My Personal Plugins List
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On my call with SEO, Paul Easton, the other night, someone asked that I send out my personal WordPress plugins list for you. Well, heck, that seemed like a pretty good idea. So… If you’re wondering what plugins I use for my blog and why, here they are:
- Akismet: It’s a spam blocker that comes with all WordPress blogs. You need a WordPress API key to validate it, but that’s free and easy to get. Just follow the instructions. Then, you train Akismet. I mean, it knows most spam right off, but when you’re approving comments (and I encourage you to set your blog so you can do so) you train Akismet for some of the less obvious stuff. There are other spam blockers. Akismet just works fine for most purposes.
- All-in-One SEO Pack: This is a must have for search engine optimization purposes. Because spiders find the title tag and description tag so important to any web page, and since each post you make is considered a page, each post should also have its own title and description. Use your keywords, and this will help your posts to rank in the results pages.
- Blog Metrics: I got this one because Shoemoney thought so highly of it, but it’s not really that important to me. It shows how many posts you’ve made, how many trackbacks you’ve gotten, how many words in your posts, etc. I like Popularity Contest better, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. (See below.)
- Daiko’s Text Widget: This allows you to use PHP code in your sidebar. The normal text widgets don’t often work well for that.
- DoFollow: If you’re approving comments anyway, DoFollow makes sense. It’s a link back to the person’s blog who’s doing the commenting. It’s like a reward for making observations, you know? If you want to encourage commenting, this is great. The default for WordPress is “NoFollow,” which means that the spiders stop at your page and don’t follow it to the commenter’s URL. Spammers might think this is very cool, but with Akismet or another spam blocker working, they don’t get any benefit at all.
- FAQ-Tastic: This allows people to ask questions at your blog. You create question categories, insert a snippet of code, and you have an ASK campaign running for whatever topics you choose. Pretty sweet. Just be sure to add a strong message for spammers or you will get spam questions. Mine says: “Unfortunately your question was not accepted because you didn’t provide enough information. Please try again. But… If you’re a spammer, don’t waste your time or mine. Your “questions” will be deleted without being read. Go away and never come back.” Strong enough, you think? I really hate spammer jerks.
- Google Analyticator: You just plug in your Google Analytics ID and the plugin takes care of putting the Analytics code into your blog for you. Just be sure to set up the campaign at Google so you can check stats on your visitors.
- Google Sitemaps: The easiest way for Google to see every page (post) in your blog.
- Max Blog Press: I have four plugins from there. If you look at the top of my blog, you’ll see a “Stripe Ad,” that you can customize any way you see fit. You can rotate three different text ads, and even weight them so come are shown more than others, if you choose.You can also color them to fit in with the theme of your blog.
The second Max Blog Press plugin is “Unblockable Popup.” If you’re new to my blog, this popup darkens the page and an optin box will slide in. That only happens the first three times someone visits, but you can customize it to work any way you like.
The next plugin from Max Blog Press is “Ping Optimizer.” WordPress blogs automatically ping Ping-o-Matic each time you make a blog post, and that’s from the minute you install it. You don’t have to do anything else. But… if you edit a post, add a picture, or change your post in any way, it will keep pinging the service. If you do it too much, it could be construed as ping spamming and you don’t want that. Ping Optimizer only allows your blog to ping once.
The last Max Blog Press plugin is “Psychic Search.” It gives you some pretty cool information about how people searched to find your blog and other stuff that’s quite useful when planning posts and using the right keywords.
- My Blog Log Widget: You have to be a member of My Blog Log! It gives you some sweet stats, and it’s a pretty cool community of other bloggers. Check it out. And notice the widget on my blog. It shows who’s reading. You can get yours from clicking “Grab This!” on my widget.
- Popularity Contest: Of all the stats plugins, this is my fave. It ranks your posts in order of popularity. It shows you how many trackbacks, pingbacks, and comments your posts have plus a whole bunch of other cool information. See what posts people enjoy, figure out why, and do more of that posting. Know how people are taking in what you write. Pretty awesome.
- Text Link Ads Widget: Hmm… I won’t recommend this for anyone who’s working to get Page Rank. You see, Google hates paid linking. I think it’s a bunch of crap, and won’t take my widget down, even though Google bounced me from a PR5 to a PR2, just for having it. I get paid a little bit for each link, and it’s not the money… it’s the principle. I don’t like it that Google wants to tell me what I can and can’t have on a blog that I own. So, don’t expect to see me with a high PR blog. PR doesn’t mean doodly squat anyway. What matters the most to me are my readers. Plus, I feel pretty loyal to an advertiser who’s been on my blog for more than a year.
- What Would Seth Godin Do?: This plugin tells new visitors to subscribe to your feed, right at the top of your feed and your regular blog posting. It appears as many or as few times as you’d like it to.
- WordPress Database Backup: Uber important. I found that out when some jerk highjacked my blog last year and wiped out EVERY single post I’d made over a 2 year period. It hurt, but not much. I’m on a totally different path now than I was way back then, so my posts are now reflecting that. But… I won’t be caught unawares again because this plugin sends me a backup file once a week. Pffft!!! Take that hacking jerk. I should have been doing this all along, but it’s one of those things you think about and then, never seem to get around to doing. Don’t learn the hard way like I did.
- WP Plug IM: This is the little widget you see at the top of every post in my blog. Plug IM is a social bookmarking site just for Internet marketers. I really like it when it’s working properly, which is sketchy. I have to say that the widget wasn’t developed by PlugIM, and that’s undoubtedly part of the problem, but like, PlugIM dudes… I hope you’re working on this.
That’s it! Whew! I hope this has been helpful. With the exception of MaxBlogPress plugins, you can get the others at http://WordPress.org/extend
The other thing I was asked to provide from the call the other night were URLs that Paul had given out. If you’re a member of Blogging4Boomers (you only need to optin to the calls in this case, not become a member of the site, though I wish you would. I think there’s way more value than the price there, and if you’re into Internet marketing, I’m cutting many of the corners for you.), you get a page with the replays of ALL the calls I’ve done with the teleseminar participants and also the Q&A sessions I do with my members twice a month.
Tons and tons of value–no charge.
So, if you haven’t opted in and want to hear these calls… go to http://Blogging4Boomers.com . I know you probably don’t want to give your name & email address to ONE MORE PERSON, but hey… you will see that this time, it’s worth it.
But here are those URLs we talked about on the call, too:
http://xml-sitemaps.com for building sitemaps for your website.
http://domainsbot.com for looking up domains and getting cooler suggestions.
GTrends.com for learning about marketing trends. (This is a plugin to be used with WordTracker, the paid keyword discovery tool.)
And we talked about surveys. Pauls’ had just gone offline, but here are a couple I use:
Survey Gizmo at http://surveygizmo.com
Survey Monkey at http://surveymonkey.com
ASK Database at http://askdatabase.com
The first two are free, the third is a paid service, but all are great for knowing what your customers what.
Hope this is helpful. If you have comments, suggestions for other plugins not listed here… GREAT! Tell me what they are and why. I’m listening!
Popularity: 60% [?]
Tags: akismet, all-in-one seo pack, blog, Blogging, blogs, Daiko's text widget, Do Follow, domains, google, Google Analytics, internet marketing, MaxBlogPress, sitemaps, surveys, Text Link Ads, wordpress plugins