5 WordPress Plugins To Get Your Blog Started

May 26, 2010 By 22 Comments
WordPress Plugins

Let's Get Started on Plugins

With 9,726 WordPress plugins, it can be a real pain in the ass daunting to choose which ones to install for your blog. If you’d like to spend more time writing content than trying to pick widgets and thingamobs, below are my top five plugins to get your blog ready to roll. After these plugins, keep adding plugins that add value, but remember that more isn’t necessarily better. Blogs with too many buttons and gadgets distract away from the content you’re working so hard to create. With the debate if your small business even needs a website, if you decide to go the blog route, now you can get started.

Almost all blogs I’ve ever created for myself or for clients (when I was agency) had these five plugins.

1. Disqus – Blog comment moderation is time consuming. Going in and approving comments, deleting spam comments and replying can be a distraction when it should be fun. I mean, hey, who doesn’t want blog comments? Disqus lets you approve, delete and respond to comments via e-mails. It also has threaded discussions making it easy for your readers to follow and join conversations. Fred Wilson has an excellent post, A Day Without Disqus, on how much his community missed Disqus when it wasn’t working.

2. Lijit – We’ve given love to Lijit previously. Lijit is a search plugin that allows users to search all of your social media content. In addition to our blog, we have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr accounts. Lijit helps our blog readers find what they’re looking for, wherever it may appear.

3. All-in-One SEO Pack – One of the best plug-ins around to help you with your SEO. It has handy features like automatically optimizing your titles for search engines and generating META tags for you. And when you get more comfortable, it has advanced features that let you go really crazy and fine tine everything.

4. TweetMeme – This plugin makes it easy for readers to Tweet out posts they like, an easy way to drive traffic to your site. Plus, like comments, TweetMeme serves as another metric to understand which of your posts resonate with readers. The homepage of Tweetmeme tells you the most popular stories now.

5. ShareThis – Making your content easy for others to tag on sites like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon is crucial. ShareThis has a nice little button that makes it easy. But lately, I’ve been wondering if there isn’t something better and my eye is starting to stray.

What are your favorite WordPress plugins? What are we missing from this list? What do you love besides ShareThis?

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About Elaine Ellis
  • http://www.smallhandsbigideas.com Grace Boyle

    Thanks for the Lijit shout out, we heart Trada too!

    I also love using Google Analytics (on top of my Lijit stats) because it really gives you an in depth view of your content, traffic and readership.

    Another favorite is Outbrain (http://www.outbrain.com/) it features related posts with photo thumbnails and helps to increase pageviews while also giving your readers MORE around your content!

    This is a great list and thanks again for including us, Elaine :)

    • http://www.theartofawkward.com/ elaineellis

      I've never had a blog that didn't include the Lijit plugin. I think it is the best seach plugin out there. Will definitely have to add Outbrain as well. How is it different than Zemanta? I've been considering that one as well.

      • http://www.smallhandsbigideas.com Grace Boyle

        Aw, you're the best Elaine! Our product team would love to hear that, Ill pass it along.

        Zemanta actually provides more related content such as: related tags, related articles, related media/pictures, etc. to the post. Outbrain is pretty clean and has just photo thumbnails relating to each post. Both are good, just a little different. Not sure which I like more…I also use on my blog LinkWithin. It's another related photo thumbnail content plugin.

        • http://devin.reams.me/ Devin Reams

          We especially like the Lijit plugin since it doesn't require the use of JS. The other plugins you mentioned are very popular (including tweetmeme) but we've seen can severely slow down a site.

          • http://www.smallhandsbigideas.com Grace Boyle

            @Devin Thanks, that's great feedback as well. We're conscientious of our load times and are constantly testing to ensure it doesn't slow down a site. Thanks again, Devin!

  • Pingback: Google Analytics For Wordpress® « PriMoThemes.com

  • http://www.smallhandsbigideas.com Grace Boyle

    Thanks for the Lijit shout out, we heart Trada too!

    I also love using Google Analytics (on top of my Lijit stats) because it really gives you an in depth view of your content, traffic and readership.

    Another favorite is Outbrain (http://www.outbrain.com/) it features related posts with photo thumbnails and helps to increase pageviews while also giving your readers MORE around your content!

    This is a great list and thanks again for including us, Elaine :)

  • http://devin.reams.me/ Devin Reams

    Happy to see three Crowd Favorite-developed plugins on the list, very cool!

    I'd say I can't live without Akismet (spam protection) bu Automattic and my visitors really like the Subscribe to Comments (email notifications on new comments) by Mark Jaquith. I'd say one very favorite plugin is the Analytics360 plugin by MailChimp/CF, though. I love having my stats within my blog dashboard.

    • http://www.theartofawkward.com/ elaineellis

      I didn't realize that Crowd Favorite had designed 3/5 plugins. Nicely done. Definitely planning on adding in the Analytics360 plugin as I am obsessed with stats. As a plugin expert, what are your thoughts on collecting e-mails on your blog. I've seen two bloggers recently lament they didn't do that from the start and was wondering if we should be doing that as well.

      • http://devin.reams.me/ Devin Reams

        We get around in the WP world. ;)

        Collecting emails from existing commenters is easy (eg: no lost opportunity there, just fetch the data from your comments database).

        Adding a signup form (MailChimp, Aweber, Feedburner, etc.) at the bottom of your comments form seems to be a good way to get people handing over emails (the notion being that commenters are already ready to be active and participate with you and your site).

        Hope that helps!

  • http://www.blogpublishersunion.com Barney Moran

    We've asked the for profit plugins, such as Lijit, for transparency on what they profit from each publishers blog, and what percent of this profit is shared with the publisher, Lijit to date has refused to provide this data to publishers.

    Barney Moran
    Founder, Blogger's Union

  • http://www.seoworkgroup.com/ SEO Services

    wow its a nice list of plugins. I know about DISQUS and tweetmeme but I didn't have any idea about others. Thanks a lot for providing such a wonderful and useful list. Keep sharing such stuffs again again with us.

  • http://www.seoworkgroup.com/ SEO Services

    wow its a nice list of plugins. I know about DISQUS and tweetmeme but I didn't have any idea about others. Thanks a lot for providing such a wonderful and useful list. Keep sharing such stuffs again again with us.

  • http://www.smallhandsbigideas.com Grace Boyle

    @Devin Thanks, that's great feedback as well. We're conscientious of our load times and are constantly testing to ensure it doesn't slow down a site. Thanks again, Devin!

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  • Keith Revell blogging tips

    When your blog gets going you start to receive spam comments so here is one to stop the spam comments, ” SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam “

  • http://www.redchillimedia.co.uk Donna

    Awesome list of plug-ins, that improves the look and feel of your wordpress website or blog. thanks for sharing with us.

  • http://www.the-seo-company.com.au/ SEO services

    As above give a nice post.This plug-in  makes it easy for readers to  tweet out their favorite positions, a simple way to drive traffic to your website. In addition, comments, TweetMeme as another indicator  to see your articles resonate with readers.
     

  • http://trada.com/blog/ Trada

    De;ete