With every installment of Wordpress should follow several plugins. Some to keep your blog safe, others to enhance it’s features. Nevertheless, here’s five plugins that I think you should include with each install of Wordpress that you use.

There are a lot more plugins available for Wordpress, and at least one other alternative for each that I mention below. After using these for several months however, I have to say that they’ve proven to be solid and convenient. All five have worked correctly since day one and all five have exceeded my expectations. With these running in the background, you’re free to concentrate on what your visitors will see – the part that I’m still, and will continue to work on.

Akismet

In the six or so months that I’ve been using a custom Wordpress install, Akismet has caught over 3,000 spam comments, with up to 70 coming through per day. If I had to sort through that amount manually, I would have even less free time than I already do. Thankfully, Akismet takes care of the spam and legitimate comments (known as ‘ham’) and makes me aware if it’s unsure of any particular comments. With Akismet installed, not a single spam comment has made it through onto my blog, it’s one of the most valuable plugins that I have installed, and it won’t be moving any time soon.

WP Security Scan

Is your username still ‘admin’, or your Wordpress version not sufficiently hidden? WP Security Scan checks through your entire Wordpress system to check for holes that hackers could use to gain access to your blog. Pretty much everything is covered to ensure a secure install, and you’re even provided with information about the system that’s hosting your blog and whether it’s up to date. Following a few quick instructions from this plugin will save you hours of work if something bad happens to your blog.

WordPress Database Backup

The last thing you want is for your blog to go down during an update or for an error to occur with your hosting package. If something fails, you’d need a clean install of Wordpress. But what about your settings, posts, comments? If you’re using WordPress Database Backup, that shouldn’t be a worry. Almost everything can be included in the backup, so there’s no need to loose anything if something does go wrong. What’s more, you can change the settings so that you receive the backup in an email each day/week/month, so you’ll never be far behind when you restore.

AdSense Manager

If you’d like to earn a few pennies from your blog, you’re going to want a couple of advertisements around. Not too many that they’re distracting, but enough that they can be seen. One of the simplest options to get adverts around your blog is Google AdSense. But to integrate those ad’s, you’ll need, say, a manager. AdSense Manager is my favourite option to incorporate various adverts into my blog and to control their position and longevity.

All in One SEO Pack

Quite a lot of your traffic will be directed via various search engines. For this simple reason, it’s important that your blog is correctly labeled up so the search engine ‘bots can easily find and archive your site. With All in One SEO Pack, you have control over how the search engines see your blog, allowing you to include numerous keywords/tags and metadata for your posts and pages. When correctly done, your site will appear for results when people are looking around for particular information. For example, ‘iWork vs Office’ searches prove a hit for ed-parry.com.