page to your visitors to let them know your blog is undergoing maintenance. Logged in Admins retain full access to the blog.
- Redirection by John Godley: Useful for pages/posts that you may have deleted or moved to another address, you designate the page and tell it where you want it to redirect to. Especially useful if you are migrating pages from an old website or are changing the directory of your WP installation.
There are more to choose from than these. Though in my opinion, these are the best at what they do. I’ve used most for a while now and find them to be invaluable and a must upon any new WordPress installation. If you feel I missed something, let me know, I’ll be glad to give it a spin.
