WordPress is the most popular content management system out there. One of the reasons for this is the huge number of plugins (24,717 at last count) available to download. Plugins are great because they allow you to extend your website’s functionality. Also, they’re very often free. Some plugin developers will ask for a donation, but you are in no way obliged to give one. The only downside to the large number available is it can be overwhelming to a newcomer: which plugins are worth grabbing and which should be left on the roadside? In this guide I present my top 3, my must-have plugins for 2013.
Though i did not mention of the plugins which is very useful and can make your website a beautiful one is nRelate Most Popular Post Plugin as i mentioned it before in my blog.
1. Akismet:
Every site that allows comments will get spam comments. It doesn’t matter if you run a big site or a small site, or what your site’s about. The spam bots will find you.
Spam looks bad when it is posted directly onto your site and therefore a net is needed to catch these comments before they get that far.
Akismet is probably the best known spam filtering plugin and a fine job it does too. You only need to set it up once and it will weed out the rubbish for you so that you only have to read genuine comments. Very occasionally, though, it will filter out a real comment, so it’s worth checking a few comments every now and again just to be on the safe side.
2. WordPress SEO by Yoast:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of getting your site noticed by the search engines, particularly Google, as it has by far the biggest market share. Whether your site is for commercial use or not if you want people to read it you need to do SEO. Fortunately you don’t need to run out and buy a copy of SEO for Dummies just yet as there is a (free) plugin that does pretty much all of the hard work for you. Built by an SEO expert, WordPress SEO by Yoast works for those who are new to the world of SEO as well as those who are at the cutting-edge.
3. Shareaholic:
Part of what makes WordPress so attractive as a web publishing platform is how easy it is to connect your site or blog to your social media accounts and for readers to share your content. Shareaholic is an easy to use plugin which not only gives the reader the option to share your posts to a number of platforms but looks great while doing so. A lot of social media plugins clutter up your pages with icons all over the place; not Shareaholic.
There are many more great WordPress plugins out there for you to explore and enjoy however if you need to know where to start, these 3 are my must-haves for 2013.
Great work Charlie… I’d
like to share this one i’m using lately http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/iframe-embed-for-momentme/. Embeds a photo gallery with a 360° view,
providing you with a multi-point-of-view experience and its free.
The Akismet is paid now…they ask for payment to get there
key…..so is there anything else that we can use to reduce the amount
of spam that we get in our comment.
why don’t you use Disqus? It is just fine…. !