Widgetville

One of my favorite things about self-hosted Wordpress blogs is the multitude of plugins to turn your humble default blog into a lean, mean and search engine optimized machine.

Now I’ve come across some bad ones too that crashed my blog so if you’re integrating a new plugin - back up, back up, back up!

Also I’ve recently updated to Wordpress version 2.5 (like it!) and some plugins might not work on the latest WP versions.

Have you got a spare domain name kicking around? If so it’s a cool idea to use it as a test bed for new plugins before using on your main blog.

OK here’s my list. It ain’t all that long, it’s my Top #10, as it would be a bit hypocritical to mention plugins that I don’t have or use on this blog

1 ) Talking of backing up I really like WP-DBManager for not just backing up but also repairing your blog’s MySQL database. By the way, if you have a self-hosted WP blog have you considered downloading EVERYTHING to your Hard Dive ( or an external one) once a week? I try to…

2 ) Subscribe To Comments. Keep conversations going by giving a vistor, who is good enough to comment on your blog, the option of being informed via e-mail when someone else replies to that thread.

3 ) Official Statcounter Plugin. I love Statcounter.com for the best free blog and site stats. There used to be an occasional issue putting there code into a WP blog. Not anymore - add the plugin and just add your 3 Statcounter strings of info and Enable. Fab!

4 ) What Would Seth Godin Do. I think we’d all agree that getting return visitors, subscribers to your blog is the most important thing you can do. Someone might LOVE your blog but if you don’t give them a way ( or multiple ways) to find you again - so what! This plugin reminds visitors to sign up to your RSS feed and be informed the next time you post. You choose how many times your RSS reminder message appears - on this site it’s for the first 2 visits.

5 ) All In One SEO Pack. Simply the best in my opinion. If, like me, you come from a web site background this allows you to Meta Tag your Blog just like you would a web site. Page title, description, keywords and so on. I’ll be writing a stand alone page for Wordpress blog SEO soon and this plugin plays a major part in that.

6 ) Feedburner. Simply the best way to get all your RSS feeds optimized. Once done you can pull in your e-mail subscriptions and loads more. Bit of alearning curve when it comes to sending info ( mails, newsletters) to your subscribers which will be covered in a future post.

7 ) Google XML Sitemaps. Make sure Google indexes you fast ( and re-indexes you regularly).

8 ) Akismet. Comes as standard and don’t even think about not using it. A brilliant Spam trapper!

9 ) MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. If like me you are constantly editing and re-editing posts this is essential as it stops your blog pinging and re-pinging the RSS aggregator sites every time you correct a typo. Don’t be treated like a spammer just for adding content to old posts!

10 ) Audio Player. I’ve used this on othe blogs and it’s great - put audio directly into your blog posts

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