As a broad guideline most errors you'll encounter along with your WordPress blog are the result of excessive or incompatible plugins. While many find the selection of essential plugins a conundrum I rely on testing each plugin one-by-one with the most recent version of WordPress so I could isolate the situation to ascertain the reason for the slow load times, call function errors or php memory limit warnings. The absolute most valuable tool I could let you know when it comes to plugins is that whenever possible look for existing code that will accomplish the same result.
Needless to say you will find certain plugins that even I use in my WordPress Blogs. I've compiled a listing below of the top 10 plugins that I personally use on a daily basis that I believe may help any tech blog:
* AdSense Now - There are many ad insertion plugins for WordPress, but if your tech blog is using AdSense - here is the plugin I would suggest https://onetech4.com/.It enables you to insert your ad blocks aligned left, center or middle in 3 sections of a post. It also provides you with the possibility to suppress ads on pages, category pages, tag pages, archives and more.
* Audio Player - To be able to insert mp3 clips or podcasts into your blog can be a problem. Audio Player is really a plugin that produces this process simple - simply develop a music folder on your internet site via FTP and then upload mp3 tracks to the directory. You can insert the built-in audio player into many posts or pages with a simple line of code - painless, simple and easy.
* Facebook Sharecount - It's no secret that social networking sites like Facebook are effective ways to produce a fanbase, but to be able to harness that power depends on a simple way to talk about your great content. Facebook Sharecount could make it possible for visitors share your posts and monitor your content.
* Foliopress Descriptions - Once your tech blog has hundreds or even 1000s of posts you will need a way to mass edit your descriptions. While the importance of meta descriptions is debated https://linustechguru.com/, I still believe that a hand written summary should really be written for every post. Foliopress Descriptions supports post excerpt, These and All In One Seo meta description fields.
* Google XML Sitemaps - If you've read my previous post on how to get indexed by Google and Yahoo you know that having a sitemap is essential. This plugin auto generates your sitemap in a nice and neat XML file and let's search engines understand the information on your own tech blog. After installing and activating the plugin Google XML Sitemaps will look after the rest.
* NextGEN Gallery - Managing your images and photo galleries can be a pain, but NextGen Gallery makes this simple. With features like auto resizing, watermarks, thumbnail creation along with gallery effects - NextGEN Gallery is vital have plugin.
* Star Rating for Reviews - Once you run a technology blog sooner or later you'll start receiving products for review. Developing a solid review is just as much about content as it is about presentation http://housebeautifully.com/.Star Rating for Reviews enables you to create ratings for the merchandise you review or even rate different aspects of the product and averages the ratings to ascertain one last score. The number of choices are limitless with the plugin - an absolute must have for anyone looking to review tech.
* TweetMeme Retween Button - If you go through the posts on TechBlogStartup you'll notice a yellow Retweet button aligned to the right. The power of Twitter keeps growing every day so rendering it easy for the reader to ReTweet great content can prove very valuable. If you've installed Google Analytics like I explained within my previous post here, then you definitely will be able to monitor so how many visitors enter your post through Twitter. If you are wondering why I haven't included ShareThis it's because I manually insert the code as opposed to utilizing a Wordpress Plugin.
* WP Super Cache - If you've heard of Digg then chances are you've heard of the Digg Effect where an article on a web site becomes so popular so quickly that the flood of traffic to the website causes the server to crash. Since WordPress blogs are designed on SQL Databases they are highly susceptible to the condition, but installing WP Super Cache can almost eliminate this threat. The plugin builds a cache of your posts and creates a fixed html page so the server load is reduced and your internet site can handle more visitors http://allibmblog.com/.If your tech blog is brand spanking new I would install the plugin although not activate it until I began to see spikes in traffic or among my articles was acquired by a major tech blog like Engadget or Gizmodo.
* All in One SEO - Search Engine Optimization is really a key ingredient to driving organic traffic to your tech blog. Writting great content is key, but once you have created that content you will need to be sure that it targets keywords and includes some basic optimization to make certain it's search engine friendly. All in One SEO does this job very well. If you are utilising the WordPress theme I personally use (Thesis) then you definitely won't need this plugin, however for pretty much every other WordPressTheme I would suggest installing it straight away so that you can start writing your custom meta descriptions
All the plugins I've mentioned above may be downloaded manually and then uploaded via FTP to your blog or you can include them from within your WordPress Dashboard - personally I prefer the latter. If you are wondering why certain plugins are not listed on my top 10 list - I simply don't see them important to a technology blog. You will realize that I do somethings with TechBlogStartup that numerous people use Plugins or Widgets to accomplish - eg. the top 6 articles aligned horizontally at the the surface of the site or the Recent Posts section in the medial side bar. For tech blogs that receive a large volume of traffic, limiting the plugins helps decrease the SQL memory load and if you've ever had a web site crash you know so how important this is.
No comments:
Post a Comment