Akismet
There is a reason that this plugin is now bundled with WordPress and that is because it is unquestionably indispensable. You have to activate it by going to the WordPress website, signing up and then getting an API key, but there is no excuse for not doing this.

Without the Akismet WordPress plugin, spammers will be leaving comments on your site at will, with ease. You will be plagued by rubbish comments that you have to delete. So make certain you activate this plugin.

Broken Link Checker
New to my preferred collection, this is a wonderful little plugin that keeps checking your posts for broken links. If any are found, let’s say a new post has an invalid link added or a site is deleted, which affects an current post, you are quickly warned. Invalid image links are also notified to you.

The benefits are that search engines and traffic are not coming across dead links and if you are linking to your own websites, then you are warned that the link needs changing.

WP Stats
I installed this one as part of another plugin. Previously I only relied on Google Analytics, but since using WP Stats I have seen the light and realised that both of these packages work well together. WP Stats provides real time reader tracking and ignores your own visits to the website, so it is more accurate. It doesn’t provide the high detail that Google Analytics provides, but it does provide all of the indispensable stats you will need – visitor source, popular pages and so on.

WP Popular Posts
This is the plugin that requires WP Stats and is really good for helping steer people about your site. For new visitors you want to highlight those posts that do well with readers, so the Popular Posts plugin displays these to your readers. This could help convert a one time visitor into a regular reader, which really ramps up your web site visitors stats!

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
There are some related posts plugins, but this is the one I always use. Again, it is a plugin around getting readers to read more and hopefully enjoy your website so that they decide to sign up for your RSS Feed or newsletter.

This one works by placing a collection of perhaps related posts at the bottom of the post that is being read, happening the theory that if they have merely read that post to completion similar writings may also be interesting.

Ultimate Category Excluder
A bit of a cheat, this one, but there are times when you decide to write something that is totally off topic and probably you don’ need it displaying everywhere. Such as, I use UCE to prevent the posts in my uncategorised category from displaying in the RSS feed.

I do this so that readers of the RSS feed are only seeing the proper posts, those that are totally on topic. If I go off topic and mouth off aboutsomething, then these are not cluttering the RSS feed.

They are my six preferred WordPress plugins that I install to every new site I create. If you have any others that you like to use, leave me a comment!

Written by Keith Lunt of How To Start A Blog. Call in if you need any help or advice with blogging for cash.

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