(C) Pix Courtesy www.geeksucks.com
I was chatting with a friend on Skype today and showed him one of my new projects; A Job website that runs on wordpress platform. He then asked me how I was able to put in one of the cool features on my site.
I smiled and told him It was a wordpress plugin.
Over the years, I have had people ask me how I was able to do something special on a particular website or implement a particular functionality etc. In actual sense I have used wordpress plugins to achieve them. Since i get asked a lot of times, I then decided to post my current list of top 5 plugins and why I use them.
Askimet : My blog won’t survive without this. I remembered setting up my first blog (Naijabrains) and was receiving massive traffic back then. It also increased the amount of SPAM comments in my blog too. Azuka advised I install Askimet on my blog and ever since….i have done that on the numerous websites that run wordpress and it’s saved me lots of time deleting SPAM comments
All in One SEO Pack – Search Engine Optimization simply means optimizing your website to rank in Google. Doing SEO sometimes requires learning a lot. Using the All in One SEO Pack can help you optimize your wordpress blog for search engines without having to learn SEO.
Google XML Sitemaps – When you have a sitemap, it helps Googlebot (Google Robots…lol) to find your blog and index it in their database. I love Google XML sitemaps and Google likes it when you have it on your website and really, you should love & use it too
Cool Author Box: If you check Deolu’s post on this blog or that of any other writer, at the end of each post, you’ll see the Author’s name, website and a profile about the author. This particular plugin helps to achieve that.
Google Analytics For WordPress: I started my personal blog two months ago. In the first month, I had 115 unique visitors. In the second month, it went up to 775 visitors. This is the third month and I have 364 visitors already. I was able to know these accurate figures because of the Google Analytics for wordpress plugin.
Those are my top 5 wordpress plugins. So tell me….what are your favourite plug in’s? Leave a comment to share it with me.
14 thoughts on “My Top 5 Favourite WordPress Plugins”
Great post Gbenga! Perfect timing for me. I just launched my blog last week and have been torn between setting up the layout and look and posting. A great friend of mine has been wonderfully instrumental in setting it up but our busy schedules have made it impossible to conclude things. He has given me a crash course already but my preference is not to get caught up in the techy details; hey, I just want to write, period!
Well done and keep up the great work.
Warm regards,
Charles
@Charles, if i am right, your new blog is http://www.ebhodaghe.com/. Your theme is cool. Here’s are my suggestions:
a. Start writing blogpost’s. it does not matter if they are cool or not….at some point, you’ll find your own voice. (took me 3 yrs to find mine)
b. leave comments on other peoples blog. Exactly, like you’ve done on this blog
c. Submit your blog to http://www.bloggers.com.ng
d. Send me an email whenever you need help, i had a lot of help too…and i’m willing to help others)
e. Stop every thing you are doing now…and go WWRITE your first blogpost
Goodluck!
I like Quick Cache. The more you install plugins the more time it takes the site to load. Quick Cache dramatically improves the performance and speed of the site. It is REALLY awesome. I use it on my site http://tosinmlmexpert.com. Thanks for this resource, I’ve being looking for ‘Cool Author Box’ for a while now. Thanks!
@Tosin,
Yes you are right. having too many plugins can slow down your blog and QuickCache actually helps.
I didn’t include it because i only listed the top 5. I’ll be doing another post on other plugins to. Watch out for it.
Am glad the cool Author Box was useful.
Thanks Gbenga, which plugin do you use to attribute the picture to the owner? I have been trying to get to do that.
Tosin
Do you mean attributing pix to the cool Author Box?
Yeah exactly? Maybe it is not a plugin. How do you do it?
Very cool insight! I don’t ve a blog yet, but I have always talked about owning a blogsite, wish I could get some help out there from anyone towards owning one next year.
Kind regards.
@oluwafemi. You can start your blog without a dime. Simply go to http://www.blogger.com to sign up.
if you have any questions, do let me know and i’ll help out.
If you’ve been getting that tingling sensation, you should start now…before the end of the year, so that you’ll feel proud starting off in January
Nice post Gbenga, quite informative. My blog has been comatose at best since I started some months ago. This will re-invigorate me to re-visit it and perform the necessary CPR to get it going again. Many thanks!
I think site statistics is my favorite. I have a whole lot installed on my site checking out google analytics though. My blog is basically about IT news but it has been a little bit difficult to get the IT coys get me subscribed to their mailing list. I had submitted letters severally usually no response do you have any idea how I can get this done considering your experience.
@Toyin,
site statistics is good. However, you only need one. Analytics is the best FREE stat software out there. It’s also simple to use.
I checked out your blog. I think its nice…
Can i suggest improvements?
a. Give it a definition: i see IT news, IT personality, IT Articles etc. Those are not definitive. You know IT is broad…drill it down to specific niche. Telecoms News sounds better than IT news…you digg?
b. The individual blogpost are cluttered with Adsense code that are not displaying. Do away with the codes. Trust me, you only need 3 adsense units on ur website to make good money.
c. Blog about Nigerian news. Recently Glo slashed its price…that should be news on your website too…remember, it will get you massive traffic from people searching about it…
I am not really much of a critic, but i hope those tips helps…..
@Tosin, you need to sign up at gravatar.com for that pix bit.
Great! Oga Gbenga well done.