So once you get your WordPress up and running there’s a fair few WordPress plugin options I suggest you review. These can easily help in a variety of areas. Make your WordPress work for you.
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WordPress plugin
WordPress plugins are code written either by companies or dedicated users to make WordPress more flexible. As WordPress is a PHP site sitting usually on a MySQL database. You could write your own… but why bother? When someone has done the heavy lifting for you and more often than not, for free.
On the left of the WP pane you’ll have a Plugins section with an easy add ability. Just search for your plugin, install and then activate them.
Statistics
There are two different solutions which are very useful here. Google Analytics and Jetpack
Google Analytics needs to be set up. With your gmail email account this is a matter of seconds to get your tracking Id (UA-XXXXX) Then you install one of two major WordPress Google Analytics plugins. I chose “Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP)” as opposed to the MonsterInsights one. Now we have some monster tracking going on.
https://www.google.com/analytics/
JetPack is a suite of solutions for WordPress. JetPack has paid features however the free stuff is just as powerful.
Some of your site visitors will probably come from Europe. Therefore GDPR and EU laws apply to your site. What you do with people’s data, including their browsing choices, needs to be declared. If you track information using Google Analytics, then you need to let the users know you’re tracking them. Instead of starting from scratch JetPack has a handy cookie notification bar you can turn on to get you going quickly
Helpful
“Read more without refresh” provides the ability to shorten a blog post very quickly without lessening the SEO ability of the site.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/read-more-without-refresh/
Given that you should always have an SSL cert installed on a website even a simple blogging site, as it demonstrates capability and consideration of the reader. Getting your site to make the most of your SSL cert is easy when you install this plugin. “Really Simple SSL”
https://wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/
“Easy Table of Contents” gives you the capability to add a ToC for long posts and articles where you use a lot of headings and sub headings to make navigation for the user through the blog much easier.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-table-of-contents/
Contact Integration
“WPForms Lite” lets a Contact Form be easily added to a post or page. It enables you to allow people to send you an email from your website. Very handy if their email isn’t available or they don’t fancy contacting via social media.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/
There is a very handy sister plugin called “WP Mail SMTP”. This enables quick configuration of how your WordPress is able to send emails.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/
Social Media Integration
There are some tools which are very helpful for social media integration. “Social Media Widget” by Acurax is very helpful. The “Floating Social Media” add the ability to always include your own social media links visually on a page. More importantly it allows people to easily share the blog posts on their own social media sites. It does have a setup cost of around $25 which is very worth it for the speed of setup.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/acurax-social-media-widget/
Site management and optimisation
A WordPress plugin collection to keep WordPress ticking over.
Now we’re all about getting our blogs up and going and getting material out however there are a host of WordPress plugins that will help your site and manage it over time. Whilst not vital when setting up, these really help keep things fast and engaging for your users.
“Broken Link Checker” does exactly what it says on the tin and can help you make sure there are no broken links throughout your blogs and site.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/
“Link Library” helps you manage the links you’ve included
https://wordpress.org/plugins/link-library/
“Smush” takes your really large images and smushes them so they load faster and make the experience of using your WordPress site better for the readers.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
“WP Optimize” does exactly what it says on the tin.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/
“WordFence” another site protection solution worth putting place.
Search Engine Optimisation support
SEO is about getting your blog found by search engines, so why not make sure that your blogs are optimised for those search engines?
“All in One Schema Rich Snippets” helps what the search engines display for your blog entry.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-schemaorg-rich-snippets/
Yoast is incredible and so so so helpful. Readability and SEO optimisation are so simple to follow using it. You can’t live operate a blog effectively without this tool.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
Sound too much like work, not a bother, chat to me and I’ll get your WordPress plugin collection sorted out very quickly. Click here to get a message to me.
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