I have a friend who asked me to help set up a new blog for them using Wordpress. Since they are pretty new to this whole blogging thing, they especially needed some help with plugins that will help get their blog running as smoothly as possible from the start. After I finished installing all their plugins, I wrote him an email to let him know what most of the plugins do and also gave some hints on how to increase some traffic. I thought it would be a good idea to post my email since it was a pretty damn long email and with my lack of posting, I thought . . . “perfect!”
Dear Jon,
Per your request:
1) List of Plugins I used for your Blog
Akismet - Spam Filter
All in One SEO Pack - Allows you to override the Meta Tags to Title your blog post with the correct keywords and titles.
Brian’s Threaded Comments - Great Plugin to Directly respond to comments of a Post instead of having them compile towards the bottom.
Contact Form - Creates a Basic Contact forum that gets forwarded to jrognerud@microsaw.com
Enforce www.preference - This is to make sure backlinks don’t get split up between microsaw.com and www.microsaw.com
Executable PHP Widget - This allows the insertion of PHP code into the sidebar widgets
Feedburner Feed Replacement - Once you have the RSS Feed set up, you will want to use Feedburner to distribute your RSS.
Get Recent Comments
Google Analytics - Insert your Google Analytics Code into the Options and it will automatically tag every page so that you can track everything on your blog.
Google Search Widget
Google Sitemaps - Creates a Google Compliant sitemap that you can upload to Google Webmasters
MyAvatars - Places the MyBlogLog avatar next to comments to place a face to someone’s words.
MyBlogLog Widget - Used in the sidebar to load MBL Widget to see who has been to the site.
Name Dropper - Social Bookmarking tool so that your readers can submit your posts to help drive new sources of traffic.
No Self Pings - I use this to decrease the amount of unnecessary pings to search engines and technorati
Optimal Title - In case you don’t use the All in One SEO Plugin, this automatically places the title of the post in front of the title of the blog in the Meta Title to promote better placement on Google SERPS.
PostPost - If you are promoting anything, you can place a 468×60 banner below each post.
Posts Related / Related Posts - Lists 5 Posts that are related to the Post just read by the reader to increase more page per viewers.
Show Top Commentators - I use this to encourage more Comments. The rewards are a free backlink from your site.
Smart Update Pinger - Pings only when publishing a new post.
Top Posts by Category - Once you have enough posts, this will display the Top posts based on views or comments
WP-PostRatings - This adds a rating system at the bottom of each post.
2) Suggestions. Off the top of my head, this is what I think you should do.
- Build your Content Quickly. I would suggest at least 4-5 posts per category.
- Join a Group of Bloggers who will help link to your articles and get your blog noticed.
- Set up an Account at the Following Social Networks: Stumble Upon, Netscape, Technorati WTF, and of course Digg.
- Comment on other Blogger’s sites and don’t forget to respond to comments left on your own site.
- Leverage your own network and your association.
- The best thing to do right now is to write high quality/controversial articles that can get dugg easily and quickly.
3) Sites that I would suggest reading right off the bat:
www.doshdosh.com - Great Analysis
www.bluehatseo.com - Crazy Out of the Box Thinking
www.johnchow.com - Great Marketing
As you can see, I didn’t link anybody since I’m really lazy right now. I’ll probably link all the plugins if there is enough requests for them, but i’m assuming most of my readers already have installed a majority of these plugins.
If you have some friends who are interested in getting started in the blogging world, then feel free to reference this page to give them an idea of what they need to install to get off on the right foot.
If you’re interested in seeing which blog I helped out, click here to see what my friend has so far on his blog. From what I’ve seen, he has some really great content that all of you might be very interested in.
Bookmark at:StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Dzone | Newsvine | Spurl | Reddit | Yahoo! MyWeb
Popularity: 24% [?]
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Great advice. I’m taking you up on the comments right now.
I would add MyBlogLog to the list of social networks to join. For bloggers they are a good one. That is where I first found DoshDosh.
BeachBum
Excellent idea of posting the email because plug-ins are something that most people always look for to make their life easy. Good job!
Excellent Post. I think it is my favorite of the week. I am going to trackback this to my readers
[…] Gary Lee is covering some startup advice for blogs using Wordpress. SKFox was originally powered by sNews, but I found that it just wasn’t […]
Very cool, indeed… Thanks, my man!!!
- JR
[…] A Nudge in the Right Blog Direction Optimal Title - In case you don?t use the All in One SEO Plugin, this automatically places the title of the post in front of the title of the blog in the Meta Title to promote better placement on Google SERPS. … […]
The list of plugins is useful. I have a few of them but hadn’t thought of/seen the others. I would agree that I find mybloglog useful as well, it’s a good way to meet new bloggers and new blogs.
I like all the plugins you suggested except for the mybloglog. I think it slows down the loading time of the page dramatically.
Thanks for the wonderful tips!
Great tips, I’m going to go through them more closely to see if I’ve got most of them.
Hey Gary, that is one list of wordpress plugin, you installed all of them as well?
That’s a heck of a lot of plugins you got there!
This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I just started a blog for my business and have no experience in starting a good blog. I am glad I found you. Wish you had placed the links too.
Very exhaustible list of useful plugins. I’ve never heard of some of them before maybe because I’m good in programming, so it do it myself. Anyway your friend could not have a better counsellor than you. John Chow is just marvellous, I read Dosh Dosh ones in a while, never heard of bluehatseo, i guess its time to have a look.
pretty useful thx, i found one i had been looking for all this time.
[…] is well documented on many sites already I’ll simply offer this link to a great listing of WordPress plugins at Gary Lee’s […]