Standard Plugins:
No matter what kind of blog you have, you will definitely need this plugin! It will help you backup your blog so you are always on the safe side if something should ever happen to your blog (which I hope will never occur of course).
I set it up to create daily backups that go straight to the trash of my gmail account (you can do this by going to settings and creating a filter). If I ever need it, I just go there and download the latest version.
WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. What does that mean? Well, by using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly. The faster, the better. Your readers will like it and Google will like it too!
by John Watson
If you have a FeedBurner account (and you should!), this plugin will help you make sure that all your subscribers get redirected to your Feedburner feed and therefore will appear in your stats.
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Search Engine Optimization:
Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. If you ever googled your own blog, you will know that the listing consits of the title, two lines of text and your url (web address). This plugin makes it easier for you to control what exactly will be shown.
A sitemap is a list of pages of a web site accessible to search engine crawlers or users. This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
As creative entrepreneurs, most of you will have lots of visuals on your blogs. This plugin automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images which helps to improve traffic from search results, especially from Google images.
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Comments:
by Andy Bailey
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog (if they have one) when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourages more comments.
by Mark Jaquith
When someone comments on one of your posts, they are usually interested in your reply or other comments on that same post. This plugin allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry through email.
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Engaging Readers:
Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons (see my sidebar). Current services include anything and everything! Just add the full URL to the list of services and Social Homes will figure out what the icon is automatically.
by linkwithin.com
LinkWithin is a blog widget that appears under each post, linking to related stories from your blog archive. The widget links to stories that are relevant and interesting to readers of a particular post, keeping them engaged with your blog, and increasing your traffic. It is minimally styled and blends in with your site design (see example below this post)
by Josh Jones, Jamie Carter, Gautum Gupta, Norman Yung
SexyBookmarks adds a list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts so your readers can share tese posts on their favorite social networks.
by Atlantic Dominion Solutions
This plugin allows you to create a library of code snippets and easily include them at the bottom of Blog Posts on your WordPress powered blog. Add any text or even html. You can use it to remind your readers to subscribe to your blog or to follow you on Twitter or whatever else you wan them to do
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Visuals:
by Matt Martz
A blog only allows for a certain width of an image due to it’s design. To allow people to view your images in a bigger version, they could click through to the original file. Shadowbox offers a more elegant solution. Clicking on the image will now darken your screen and overlay it with your image. Don’t know what I’m talking about? See an example.
Installation of these listed plugins is included in the Creative Web Biz Kit for Artists and Other Creative Entrepreneurs, along with a self-hosted wordpress blog set-up, 10 preinstalled themes and a free ecourse!
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Want more?
Find more plugins by opening the “plugin” drop down menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard. Select “Add New” and start searching by keyword, author or tag.
Your Turn:
what are your favorite plugins?
Leave a link to your blog so we can see them in action!
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Nice stuff to take a look at!
Jan, glad you like it :-)
Sweet! Thanks for sharing. I am excited to try these out! How did you hear about all these? Just through word of mouth?
.-= Francis´s last blog ..Chef Knife Sets =-.
[...] + the actual site set-up (by me) + 10 preinstalled themes (all designed with artists in mind) + 10 preinstalled plugins which extend the functionality of your blog so you can sell your creations directly from your site [...]
I just spent 4 hours working on my blog and searching for cool plug-ins and widgets. I know there are at least 6 on your list that I am about to try. Thank you so much!
[...] stumbled upon this amazing blog as I was cleaning out my following list on twitter. I added quite a few of her suggestions. Instead [...]
CommentLuv is a nice plugin, Some sites adopt it, but others ban it from their list, the reasons are endless, some think that by enabling keywords it drives more spam, and i tend to agree to this theory.
I <3 this post. Thank you for filtering all the gazillion plug-ins for easy reference. I've implemented a few already over the past week and couldn't be happier – especially with the WP Super Cache one.
BTW I found you through GoddessGuidebook :)
Jo,
glad I could help a fellow Goddess :-)