In this post, I will list and explain what I consider to be the 10 best plugins for WordPress. Plugins can be a true life-saver on a WordPress site, but some can be more of a pain than a benefit. This list will cover the best of what WordPress has to offer with regard to plugins.

This list is for WordPress.org sites. If you are running a Blogger or WordPress.com site, this post isn’t for you. Unless you want to create your own self-hosted WordPress site.

10 Best Plugins for WordPress

Akismet – WordPress’ anti-spam plugin that now comes standard with a WordPress installation. There is no better spam filter for WordPress, so set up your API key and get Akismet going first thing.

Yoast – Great plugin to help keep your SEO on track. See this video for how to use it to help your on-page SEO. With Yoast, you can also manage your sitemaps, permalinks and other key SEO information without having to dig deep into code.

Comment Reply Notification – This will make a little box (which you can choose to be auto-checked or not) right under the submit comment button that will allow commenters to be notified via email when a reply to their comment has been made. This is great for interaction, which is not something you want to discourage.

Flare - The social sharing plugin that you see on this site is Flare. Some say it is resource heavy, but I have never had any issues, so it gets my recommendation. You can set it to have a floating share-bar on the left or right side of the page in addition to social share icons at the top or bottom of the posts.

Online Backup for WordPress – allows you to easily backup your entire WordPress site and database. You can set up an online backup database in the cloud, or can download the backups straight to your computer. Either way, make sure to download this plugin and backup your site often! As a matter of fact…

Ok, where was I… oh ya, plugins. Here’s the rest of the list:

W3 Total Cache - An all-in-one caching plugin that will make your site run faster. There is tons of stuff that you could delve into with W3 but if you just install it and keep it up and running, it will do all that you need. For a more in-depth look at W3 Total Cache, see this great post.

Nrelate Related Content – This will create a “You may also like” feature at the end of your posts where you can direct readers to related posts. You can choose how many posts to show, what size image thumbnail to show and other options. Again, this plugin saves you an ungodly amount of coding that would be required to get the same feature.

WP Touch – This plugin will give you an easy, basic mobile friendly site. Upgrade to the WP Touch Pro version to get more customization options, functionality and the ability to put ads on your mobile site.

PC Hide Pages – quickly and easily hide pages from search engines. An example of when this is useful is on this site. I do consultations and have working pages built just for each client. I don’t want those pages to be indexed by Google and potentially found by random people.

Wordfence Security – includes a complete firewall, scans for DNS changes, blocks brute force attacks and more. You can also see and block the IP of any visitor to your site. Basically, this plugin is like your site’s bodyguard.

Bonus Plugins – for Genesis Theme Users

Simple Social Icons – Quickly place simple, good looking social icons on your Genesis site. Change the color, hover color, roundness and size without getting into html code.
Simple Hooks – Will allow you to do things with functions without having to touch functions.php files. Easily place Analytics code or other scripts without the need of an expert.

So there you have it! With any plugin, make sure you check the reviews. If there are not recent reviews, or the plugin has low reviews, move along. Again, I use every single one of the plugins above and can vouch for their safety and usefulness.

It’s bound to happen. You’re going to compare your blog, your design, your numbers, anything to other blogs. It’s human nature. If you never compare, good for you! You’re a rare breed!

Comparing your blog to other blogs is a waste. A waste of feelings. A waste of effort and most importantly, a waste of time. There is a big difference in comparing your blog to another and learning from another blog. View other blogs with a learning eye, not a comparative eye. If they do something you want to do, learn how to do something like that on your own blog (of course without directly completely copying them).

If another blog has way more followers than you, find out why instead of wallowing in the fact that they have 100 times more followers than you. I know, your blog is sooooo much better than theirs and you just don’t understand it. How about trying to figure out why this blogger has so many followers? Has the blog been around a lot longer than yours? That could be a reason. Do they advertise? Do they do giveaways? That could effect it. Can you not figure it out? Move on! Don’t get stuck on one blog trying to figure out why they are so successful. Spend some time on this site and you’ll get a lot of tips on how to build your blog.

Did another blogger get a sponsor that you wanted? Who cares?! Instead of having an “oh poor me” attitude about it, try and find out why they got it. Are they Tweeting at the brand? Do they have ton of pageviews every month? Figure it out, but if you’re just going to wallow, you’re not going to help yourself at all. To be honest, you really don’t know how hard that blogger tried to get that sponsor. Maybe they sent out emails to 50 different companies and heard 49 rejections before they got a sponsor. To assume that things are falling into other blogger’s laps will only discourage you. The truth is, nothing will fall into anyone’s lap. Getting sponsors, getting readers, getting followers; it all takes work.

