Top Ten Plugins for New Wordpress Bloggers

When we decided to write a post about plugins we were just going to pick ten and leave it at that. We quickly learned that ten wasn’t going to be enough. There were just too many good plugins that we use and it didn’t seem fair to leave out all of the other great plugins that need some attention. So in the next few posts, you should see a list of plugins recommended for review sites, monetization, and social networking. This post is dedicated to new bloggers and unlike the other posts you will find, this list will have ten plugins rather than five.

Without further ado, here are the top ten plugins that could help new bloggers to succeed in the blogosphere. Don’t see an important or useful plugin listed? Feel free to leave a comment and let us know what we missed or forgot!

Adsense-Deluxe
Why it’s important: Whether you’re using it as your sole means of monetization or not (I’d hope not) Adsense is used by the majority of blogs and bloggers in the sphere. Adsense Deluxe makes it easy to pop an adsense ad into your post or sidebar. You can set up different sizes with channels in your admin panel and then use a small code wherever you want the adsense banner/link to appear. It doesn’t get easier than this.

All in One SEO Pack
Why it’s important: If you’re writing a new blog and want it to succeed then having some readers (any readers) would be a good thing. SEO is important if you want on search engines such as Google. Unfortunately, most blogs aren’t set up for individual SEO on every post/article you write. All in One SEO allows you to write specific titles, descriptions, and keywords (among other things) for each blog post. This can help you to get indexed on the search engines faster and gives you a competitive edge over the blogs in your niche not using this method of SEO enhancement.

Brian’s Threaded Comments
Why it’s important: Once you start getting comments you may begin to notice that you have to @ specific people or comment based on the comment number they were if you want to respond to them. Brian’s Threaded Comments allows you to comment to a person under their comment, starting a comment thread. This allows for a neater look to your comments section and offers a better chance for discussion since it’s easier for people to keep up.

Commentluv
Why it’s important: This isn’t so much important as it is useful. This allows people who put in their blog URL to have their latest post title and link appear under their comment. Depending on your blog, this may help to up comments and even if it doesn’t, it will offer some link love to your loyal commenters, which is never a bad thing.

Contact Form 7
Why it’s important: If you don’t have a contact form then people cannot get in touch with you for any reason. Even if they can contact you, the contact form makes it a much easier and more anonymous (they don’t show your email address) process. In my search for a contact form this was the easiest one to use and set up. Just set up the form (you can create multiple forms), create a page, and then pop in the content form code, as well as any associated text you want. This plugin is also highly customizable so you can make various forms to use as surveys or other submission style forms. All that’s left to do is link to the page you’ve created with your contact form on it and you’re all set up.

FeedBurner FeedSmith
Why it’s important: Feedburner is the ultimate RSS delivery system for Word Press and other blogs. Feedburner allows you to design your feed the way you want it, monetize it (should you wish to do so), and create an email delivery list for those that don’t use RSS. More importantly, it tells you a great deal about your RSS subscribers, what they are clicking, and how they subscribe to your feed. Wordpress RSS doesn’t offer these options and if you’re not using them you’re missing out. All you need to do is set up a free account at Feedburner, claim your feed, set your options, and install this plugin. It’s well worth the few minutes that it takes to set things up.

My Link Order
Why it’s important: This one isn’t absolutely necessary but it can make things easier. When adding in links for your blog roll, WP does the first come, first listed thing or alphabetical (I forget which?!). That’s fine, unless you add things and then want to move them around. My Link Order allows you to arrange your links as you want them, not as you put them in.

ShareThis
Why it’s important: If you want to be listed on Digg, Delicious, Myspace, Facebook, or any other social networking site, having something like Share This makes it a lot easier. If someone likes your post they click the words “Share This, a box pops up with social networking links, click on a social networking link of choice and this will immediately log them into their account and bookmark or post your article/page/website on it. It’s one of the most highly recommended plugins on the list.

Sociable
Why it’s important: Sociable is similar to Share This except instead of offering a trendy drop down box of links you have a line of small social networking icons at the bottom of each post. Sociable offers more social networking sites than Share This, so it doesn’t hurt to have them both and utilize them in a way that allows you to list a maximum number of sites to ensure that all your users have an option they prefer, and you end up on more sites as a result.

WWW Redirect
Why it’s important: WWW Redirect allows you to use the URL that you prefer for your site, the way you prefer it to be used. For instance, we purchased i-don’t-pay.com. If you enter it without the WWW it does not matter. It will still appear the way we want it to appear. This was created to insure that when a site is indexed on search engines, it was not indexed in various forms (with and without the www, etc). This tends to make things a lot easier on you, your visitors, and the search engines.

Technorati Tags: Top Plugins, WordPress, New Bloggers, WWW Redirect, Sociable, Share This, My Link Order, CommentLuv, Feedburner Feedsmith, Contact Form 7, Brian’s Threaded Comments, All in One SEO Pack, Adsense Deluxe