At For Bloggers By Bloggers, we use self-hosted WordPress as our platform of blogging choice.
There are many reasons for this – flexibility, support, strength of platform, theme developers and much more.
But one of the best reasons for using self-hosted WordPress for your blog is that it has a thriving plugin developer community. Plugins are additions to your blog, and they offer more functionality to your site.
These can range from dynamic design additions to social sharing; contact form options to community forums; and much, much more.
Advanced Author Bio
While some WordPress themes come with the option for an author bio, the Advanced Author Bio is a great plugin that’s ideal for multi-author blogs like ours. It gives you a bit of background on the author of the post you’re reading, as well as where to connect with them online.
afterRead
Having a call to action on any blog post is key. It could be to share your post, or subscribe to your blog, or buy a product. afterRead allows you to tailor a fairly non-intrusive box and ask your readers to do something (for us, you can see we remind you to subscribe to our blog).
Akismet
The old faithful when it comes to filtering spam from your comments, Akismet is the preferred spam filter plugin of choice for many bloggers. It learns by your actions, and improves your spam filter because of it.
Align RSS Images
This is more of an aesthetic plugin than really functional, but I just like the way that Align RSS Images makes the images from your blog post format the same way in your RSS feed. It just looks tidier than the standard layout on your normal feed would.
BackupBuddy
There is nothing worse than having years worth of blog posts lost due to a database error, or when you migrate to a new host, or your site gets hacked. Which is why BackupBuddy is our choice when it comes to saving your content. It also helps migrate to other hosts, and much more – in short, it’s essential.
Block Bad Queries
There are many security plugins available for WordPress, and Block Bad Queries is a great one that protects your blog against malicious URL requests that are used to hack your site. Well worth having on your blog.
Efficient Related Posts
When your reader finishes your post, do you want them to (hopefully) comment and then leave, or do you want them to explore a little bit further? Efficient Related Posts scans your complete blog, and offers up the most relevant posts to the one currently being read, to encourage your readers to stay a little bit longer.
Exploit Scanner
Another great security plugin, Exploit Scanner does exactly what it says on the tin. It scans your web for malicious exploits (including your plugins), so you can then remove and clean your database to prevent hacking of your site.
Google XML Sitemaps
If you want your blog to be indexed properly by search engines, a sitemap helps immensely. Not only is Google XML Sitemaps great for visibility of your site in the maor search engines, but it builds your sitemap for you automatically – who doesn’t like that?!?
Gravity Forms
One of the best form-building plugins out there, Gravity Forms (affiliate link) is much more than just a plugin for your Contact Page. You can use it to build your email leads list; run Freshbooks and Paypal options through it; and much, much more. Simply put, if you want a plugin to help you take your blog to the next level, get Gravity Forms.
Grid Archives
Many of the standard WordPress theme archive options are pretty boring. Sure, they can show you old posts and the dates they were posted, but they’re still pretty boring. Grid Archives gives you a funky box option, and one that you can easily customize to suit your design. Check our Archives Page as an example.
Instant Weekly Roundup
If you write a lot of posts ina single week (or even just one a day), often readers might miss one or two. This is where Instant Weekly Roundup comes in handy – you select the date(s) and the categories, and it generates a roundup of that week’s posts for your readers to enjoy.
JW Cloud Sites WordPress Scanner
Another great security plugin, JW Cloud Sites WordPress Scanner is similar to Exploit Scanner, with the exception that it’s built specifically for blogs with cloud-based hosting plans with Rackspace. We use Rackspace via BlogOnCloud9 as our web server and host, so this plugin is perfect.
Livefyre Realtime Comments
While there are many bloggers who don’t like Livefyre, here at For Bloggers By Bloggers we LOVE it! The best third-party comments system bar none, Livefyre is more than just a comment system – it’s a full-on community chat and social media conversation system.
Login Lockdown
While dedicated hackers will always find a way to break into your site, Login Lockdown offers increased security by blocking access to your blog after a set mumber of failed attempts.
RSS Footer
One of the problems with any content that’s shared by an RSS Feed is that it can be easily “scraped” – where someone else takes your content and uses it to fill their site. RSS Footer allows you to embed a copyright notice that appears on every post in your feed, and shows where the original article came from.
SEO Data Transporter
Depending on what theme you use, switching WordPress designs can mean you could lose all the SEO (search engine optimization) you’ve set up on your Pages and Posts. SEO Data Transporter easily moves your existing SEO onto your new framework, and it supports the main themes and SEO plugins.
Social Profiles Widget
When you blog, it makes sense that your readers might want to connect with you elsewhere. The Social Profiles Widget makes it easy for you to have an area in your sidebar that shows all your main social profiles, and offers some cool design variations for the social icons too.
Subscribers Text Counter
If you’re looking to show your blog’s “social proof”, then the Subscribers Text Counter is perfect. It shows your Feedburner subscriber number, as well as your Twitter followers and Facebook Fans (if you have a Page). This can help attract advertisers to your blog, if that’s one of your goals, by showing its popularity.
TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner
Thousands of WordPress sites were recently hacked, due to the TimThumb script that resizes images on your blog. The recently-released TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner scans your blog and alerts you of any malicious activity based around the TimThumb plugin and fixes/updates any threats.
Twitter Facebook Social Share
While there are many social sharing plugins to let your readers share your posts across their favourite social network, I really like the simplicity of the Twitter Facebook Social Share (as seen at the bottom of this post). It offers the option to have the share box at the top, bottom or floating, and keeps it simple with the most popular networks only.
Viper’s Video Quicktags
While you can grab the embed code of a video to drop into your blog post, Viper’s Video Quicktags makes it even easier. Simply grab the URL of the video (from various supported video sites), add to your post, and it formats perfectly for you based on your preferred video dimensions.
WPtouch Pro
With the rise in web users using their smartphones to browse their favourite sites, having a mobile-friendly blog is key. WPtouch Pro is the premium version of their popular free plugin, and allows you to customize your blog even further for mobile browsing, including a dedicated iPad setting.
So there you have it – of our favourite plugins here at For Bloggers By Bloggers.
Of course, a lot of these can be hard-coded into your blog, if you have that skill set. And some themes offer built-in variations of these plugins too, which helps with load speed of your site (the more plugins you use, the slower your blog can be).