Your blog is YOURS. It’s what you make of it. Nothing anyone else does on their blog should change the way you feel about your blog. You will gain readers by being true to yourself not only in your writing, but in your design, pursuit of sponsors, monetization and promotion. It will show and people will appreciate that.

This is not a rant by any means, but this is definitely a subject where some cold hard truth and self reflection is necessary.

This post is expanding on my earlier post, Got a Blog, What’s Your Plan?, which more or less discussed the importance of having a plan. Here, you’ll see some tips on how to form that plan.

Let’s talk about how to form a basic blogging plan.

While it’s perfectly okay to write posts whenever you want and about whatever you want, having some sort of consistency is what leads to more readers. While people like a surprise every now and again, they also value consistency. There’s something nice about knowing what to expect from your favorite blogs from time to time.

I’m sure you have a few favorite blogs that you follow. Do you pretty much know when they are going to post? Do you look forward to a certain post every week? Perhaps they take part in a link-up that you like? One of my wife’s () favorite link-ups is What I Wore Wednesday from the Pleated Poppy. She has readers who look forward to her outfit posts each week. Participating in the link-up helps her have at least one post in a week where the theme of that post falls on the same day. So her readers know that if it’s Tuesday, they can expect to come back to her site Wednesday to see a new outfit post. An added bonus of doing a link-up is the additional traffic that comes with it. Just make sure to play nice and follow the rules of whatever link-up you are participating in.

A good place to start your planning is with a weekly posting plan. Make a rough outline of ideas that you have for posts for the next week. It’s okay to not have a new post every day, but having a rough outline of posts ideas will allow you to space your posts as best you can. You don’t want to put posts out on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday only to realize you have nothing to post about for the rest of the week. Had you written out a weekly plan, you may have seen that coming and could have posted Monday, Wednesday and Friday or something like that. If you go more than a few days without a post, you’ll start to lose followers. A plan can help you avoid that.

You may find that when planning out your posts for the week, you have more ideas than you have room for. This is a great thing! Set aside the extra (non time-sensitive) post ideas for a week where you are running thin on ideas. Having them written down will ensure that good ideas don’t fall through the cracks.

After you’re got a weekly post planner written out, it’s time to start planning each day. When will you post? How much time are you allowing yourself to “blog browse” and leave comments on other blogs? How much social media promotion will you do? Do you have side projects like a new header design? Fit those into your daily worksheet so they don’t get missed! I have found that when I write down my weekly and daily goals, there does in fact seem to be enough time in the day to get everything done!

For a daily blogging to-do printable, see:
Blogging Tools ~ Daily Checklist Printable

It’s good to have longer-term plans in place as well. Make a monthly plan that you take into consideration when preparing your weekly plan. Your monthly plan should have some numerical goals on it like Twitter followers or blog followers in addition to other things like maybe post counts or traffic numbers. If you’re coming up to the last week of the month and your goal for Twitter followers is going to be short, you’ll want to address that. Here are 5 quick ways to increase you Twitter followers.

The real key here is to form a plan that is right for you. Make it attainable, yet challenging. Make it full of things that you want to do! After all, it is your blog, so you are the one calling the shots. You’ll have to take your goals and your plan seriously if you want any of this to be worthwhile. I would hope that you set your goals the way you did because you wanted to achieve them. So why let the week, month or year end without giving it your all to achieve those goals?

For help on setting realistic goals, take a look at my blog consulting page and contact me with any questions!

Whether you’ve been blogging for 6 years or 6 days, you should have a plan. Unless you’re strictly doing it for fun with no interest in having anyone read your blog, you really should always have a plan looking forward. Do you have a weekly, monthly or yearly goal for your blog? You should!

You can form goals for your blog around many different factors. It’s all about what you consider success from your blog. If you’d like to have as many people as possible read your story, you should place the majority of your focus on gaining readers. If you’d like to make money from your site, your goals should involve turning those readers into money. Whatever your goals are, it helps to write them down.

Writing down your goals leads to self-accountability. If you have something to look at, to constantly remind you of what your goals are, you are more likely to stick to your plans. It’s good to have goals for those days when you’re having trouble focusing. You can look at your goals and ask yourself, “what can I be doing right now to move closer to achieving my goal?”

It’s okay for your goals to change too! If your initial goal is to gain readers, but then you realize that you’d like to maybe start making some money, there’s nothing wrong with re-evaluating your goals! That’s the beauty of this whole thing, it’s YOUR blog and YOUR rules! You can focus on whatever you want to focus on! The main point is to know which direction you’d like to go toward.

So what’s YOUR plan?