I know a few people who have recently thrown their hat into the blogging ring and are using Wordpress. Here’s a quick list of plugins that I consider must have plugins for the backend of your site. This is the first post in a series where we will also cover Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Marketing, Cool Fun Stuff, and Moneymakers.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are many other plugins listed here, but these are some really good ones to get you started.
Askimet for catching spam comments
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”
This plugin ships (downloads) with Wordpress, so you already have it if you are running Wordpress on your own domain. It works great. It checks each comment your receive against a list of known spam comments and is constantly being updated by all of the Askimet users.
Very simple and easy to use. This plugin allows you to decide which tables in your Wordpress database you want to backup. You can set up an update frequency and even have the backup file emailed to you. Very handy.
Let’s hope you write some extremely valuable content yesterday. The last thing you want is someone taking this great stuff and posting it somewhere else (scraping it). This plugin gives your posts a “fingerprint” and helps you search for scrapers out on the web. What do you do when you figure out you’ve been ripped off? That’s a whole different topic.
As far as software goes, Wordpress is very easy to upgrade to a new version. It may even be worth your while to do it once for yourself (make sure you back up ALL of you tables first). After that, use this plugin. The less hassle blogging is, the more fun, profitable, and creative it will be.
Super cool. This plugin keeps up with new releases of all of your other plugins. When a plugin is updated with bug fixes and new features, this will let you know.
Again, this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything you need for administratrion of you Wordpress blog/site. Everyone’s needs and desires are going to be a little different. It is well worth your time to browse through the other administrative plugins and maybe even write your own.
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