As a WordPress blog user, I greatly appreciate the use of plug-ins. I didn’t really understand what they were until I started playing around with my new blog theme and design. It was then that I discovered a whole phethera of plug-ins that make adding features to my blog a whole lot easier!
WordPress.org Plug-In Directory states that
Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine.
And I have found that to be true!
I have also noticed that most posts of this type, recommending the best plug-ins and such are written by technical people that know a whole lot about, well, the technical side of blogging than I do.
I’m just a mom blogger that doesn’t know anything about the technical side of all of this, but I am learning as I go and I’d like to share with you my favorite WordPress plug-ins. They can all be found in the WordPress Plug-In Directory and you can download them from there as well.
1. Askimet – checks your blog comments to see if they look like spam or not and then stops the spam. It catches A LOT!
2. WordPress.com Stats -simply tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks on your blog.
3. Google Analyticator – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics.
4. Comment Luv – Shows a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. I’ve seen this being used a lot and it’s always fun to see in the comments section of other blogs.
5. Sociable – Basically adds social media bookmarking buttons to your posts. You can choose specifically which social media sites you want to link to.
6. Twitter Counter – Displays the number of followers you have on Twitter
7. Twitter Tools – Creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. It allows you to pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.
8. Twitip ID – Adds another field in the comment form for twitter IDs.
9. WP Gravatar – Lets you use Gravatar, MyBlogLog, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or Favico.ico files with your comments.
10. WordPress Automatic Upgrade – allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest version.
Using all of these plug-ins definitely works for me!
To see what works for other mom bloggers out there, visit Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.
Courtney says
great tips. i use a few of those but didnt know all of them. thanks for the tips I will have to look them up!
Kathleen@so much to say, so little time says
I’m so technologically challenged that even this list uses terms I don’t understand…Gravatar, MyBlogLog, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or Favico.ico”–mind explaining these for a mom blogger who would love to understand & expand my site? I don’t even know how to add buttons…the one time I tried, I found out the only way to do it was to completely custom-write my design. I turned around and ran away screaming LOL. But if Word Press is as flexible as it seems, I need to learn!
Melissa says
I hadn’t heard of some of those! Thanks!
wanda says
I crack up when I look at all the cool things my WordPress blog will do and I DON’T HAVE A CLUE!!!
One of these days…..I’m gonna rock at this blogging gig!
.-= wanda´s last blog ..Miss G goes to Indy =-.