One Click Plugins
for Wordpress

Bloggers who opt to start a blog with Wordpress will certainly not be disappointed by the amount of time it takes to start a blog. You can be blogging with Wordpress within minutes. The only requirements for starting a blog are a valid email address and a username. The blogger enters this information into the signup page and receives a password almost instantly. Next the blogger simply has to check his email, follow the activation link provided and use the password provided and the process is complete. The blogger can start blogging immediately.

Support Offered by Wordpress

First time bloggers may have quite a few questions about the process of starting a basic blog and once they establish this they may have additional questions about using advanced features and customizing the blog.

Wordpress offers a great deal of support for bloggers of all skill levels. Although their support staff is incredibly responsive some bloggers prefer the ability to communicate with other bloggers in forums. This is because the forums are active 24 hours a day and bloggers can find support from peers at any time.

Wordpress also maintain an online help file and development file that can help new and advanced bloggers to make the best of their blog. This includes the provision of a directory for all the various plugins that you can use to optimize your wordpress blog and add functions to it that don't come with a simple install.

One Click Plugins for Wordpress

One plugin that does come with Wordpress is Akismet and you should activate this plugin for every blog. To do this you go to the plugin tab in your dashboard and click on its name and activate. A message will pop up that you need an API key.

You need to register with the wordpress site to get this. If you already have a wordpress blog on their site, all you need do is login. If you installed on your own domain, just register first and then login to get your key. Copy and paste it as instructed. Now if any spam bots post irrelevant or offensive comments to your blog, you are protected from them.

There are many other excellent plugins that can extend the functionality of your blog. If you have seen Adsense within a post on a blog it was probably put there with the use of the Adsense Deluxe Plugin. Unfortunately you cannot have adsense on a free blog, only on one hosted on your own domain, because Wordpress will not allow any javascript.

If you have seen a well done tag cloud it was probably created with the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin although there are other tagging plugins available. Again, many plugins you can only use with a blog you host yourself as you cannot ftp to the site, likewise your themes are limited to those that wordpress offers.

Seen a small box at the end of each post with a message in it? The WP-Generic Footer Plugin does this. There is also one called WP-Head for inserting meta information for the blog in the header. You might also like to look for a social bookmarking plugin such as Add This or Socialise.

Most plugins require little more than a one click activation and sometimes perhaps a little data entry to personalise a message. There are some however that require you to configure the plugin or alter specific bits of code. Until you know what you are doing be careful about doing this and make a copy of the file before you alter it -  but don't be afraid to experiment. If you do make a mistake, de activate the plugin until you can find where you went wrong.

To find great plugins and see a full range of them visit the wordpress site and see their listing. They link to the creators site where you can be sure to pick up the most up to date version.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins

http://wp-plugins.net/beta/

Word Press Titles listing

http://dev.wp-plugins.org/

http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/TitleIndex

We discuss our favourite plugins at length in the Blogging Module of the Course. Visit the blogs themselves as well for blog tips about plugins. but here are other peoples lists of some of their favourite plugins.

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/02/02/lists-of-your-favorite-wordpress-plugins/

http://www.johntp.com/category/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/

http://www.adesblog.com/useful-wordpress-plugins/

Siteground

http://www.siteground.com/wordpress_plugins.htm

http://theblogjoint.com/?s=plugins

http://www.jimwestergren.com/my-wordpress-plugins/

http://www.jimwestergren.com/text-surrounding-link-final-proof/    Also read this interesting post.

http://www.mickmelseo.com/20080308/wordpress-plug-ins-that-i-use/

The sheer convenience of these one click plugins for Wordpress makes it the most popular platform of use. The ability to create a more flexible navigation, to add advertising and payment options, to add a forum or a store and the ability to use videos and galleries for pictures make Wordpress the best choice for most bloggers.

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