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10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins
I’ve been on wordpress for several months now. I made the switch last year when I knew it was time to upgrade from Blogger. If there’s anything I’ve learned about WordPress, it is that the plugin is king. So, today I’m sharing my 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins!
Akismet- I’ve got these by alpahabetical order, but I have to say, if they were ordered by importance, Akismet would still be number one. Akismet filters out spam comments and back-tracks on your posts, so you don’t have to. I get HUNDREDS of spam comments each week and I couldn’t imagine having to sort through them all by myself. There have been a handful that have snuck through, but other than that, Akismet takes care of them. I have the Pro Blogger Monthly plan, which is $5 a month- and SO worth it!
Broken Link Checker- Broken link checker is another great plugin when it comes to the background maintenance of your blog. This plugin is pretty self- explanatory, it checks for links within your blog posts that are broken. This is great because once you get so many posts, it can be hard to keep up with all of your links- especially those affiliate links that are supposed to be bringing in money for your blog. If something happens and these links no longer work, the plugin lets you know!
CommentLuv- CommentLuv is my favorite comment plugin of all time. If you look down below, you can see that when my readers go to leave a comment, they can leave their name, email, and website address. I love to be able to visit others’ blogs when they comment. Then, it also leaves me a link to their latest blog post- how cool is that?!
Comment Reply Notification- Okay, so when it comes to comments, this plugin might be even more important that CommentLuv. The Comment Reply Notification plugin will actually notify your readers when you reply to their comment! It sends the reader an email (to the address they provided when they commented) and then they can continue the conversation!
Feedburner Email Widget- This is one of my fav’s too! Who am I kidding these are all my fav’s! Anyway, I have a newsletter for my blog, but I struggle with getting it sent each week. When I came from blogger, I didn’t want to lose all those feedburner subscribers I had gotten, so I transferred the feedburner feed over from blogger to wordpress and added this handy plugin so that I could continue to collect feedburner subscribers and those people could get my blog posts each day to their inbox!
Google Plus Authorship- This plugin is not absolutely necessary, but I still love it. This plugin helped me establish Google Authorship over my blog- “they” say this is important, and it puts my profile photo next to my posts in Google search, helping things look a little more legit! Getting your authorship can be tricky, there are a few different methods, a quick google search will bring up some great tutorials… I wish I remembered which one I used!
Quick Adsense- Quick Adsense is just that- a quick way to set up & maximize your adsense! I simply put that I wanted to have 3 adsense ads on my blog at all times (you can only have 3, or less if you use other ad networks besides adsense) but I can choose the spot I want the ads to show up, and which ads I want to display using my adsense codes. Easy, simple, quick, and I can maximize my earnings by cleverly displaying the ads. 
Shareaholic- Shareaholic is my favorite “sharing” plugin. You can choose to display shareaholic buttons at the bottom of your posts, top of your posts, or both! This is a great way to help your readers easily share your content to facebook, twitter, pinterest, and more!
WordPress Database Backup- If you get ANY plugin, get this one… and for the love of the blog, backup your site!! It’s as easy as running the backup and saving the file to your computer.
WordPress SEO- I use the Yoast plugin for SEO, and it is marvelous! It makes maximizing my SEO impact super simple, right inside my post and shows me how well my post is set to perform. This is a must, must, must have!
Okay, so a few things about plugins, remember to be careful, plugins can absolutely make your site go wonky. I recommend doing one at a time, that way if your blog goes berzerk you can simply uninstall the last plugin you installed and hopefully all will be fixed. Also, don’t forget to update your plugins. WordPress will let you know when you need an update. My last tip- when deciding to install a plugin or not, look at how many people have installed the plugin- more installations=good. Then, see when it was last updated. You don’t want a plugin that the developer has totally forgotten about and does not update!
Okay, so do you have all of these plugins installed on your blog? Which one is your favorite? Is there another wonderful plugin out there that I’m missing out on?? Let me know in the comments!
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