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9 Plugins for Every Wordpress Installation

May 26, 2009 By Jeff 1 Comment

Wordpress is my CMS and blog platform of choice.  I have tried a lot of different programs in the past, Geeklog, Drupal, Joomala, and even PHP-Nuke.  However the power and simplicity of Wordpress has made it the one for me.

Here is a list of the plugins that I install on EVERY site that I start either for myself or for a friend.

  1. Add-Sig – This addon is great for adding a signature to every post.  I put in my twitter link, a reminder to add my feed at the bottom of every post.  Remember to keep it short though, you don’t want your signature to over-whelm your visitors.
  2. All in One SEO Pack – If you are going to do nothing else for SEO, install this plugin and use it.  This plugin allows you to give every post its own title and meta information.
  3. Google Analytics for Wordpress – This is the easiest way to add your site to Google Analytics without having to modify your theme.  This plugin also gives you the ability to NOT track the information of the admin which will give you a better idea of the traffic on your site when you are starting out.
  4. Google Sitemap Generator – Google loves its sitemaps.  I know I said above that if you did nothing else for SEO you should use the All in One SEO Pack, well you should install this too.  With this you just have it install it, and every time you make a post it will add it to a XML sitemap that Google will use to hopefully index your site.
  5. Contact Form – One of the things that Wordpress doesn’t have built in is a good contact form.  This plugin will allow you to add a contact form and allow your readers to get in contact with you, without you having to worry about making email public….if you’re worried about that sort of thing.
  6. Twitter Widget – You’re on Twitter….right?  Well if you are and you have a Wordpress blog you know that the widgets that they have suck.  This plugin gives you a widget that will match your theme and allow your readers to see what you have been talking about on Twitter.
  7. What would Seth Godin Do? – Seth Godin once said in his blog that you should use cookies to ensure that visitors to your site get a unique experience.  This plugin allows you to give first-time visitors to your site a special message.  With this message you can welcome them, point them to other great posts, and tell them where to go next.
  8. Wordpress Super Cache – So you just started a blog and you are wondering why you need a caching system.  Well be positive, your blog will be popular enough and if you get a huge traffic spike you want to be sure that your site can handle it.  So install it, test it, and be ready for everything.
  9. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin  – This plugin puts a list of past posts that you have made with the same tags as the one that your visitor is reading.  This gives the blog more stickiness so that your visitor has somewhere else to go when they finish reading the post that got them there.

These are my must have plugins for every wordpress installation.  What are some plugins that you would recommend for all wordpress users, or how about alternatives to the ones that I have listed here.

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Self Hosted or Hosted

January 4, 2009 By Jeff Leave a Comment

One of the first things that have to be decided when you are getting ready to start a website, whether if it is for a personal site, business site, or a hobby site is whether you are going to host the site yourself and or a hosted service.

If you are building a blog type site this is not as critical at the start.  You can easily start your site on a free hosted blog site and then if you feel it necessary you can more to a hoste solution with minimal headache.  Just make sure that you have your own domain so that you don’t lose too many links that you have built.

Difference between the two. Hosted like going with a host like Hostgator and between a hosted, wordpress.com, blogger, etc

blogger logo 

Advantages of the hosted service.

  • Don’t need to have any programming experience
  • Don’t need to worry about keeping the programs up-to-date
  • Minimal backend work needed
  • Usually lots of easy to installed themes, and styles
  • Security, hosted services are typically very secure.

Disadvantages of hosted service

  • You don’t have control of what is used for the site
  • You can’t customize certain aspects of the site
  • Even though there are plugins and extensions available what you can do with the site is limited.

hostgator_logo

Advantages of using a host

  • You can pretty much put anything that you want online
  • You have much great control of the way the site looks and interacts with your audience
  • You can use the host for your FTP, email, and many other services that the hosted version does not have
  • There are many “unlimited” hosts that allow you to store large amounts of data at no extra cost.

Disadvantages of using a host

  • If you are not careful, you may find that the site is down more than it is up.
  • Customer service may be a nightmare (Although Hostgator is an exception to this.  They have done everything they can to make my life on their servers enjoyable) .
  • There may be bandwidth limitations.
  • The cost can be huge if you have a popular site with little revenue as the bandwidth charges can get expensive.
  • You are responsible for ensuring that your site is secure.

Conclusions
It really depends on what you are planning on using the site for.  If you are only interested in a content site or a personal site that you can communicate with family etc.  They a hosted service, or using many different hosted services to serve the purposes that you need for them. 

This can include services like Wordpress.com, Flickr.com blogger.com, etc.  If you are interested in having a custom site programmed, want to have a email address with your domain or want to have the choice of how the site works.  If you want to have full control over the type of content, visitors, the script on the site etc then you are going to be looking for something that is hosted.  The other thing that you have to remember is that if you want to ensure that you have FULL control over the content of the site then you want to fully control the host.  The hosted services typically have a TOS stating that they do not assume any risk if you lose everything.

Thoughts?

So you know what I think, what do you think?  Let me know in the comments below. 

Cheers, JM

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