Recommended Resources
WordPress Plugins
Michael Hyatt periodically offers an updated list of his favorite plugins to his readers. While I don’t claim to have nearly as many interested readers as he does, I thought my readers would still enjoy a similar list from me. There’s some overlap in our lists, but not completely.
An important thing to note though is that the more plug-ins you have on a site, the slower it may potentially run. So, be selective about which plug-ins you actually want and need. But here are the ones I often recommend to my clients.
| Plugin Name | Description |
| Akismet | Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world toprotect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. |
| All in One SEO Pack | Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. |
| Backup Creator | Backup and cloning tool for WordPress blogs |
| Better Adjacent Post Links | Adds two enhanced commands to replace WordPress ‘previous post’ and ‘next post’ functions. |
| Blubrry PowerPress | Adds podcasting support to your blog. Features include: media player, 3rd party statistics, iTunes integration, Blubrry Services (Media Statistics and Hosting) integration and a lot more. |
| Broken Link Checker | Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. |
| Change WordPress URL | Goes through all of your posts, pages, options and guides and update your old domain to your new domain. |
| Featured image | Provides you with a featured image shortcode [ featured-img ] and Featured Image widget. |
| GigPress | This plug-inwas designed by performers for musicians. However, many speakers are using it now too. It provides a simple means of communicating your past and present speaking schedule that people can easily add to their calendars.Here’sGigpresson |
| GoodReviews | Retrieves Goodreads.com reviews for books you choose to display on your WordPress blog. |
| Google Site Verification Plugin | One-click Google verification for your website! |
| HelloBar for WordPress | Easily add your HelloBar to your WordPress blog! |
| Jetpack by WordPress.com | Bring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users. |
| Localendar | A powerful calendar with Month/Week/Day block and list views, “Today + Happening Soon”, and a mini-calendar widget. Fully customizable. |
| nRelate Related Content | Easily display related content on your website. |
| OptinSkin | OptinSkin is a premium plug-in that allows you to quickly add beautiful opt-in forms and social share buttons anywhere on your blog. |
| Public Post Preview | Enables you to give a link to anonymous users for public preview of any post type before it is published. |
| Shareaholic | Adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts. |
| ShareThis | Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. |
| Simple Google Sitemap XML | Generates a valid Google XML sitemap with a very simple admin interface. |
| Social Media Widget | Adds links to all of your social media and sharing site profiles. |
| Testimonials Widget | This plug-in allows you to display random, rotating testimonials in a sidebar or on a page. Here’s the Testimonials Widget onmy site. Look in the sidebar under the Testimonials heading (just below the fold). Here’s another example on a client’swebsite. |
| TinyMCE Advanced | Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE, the visual editor in WordPress. |
| Twitter Goodies | Allows you to create any one of the four Twitter widgets located at twitter’s website twitter.com/goodies/widgets with the friendly WordPress drag & drop convenience of widgets. |
| WordPress Google Form | Fetches a published Google Form using a Unable to process Google Form short code. WordPress shortcode, removes the Gooogle wrapper HTML and then renders it as an HTML form embedded in your blog post or page. |
| WordPress Ping Optimizer | Saves your WordPress blog from getting tagged as ping spammer. |
| WP Super Cache | Generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. This makes your blog load much faster! |
| WP-PageNavi | Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. |
If you’re interested in having Aleweb implement and configure these on your site for you, feel free to contact us!
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