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If you’re like me, you’ve decided to write a blog to share your writing with the world. You thought your writing would stand on its own, and readers would flock to your website, grateful that you decided to share your awesomeness with everyone.
Then, reality sets in. Developing content and working on your “Real” writing become chores, not fun.
Even worse, you realize that although you’ve trained yourself to develop plots and realistic characters, to edit yourself and set realistic goals, you know bupkis about SEO, CMS, WEB 2.0 and all the other things you thought you could get away with not knowing. After all, this blogging is supposed to be all about giving the masses a voice, right?
Essential Plugins for Every Blog
Akismet- The spam Blocker that’s included with WordPress is still one of the best. You should have already enabled it. If not, shame on you.
Bad Behavior- The other Spam Blocker. Bad Behavior maintains a list of bad sites and blocks these users from ever seeing your precious posts.
All-In-One-SEO- Allows you to add metadata to your posts to get them noticed by Google.
Google Sitemaps- Helps Google Index all your pages. And if it helps Google, it helps you.
YARPP- Related posts plugin. Lets Users navigate to other articles they might be interested in
Popularity Contest- Alex King has written a whole mess of popular, useful plugins, but this is really useful. It allows you to rank pages and posts on a variety of criteria.
RSS-Footer- Ads a footer with a link back to your site to your RSS feed.
Sociable- Adds Social bookmarking buttons to your posts, making it easier for readers to share and recommend your pages. Try it now!
W3 Total Cache– Reduces Server load and speeds up page rendering by creating static pages of your posts. Basically, Speeds up your site. Google likes speedy sites even more than readers do.
wp-Database Manager- Lets you update and manage your database from the dashboard. Great for Piece of mind.
Who Sees Ads?- Lets you add different ads for different readers. Pretty neat technology, Like having Google adsense for your higher paying affiliates. So, For example, Google Newbies get a couple ads to click through, Regular readers see nothing but content.
WP Greet Box- As above, a great way to personalize content for different viewers.
Viper Video Quick Tags- Easily lets you add video from all the major sites.
WordPress Plugins for the Writer:
Simple Facebook Connect- 500,000 viewers can’t be wrong. A whole suite of apps that integrate with Facebook. Allow your readers to comment, log in, share and spread your site to their friends. Also Twitter.
Dave’s Whizmatronic Widgulating Calibrational Scribometer- Progress Meter for NaNoWriMo or any other project.
Web Fiction Table of Contents- Sidebar Table of contents.
In Series- Like the above, only puts the table of Contents on the posts.
Podpress- Integrated Player and Podcasting Dashboard with statistics. What I use here.
Bonus: 4 Firefox Extensions for writers
scribefire- Lets write blog entries and add site reviews from Firefox without having to fire up the old Dashboard.
Logos- Dictionary, quotes and more.
FireFtp- Full Features FTP for managing your WordPress Install, themes and Plugins.
Tree Style Tabs- Puts Browser tabs down the left side of your browser and lets you organize them like bookmarks
