Thom Allen, of Salt Lake City, filled his WordCamp SLC session with people eager to learn the best way to pimp out their WordPress sites
“10 Widgets To Rock Your WordPress,”
“Out of the box, WordPress is so easy to install and setup even a caveman can do it. And now that you have your shiny new toy, lets pimp it out. We all know WordPress gives you the ability to create custom themes, custom post types, and custom widgets. There are literally thousands of third party apps and themes to pick from, but you may not know which ones will truly Rock Your WordPress. We’ll talk about 10 Widgets (and maybe even sneak some theme goodies in) that you can add today, giving your site instant appeal, help with maintenance, and keep visitors coming back. You won’t want to miss this session.”
Thom Allen
When I was learning to use WordPress, Thom Allen was one of the first WordPress geeks I met. He started and ran PodCamp Utah. His since of humor shines in this bio I found: “I Read/Write/Code, talk about Software, Cloud Computing, Mobile, and take pictures, but not of cats, I’m allergic. US Marine. http://gplus.to/thomallen”
Thom most certainly over delivered, but covered all the major areas you will need plugins to enhance your site: Backup, Caching, SEO, Media and Social Sharing.
Thom’s Rocking Recommendations and my notes and links.
WordPress Backup – Free Plugins from the WordPress Directory
WP -DB Backup – This is the free backup I use for most of my small sites and free installs for clients. I have it set up so emails are sent to my email according to how often I add new posts and updates.
WP – DB Manager – This free backup system is highly rated in the WordPress Plugins Directory.
Backup – Paid Plugins
Vault Press – Backup and Security Plugin by Automattic with a cheap monthly payment plan.
Locker – Monthly payments that include multiple sites…cheap.
Off Site Backup – This would be backup from companies like Mozy.com.
Backup Buddy - mentioned by someone in the SLC group and Matt Mullenweg in his “2011 State of The Word” address. This is my favorite! We install it on all of our clients sites and recently used it to save a site.
WordPress Cache Plugins – Make your site run faster!
W3 Total Cash -My recommendation.
Now a Cache plugin can look overwhelming when it comes to installing it. But don’t worry I found the perfect videos by Chuck of CyberSmartWebMarketing.com.
WP Super Cache – Found in the WordPess Directory…now I have to agree with Mr. Cyber Smart on this one…W3 Total cache has been a better plugin.
Special Note- I always disable my cache plugin while I am working on a site. If it is on, the updates do not show up immediately, so it is hard to see changes.
Media Plugins
Photo:
Next Gen Gallery -This free plugin just happens to be one of the most popular plugins in the WordPress Plugins Directory. It is full of features you did not even know you needed.
Light Box 2 – Enhance the view of your images with this simple but nice pop-up of your image.
WP Smushit – This plugin strips out the meta data from your pictures, decreasing site load time. If you are using a lot of images you want this plugin.
Video:
Vipers Video Quick Tags – Embeds videos, although the new 3.0 versions give you the video embed options this still gives you more options.
Audio:
Power Press – Includes full iTunes support, web audio/video media players and more.
Pod Press – Adds a lot of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast.
Audio Player – This is the Audio plugin I have used. It is really simple. It is the plugin that CopyBlogger uses for his weekly podcast: “Internet Marketing For Smart People.”
Social Sharing Plugins
Share This – Adds links at the bottom of posts to share via Email, StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, Twitter. This is a lite weight tool.
Social Sharing Tool Kit- Easy sharing and connecting on social networks. Display on posts or use widgets or shortcode. You have a big choice in size of the buttons.
JetPack - This is a whole series of plugins that gives self hosted WordPress sites the some of the powers of WordPress.com sites. There are parts of this plugin I am not interested in…but I use some of the parts as stand alone plugins. For example I have a client that wanted a spell, style and grammar checker so we added After The Deadline.
Social Share – Adds share icons at the bottom of your post. Gives the option of two sizes. This one is easy to add to your site and gives you the most popular sharing choices. It is a little more lite weight than most social sharing plugins.
SEO plugins for WordPress
Yoast WordPress SEO – Free All In One available in the WordPress Directory. WordPress Beginner gives you full installation instructions.
All In One SEO Pack – Free and simple to use. Instructions for configuring All In One SEO.
