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You’ve got your domain. You’ve got your WordPress theme. You’ve even written a few posts to get you started. What now? Now you need to find a set of tools that will make your blogging easier, more efficient and more effective. Here are 10 WordPress Plugins you should have.
1. WORDPRESS EDITORIAL CALENDAR
This is a great tool for keeping track of post deadlines and for bloggers who like to create several posts at once. You have a full calendar dashboard where you can save the post title, publish time and notes right on the publication date. With a few clicks you can easily change details or drag and drop posts to different dates. It’s a great way to keep track of your post schedule with just a glance right on your dashboard.
2. AD INJECTION
If you’re looking for a simple plugin that will give you total control over where your ads display, but without all the bells and whistles of tracking, clicks etc — Ad Injection is perfect. You can control where ads display on the sidebar and in post. Control exactly where in your post the ad shows up with paragraph or character count. Turning off ads site-wide or by location is as easy as a click of the mouse.
3. AuthorSure
This is a great way to jazz up your author bio, author page and take care of Google Authorship Verification at the same time. AuthorSure uses rel=author, rel=me and rel=publisher links to connect your posts, archives, authors pages, Google Plus profiles and Google Plus pages. It also creates links from your site’s author pages to the authors’ Google Plus Profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and more. At the same time it offers you a streamline modern author box at the bottom of each post.
4. Growmap Anti Spambot
All blogs have trouble with spam comments. But, the last thing you want to do is put up a Captcha box that will frustrate your real readers. This plugin will add a simple, unobtrusive checkbox to your comment form asking users to click and confirm they are not a spammer. Another bonus is that the check box is generated client side with javascript that bots can’t see to help stop 99% of spam.
5. NoFollow Link
One major topic in blogging now is nofollow vs dofollow and how they can affect your Google Page Rank. NoFollow Link makes compliance a cinch. Simply create a link in your post as usual, then click anywhere on the link and click the nofollow button on your editor. Your link is now nofollow. It’s really that simple.
6. Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments
If you like to reply to comments from your dashboard then this plugin will come in VERY handy. The usual comments screen cuts off the comment after so many characters, making it impossible to see the entire comment without going to the post itself. With Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments you’ll have a ‘Show More’ option on each comment which, when clicked, shows the entire comment without leaving the dashboard.
7. MyMail Email Newsletter
With the impending close of Feedburner, web experts are saying now is the time to really push for a newsletter following. Unfortunately, online newsletter services will charge you a fee every month for the lifetime of your account; some even charge per subscriber. MyMail is an independent plugin that runs your newsletter signup right on your website – and for a one time fee of $25. No monthly costs. No third party website. Sign up subscribers, manage your lists, compose your newsletters and send — right from your dashboard. Complete newsletter control without the cost.
8. Peter’s Post Notes
Post notes are a great tool for multi-author blogs or bloggers who plan posts in advance. It places a note list on your post editor page so that you can keep track of important links, references, deadline and more. You can also use the notes to set reminders for co-authors about post requirements, edits etc.
9. Ideas
The downside of using drafts for future post ideas is that it’s very easy to accidentally publish the post. The Ideas plugin allows you to create your post idea with title, summary and included links — without the risk of publishing too early.
10. WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress SEO by Yoast is the best SEO tool for free. No more manual check to make sure all your ducks are in a row – this plugin automatically scans your article as you work to make sure you have what you need for optimal visibility online. “Check simple things you’re bound to forget. It checks, for instance, if you have images in your post and whether they have an alt tag containing the focus keyword for that post. It also checks whether your posts are long enough, if you’ve written a meta description and if that meta description contains your focus keyword, if you’ve used any subheadings within your post, etc. The plugin also allows you to write meta titles and descriptions for all your category, tag and custom taxonomy archives, giving you the option to further optimize those pages.”
Feature image “Peach Fuzz” by Ray_from_LA. Used under Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
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