If you’re a WordPress blogger, then you’ll know one of the very best, and most fun things about WordPress is having access to a HUGE library of plug-ins developed by third parties to work on WordPress.
There are plug-ins for almost everything you might want to do on a blog – check your stats, boost your SEO, design pretty galleries, customise your menus, spruce up your scheduling – here are some of the favourites picked by the Foodies100 team.
1. all in one seo pack
All in One SEO Pack is a fantastic plugin that deals with all your SEO needs. It automatically optimises your titles for search engines and generates META tags without you having to do anything at all. My favourite thing about this plugin is the title optimisation. I can call my blog post anything I want, but then I can pop to the All-in-One plugin and put an SEO-friendly title. You can also leave it alone and it will automatically do it for you.
You can see an example of this below, on a post which I titled “Hometown” but on the All-In-One I titled it something else. I love this option as it allows my blog to be a bit more personable. You can also add a description and keywords.
2. jetpack
What I love about Jetpack is that it does it all. Really! It’s easy to install and use. You can monitor your blog stats, comments, subcriptions and sharing. This is really the jack-of-all-trades when it comes to plugins.
3. akismet
Akismet deals with all your spam comments and it is hands down the best thing I’ve ever done when it comes to the day to day management of my blog. What did I do before Akismet? I spent a lot of time deleting spam from my blog.
4. google (xml) sitemaps
Sitemaps are crucial if you want Google to accurately index your blog content, but creating a sitemap and ensuring it’s indexed can be a fiddly process. If you want to help search engines index your blog then we think the Google (XML) Sitemap plugin is the best plugin to use. It’s really easy to install, you simply download it, activate it and it’s good to go.
5. edit flow
Edit Flow allows you to customise your calendar and status. This is great when you have a few different posts on the go. Using this plugin means you can schedule posts and also the status to “draft”, “waiting for edit” or “in progress”, so you can see at a glance what needs to be done or how far along you are with a post. It really comes into its own on collaborative blogs.
6. Advanced TEXT
Sure, it’s not the most fun-sounding name, but this nifty little plug in is very clever indeed. Advanced Text lets you define which sidebar widgets appear on which page of your site. So if you’d like to make an image (such as an advertisement) appear only on the home page, this is the plug-in for you. Similarly, you might want to display a special offer on your ‘buy now’ page, or a ‘contact me’ button on your About Me page.
7. Alpine Phototile
This nifty little widget lets you create customised galleries in your blog sidebar or footer that will automatically display your latest Pinterest images (there are also versions for Tumblr and Pinterest). Simple to use, and easy on the eye, Alpine Phototile is a must-have if you want to showcase your images.
8. NextGen
If you want to display image galleries on your website or blog, NextGen is the most popular and widely used image plug-in. It’s a little fiddly to use at first, but with patience you can create completely professional looking galleries.
9. ContactForm7
Simple, effective. If you want a basic ‘contact us’ form on your website, this is the plug-in to go for.
10. Popular
The Popular Widget plug-in creates a simple tabbed widget in your blog sidebar, header or footer, showing the most viewed and most commented posts. You can filter the results shown by category, date and tag, making this a really flexible and simple tool.