Advanced Settings for All In One SEO
WordPress Stats Plugins
WordPress.com Stats – Now part of the JetPack series…but this plugin alone is easy on load time.
Woopra – An extensive analytics tool you will love. This starts with a free plan with upgrades. Installation Tips.
Clicky by Yoast - Integrate this paid service into your WordPress site.
Google Analyticactor - Get your Google analytics right in your dashboard. This my favorite, when I am using Google for my analytics.
Whew! Thanks Thom.
Now remember taking the time to choose the right WordPress Plugins for your site makes all the difference in how the plugins will perform in the future.
Sheila
P.S. Do you have some base plugins you would like to add? Or would you share your experience with the one listed.
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Great post Sheila,
I have had problems with the WP Super Cache locking me out of my own blog which is why I quit using this one. Had a few other friends recommend the W3 Total Cache but I found it so confusing. After reading this and watching the videos, I’m definitely going to add this one.
WordPress SEO by Yoast has also been highly recommended as well to replace All in One SEO Pack. I like that it has a few other plug-ins inside it so I think I’ll be switching to that one too.
Thank you for sharing all of these and adding the videos too Sheila. I enjoy watching someone show me what settings I should use once I have them installed. Extremely helpful.
~Adrienne
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Adrienne,
I know you know the value of video. Your videos are always so helpful.
I am so glad I found the CyberSmart videos for W3 Total cash to share with you. I needed the step by step instructions.
Shiela,
Some great tools here. I am getting ready to do a plug in overhaul in a week or so…so this is a good resource for me for what to keep, what to get rid of and what I might not know about. (I saw a few that fell into each)
Anyhow, bookmarked and I will be back soon!
-Steve
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Steve,
Glad this helps. I have a few more plugins to add in my next post. One of them was recommend by Adrienne in her plugin post. Right now I am testing it out. So be sure to check that one out too.
Thanks for sharing the above plugins I will surely be looking into these to install on my new blog.
Keep up the good work
Steve
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You are most welcome. I have few more I will be sharing next week….the plugins I always add to a new blog. So come back!
Cool. Thanks for the list. I recently started a new website and I installed wordpress. The problem was I didn’t managed a wordpress blog for almost a year so I’m a little confused on what plugins will work best. So this very helpful. Thank again!
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Rancid,
This list has most of the basics. I will be posting my absolute list next week. Plus a few extras.
Glad this helps.
A few suggestions for plugins. I am going to suggest security plugins after having my website had 2 hacking attempts in the past few weeks. Fortunately the attacks were stopped partly due to these plugins. The plugins I recommend you use are Login Lockdown, WordPress Firewall 2, and WP Security Scan.
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Caleb,
Thanks for the security suggestions. I have not been very diligent in finding good security plugins. I do use login lock down…I will be checking out the other two.
Appreciate your suggestions.
There are some pretty cool plugins I haven’t heard off and most important, I think that Light Box 2 you mention is the one I was searching for. I saw the light box images on many blogs but never knew which plugin is that. I think it would be a great choice for tutorials to make the image bigger so people can follow it.
I try to add as much code as I can to avoid plugins (like social sharing) but some of these just can’t be replaced with code (read: I don’t know how to do it, lol). Thanks for the list
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Hana Code Insert is one of the most valuable and flexible plugins one can use for inserting nearly anything into the content of their blog with shortcode. Once you try it you’ll realize the power of this plug in and it’s free. You can use it to put Ads in very specific places on your blog pages and then if you want to change them later all you have to do is change the code on the backend and it updates across your site. I have no relationship with the author just thought I’d throw that out there… as every list I’ve read seems to have so many of the same plug ins and for good reason. Give this one a try if you can not find a specific solution for inserting odd bits of this and that within content.
Thanks for sharing the widgets. I’ll keep them in mind, incase of a sudden change. Thanks!
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Great list! I’d never heard of Woopra so I’m off to check that one out.
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Thank you, Sheila for sharing this info ! I was not aware of some of these plugins. I could definitely use a better backup solution than what my current process is. The cache plugin has helped my site a lot !
Some pretty good plugin suggestions! For the social plugins, I recommend GetSocial, because it’s lightweight and seems to work on a variety of different themes.
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