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WordPress is a wonderful blogging platform. It contains plenty of great functionality that ease the work of every blogger. One of the most valuable one is the ability to extend the system functionality with plugins.

The possibilities are endless and this is why, actually, there are zillions of plugin available. In fact, this is a real and a big problem when you are an inexperienced blogger. Just figure out… you just finished your WordPress installation, you are proud of yourself and you are ready to add more, but what? What are the plugins you should add as a starting point? Which ones are really essential?

Of course, everyone may have a different answer to this question. It would mainly depend on the value you give to each functionality. I try to make the exercise and I made a list of 8 WordPress plugins I would recommend as a startup kit!

Here it is:

1. Askimet

In few words, Askimet catch every comment that look like SPAM and will put them on a list to be validate - just like your email spam filter. Thus, this plugin let you do what you really enjoy: creating fresh and valuable content!

2. FeedSmith

This plugin detects all ways to access your feed, and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

3. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin creates a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is automatically updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo, are notified about the update.

4. Maintenance Mode

Every website or blog need maintenance. Someday you may want to update your blog design, create new sections, upgrading some components or scripts, etc. In fact, there are tons of reasons why you may want to put your blog in maintenance mode. This plugin allows you to do that by adding a splash page to your blog to let your visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators still have full access to the blog including the front-end.

5. Share This

Social media sites are excellent platform to distribute content and create a strong brand. The first rule to help your content being distribute is to make this distribution process simple and easy for your readers. The Share This plugin provides a quick, simple to use, and unobtrusive way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send your post link via email, AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more.

6. WP-Cache

Are you expecting tons of traffic to reach your blog? Are you expecting to hit the Digg front page? Of course, if this is the case and you really hit the front page, you better be prepared to receive the wave! Just as an example, the first time Skellie hit the front page of Digg, the server that were hosting her blog became overloaded and her blog wasn’t reachable anymore – at least temporary! Now, if you don’t want to live the same story, you better be prepared.

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive. It works by caching WordPress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and the building the page from the database. WP-Cache allows to serve hundred of times more pages per second, and to reduce the response time from several tenths of seconds to less than a millisecond.

7. WP-DBManager

Another possible nightmare is a server crash. Do you make a backup of your blog recently? What would be your reaction if I tell you that you may potentially loose your blog content at any time? Of course, if you made a backup of your whole blog recently, you are reading these lines just relax. However, if you never made any backup or if you just can’t remember because it’s too far away in your memory, then you may be more anxious.

This plugin allows you to backup your database automatically according to a configured schedule. Every backup may be sent to your inbox. You may also consider some other alternatives for this plugin if you want to backup your whole blog.

8. WP Contact Form III

Blogging is all about relationship! Once again I say it. I really think that focusing on efficient communications is essential. Of course, your readers may leave you some comments or feedback on the comment section of your posts, but what about if they want to send you private message? Developing an easy way to contact you is a must! Thus, your contact page should include a contact form to help your readers to get in touch with you easily. This plugin allows you to include a friendly contact form easily.

I would really enjoy hearing you on this point. Since it is pretty subjective, I would appreciate if you could recommend some others plugins you consider as a MUST.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 9:57 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.