Wow!!! WordPress have truly made website creation and blogging a lot easy than it used to. You do not need to possess any coding skills or go to the best web design school before you can actually use wordpress. There are millions of beautiful themes and plugins that are already there for you to take full advantage of, to make your blog practically anything you want.
I remember creating my first ever website with pure html. Yes! and the website took me up to five days to complete the desktop view and additional 6 days to complete the mobile version of the website. Today, you can create a website or a blog for just 5minutes (tops) using wordpress.
Must Read: How To Stand Out From The Crowd, As A Blogger
Plugins really do help our blog to look more professional and appealing, don’t you think? Plugins are great for your blog because they make you achieve what you’re actually looking for, but too much plugins can cause more harm to your blog/ website than good. I am not here today to tell you the disadvantages of plugin but to discuss with you, my best WordPress plugin which I feel every bloggers should have and use.
If you’re a blogger and uses WordPress, there are some plugins that is a must to have if you’re making your blog more users friendly and sociable
My Best Top 20 WordPress Plugin I Just can’t Do without
Without taking much of your time, let’s just start with the top 20 plugin list every bloggers should have, Shall we?
Google XML Sitemaps:
I put this little plugin first because it’s supposed to be the first plugin any blogger should install.
It allows search engines to better index your site 3x faster than it would normally do. How this little gem works is; it sends notification to all search engines every time you create new content. Now tell me how awesome is that?
Akismet:
Love by many hated by all
This plugin actually identifies comment that are spam and sends them to the spam section of your comment. This plugin is trusted by WordPress, that’s why they made it a default plugin
Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin:
As much as Akismet is watching my back for any funny comments, I still need to tighten up the security.
This plugin add a little check button below your comment box and anybody who’d like to leave a comment on your blog will have to “tick” it to prove that they are human.
Clean-Option:
Ok! If I have not recommended any plugin for you, I’ll recommend this little gem.
What can this plugin do? If you uninstall a wordpress plugin, that plugin will still leave traces and some of its parts which in time will overload your databases and eventually slows down your site. That’s where “clean-option” comes to play. Clean-option will completely uninstall your wordpress plugin and free your database from clusters. The big part is, it gives your blog a healthier life.
WP Smush.it:
Must Read: My Top 5 Video Editing and Screen Caption tools For Bloggers
The images you use in your blog post can cause your blog to slow down if not optimized properly and we all know that nobody likes a slow blog.
This plugin actually reduces the size of your images by running them through smush.it and making your blog faster than usual. If you want to make your blog as fast, I’ll recommend you use this.
WP-Optimize:
whether you like it or not if you are using wordpress blog, you will always have some broken tables especially if you are using commentluv plugin for your blog.
This plugin cleans your “post revision”, repair your “databases” and many more with just a click. This plugin is one of the most recommended plugin any good friend would recommend to you
MobilePress:
The online world is being dominated by mobile users and as a wise fellow, it is good to take advantage of these steps.
Mobilepress will make your blog more mobile friendly and to make it more fun, it is 100% customizable and free to get. So if you’re trying to get the most out of your mobile users, I’ll recommend this little but most powerful plugin.
W3 Total Cache:
When my traffic went up, I almost got kicked out by my hosting provider, and then Google advised me to use a caching plugin to reduce my blog load. I tried W3TC and like a miracle my CPU and all other processes reduced and my blog became even more faster than usual
I love this little plugin because it has all what can optimize your blog just the way you want. Hey! If you’re not using this, I’ll advice you start thinking about using it now.
WP External Links:
Do you know that you can actually get penalized unknowingly by making all your external links a do-follow? If a blog is being black listed and you give that blog a backlink juice, it’ll affect you.
This plugin can protect your blog from being penalized by making all your external links a no-follow. What better way to protect your blog then this?
All In One SEO Pack:
Seriously, I don’t really know what SEO is actually all about till I read it here at my blog
Limit Login Attempts:
With the recent rise in wordpress hacking attacks, it is best to protect your blog with any means necessary. This plugin actually limits login attempts.
The plugin alerts the admin via email that somebody has attempted to login to his admin panel. One other good thing is it bans ip automatically after multiple failed attempts. So I’ll advice you to get this plugin if you don’t have one yet to help protect your blog.
WordPress Security:
Must Read: Enabling Commentator’s Gravatar On MobilePress
I love securing my blog both manually and automatically. Like the wise would always say – Prevention is better than cure. WordPress Security helps in accessing your blog and telling you where need fixes against hackers. It gives warning and always stays on guard.
FeedBurner FeedSmith Extend:
if you are planning to use feedburner as your blogs main feed, then this is the best option I’ll recommend.
This plugin makes it easy to automatically redirect your feed to feedburner without stress or errors. Like if you type http://onenaijablog.com/feed, it will automatically redirects you to my feedburner feed. Now tell me how awesome can that get!
Contact Form 7:
This plugins helps you to create a perfect contact form for your blog. you can bend the plugin just the way you want it; like adding new space, adding radio button and many more. Every blog needs this pluging.
CommentLuv:
Every bloggers’ favorite. This plugin makes your blog more sociable and attracts even more comments to your blog.
How does commentluv work? It visits the site of the commentator while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit (authors own words).
ShareThis:
This is one of the best social sharing plugin I have laid my hands on. It does practically everything you are expecting from a social sharing plugin.
This little plugin can monitor your social sharing activity, knows and suggest when to share your post, it has hovering bar and it has even more feature that will make you say wow!!!
nrelate Related Content:
Keeping a low bounce rate while we fight for traffic is what every bloggers are doing. If your blog bounce is above 90%, you will have some little problems with search engines and it will also put your blog in harm’s way. What better way to reduce your bounce then to use “nrelate Related Content”.
This plugin shows some related post below or above your blog post. I’ll say that this is the perfect tool for you. Check below my post and see what I am talking about
The Slide by SimpleReach:
When you’re making comment on most blogs (like mine) and you scroll down the blog, suddenly a “Recommend This For You” slides out from the right, this little plugin is responsible for that. This plugin reduces bounce rate by showing your readers and comment lovers a slide out recommended post. I would totally recommend this plugin to all that have not started using it
WP-PageNavi:
This plugin changes the old <- Back | Next -> pattern by adding numbers instead. If you are looking for a plugin that will allow your readers to navigate your blog swiftly and reduces your bounce rate, you should try this little plugin.
Plug-in are great for your blog but my advice to you is to minimize the way you use plug-in because too much of it will cause harm to your precious blog.
Note: All plugins i mentioned in this post are free and they can be found at wordpress plugin directory
Must Read: Top Reasons You Are Not A Successful Blogger
Are you using any of the above plugin mentioned? Do you use some awesome plugin that are not listed here? Please, feel free to drop your comments using the comment box below.
Do you have comments, questions and thoughts that you’d like to share with us? Please do drop them by using the comment box below. Remember that your comments and thoughts are highly welcomed and appreciated.
Was the post okay? Please do click the like button, share us and recommend us to friends because you’ll never know who among your friends might be in need of information like this. Do not forget to subscribe to our feed for your latest updates on the go.
Don't Miss Any Post Again. Subscribe To Our Feed And Be Updated
Enter your email address below:
Powered by OnenaijaBlog
