Blog production toolkit: essential WordPress plugins
One of the neat things about WordPress is that there’s a whole slew of programmers out there writing “improvements” for it in the form of plug-ins. A plugin is a bit of stand-alone code that adds a new or enhanced function to your WordPress blog. Plugins might be used to control spam comments, remind visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, or even pull in headlines from the feed of another website. Over the past couple of years I’ve added and removed plenty of WordPress plugins, and have found the following to be the most useful and trouble-free:
Akismet – this is spam-comment fighting plugin and it comes with the WordPress software.
FeedSmith – runs the RSS feed from the blog through Google’s FeedBurner service, which allows you to track your number of feed subscribers and otherwise maximize the power of your feed.
SubscribeRemind – Reminds readers to subscribe to your blog’s RSS Feed.
All-In-One SEO Pack – allows you to optimize your blog’s posts and pages for exposure in the search engines.
Sociable – Reminds readers to share your content with favorite ‘social’ sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Technorati.
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Whenever a new version of WordPress comes out, WPAU helps you update in a flash. (I recently upgraded four blogs to the latest version of WordPress in under 10 minutes, with no glitches.)
WP-DB-Backup – Lets you schedule backups of your WordPress Database at regular intervals.
Each of these plugins is free – you simply download the code, then upload it into your wp-contents/plugin folder, and activate it in the WP dashboard.
Blog production toolkit: self-hosting with WordPress
It’s no secret that I love the WordPress blogging platform. I use it on all four of my personal blogs, and I use it as the sole platform for my business website. One of the things I like about WordPress is that there is a large and vibrant community of developers who support it – not only the folks who work on WP itself, but thousands of others who write plugins and create design themes. There are entire excellent blogs devoted to WordPress and its features. There is no shortage of help if a problem arises.
I’ve said before that there are times when a free-hosted blog is just what you need. For my present situation, however, I use what’s called “self-hosted WordPress.” What’s the difference?
A free-hosted blog is one where your blog sits on a server owned and operated by the company that makes the software. The URL of the blog will look something like this: http://nameofyourblog.wordpress.com. WordPress doesn’t charge you anything to use their software, or to store and back up your site. The range of site design templates is somewhat limited for free-hosted WP blogs.
A self-hosted blog is where you go out and find a web hosting company, install the blogging software on their server (and likely pay them a fee to do so), and manage the site yourself. There are many more design templates available for free-hosted WP blogs – in fact, you can write your own or edit an existing one if you’re so inclined.
Of course, self-hosting my own blogs means I’m responsible for updating the software when notifications come out, for backing up my sites on a regular basis, and for paying my web host each month to keep the lights turned on. (Fortunately there are tools that automate almost all of these tasks, but that’s another post!)
In case you’re considering a switch to self-hosted WordPress, I thought it might be useful to share my personal blog production toolbox. Here are the basics for self-hosting:
- WordPress software, self-hosted version
- Domain registration and Website hosting services through Blue Gravity.com
- WS-FTP software from Ipswitch, for transferring files from my computer to the webhost
In future posts I’ll share other tools that enhance my blogging productivity. Those mentioned above are the bare minimum needed to self-host WordPress.
