WordPress is the most popular blogging platform out there, and for good reason. Besides being extremely easy to use, it is also quite flexible in what you can do with it. If all you want to do is run a personal blog on which you can share little tidbits about your life with your family and friends, all you need to do is open a free account at WordPress.com and get right to it. And if you plan on doing some serious blogging, you can open your own web hosting account and create your own stand-alone WordPress installation by downloading the core WordPress files from WordPress.org. Either way, you can personalize your blog and make it look pretty much the way you want it to.
One of the most powerful aspects of blogging with WordPress is the ability to use plugins to add functionality and spiff up the site. There is a plugin for just about every function there is related to blogging, and here is my list of must-have plugins for the serious blogger:
1 – Login Lockdown- This simple plugin makes it a lot harder for a hacker to break into your blog’s admin account by using software to try numerous login / password combinations as a brute force method of taking over your blog. After a set number of failed login attempts (set by you), the login form is disabled for a given length of time (which is also set by you). This effectively renders automated scripts that try to guess your login info ineffective.
2 – Remove My Version- By default the code for every page on your WordPress blog contains a line that tells the world which version of WordPress you’re running. Sounds like a good idea, right? Well, it isn’t. When a hacker finds a security vulnerability in a particular WordPress version, he simply uses Google to find a bunch of blogs running that version by searching for that line in the code. Then he attacks the blogs that show up in the search results. The “Remove My Version” plugin does just that, making it more difficult for hackers to identify your blog as one that can be easily attacked.
3 – WP Super Cache- When a WordPress blog receives a burst of traffic, all those hits on the WordPress files and MySQL database can reduce the speed of your blog to that of a lethargic turtle. WP Super Cache helps alleviate this problem by storing static HTML versions of your blog’s pages, then loading them into your visitors’ browers instead of brand new dynamic pages that the server must create on the fly. The result is a faster site that can handle much larger amounts of traffic without crashing.
4 – Dagon Design Form Mailer- Contact forms are handy for letting your visitors email you without having to publish your email address on your blog. They are also useful for gathering information from your visitors. There are a number of good form generator plugins available, but the one I use on all my blogs and recommend is this one from Dagon Design.
5 – Ohz’ WordPress Admin Drop Down Menu- The WordPress admin interface is pretty straightforward, but this nifty plugin makes it even easier to understand and use. Give it a try and you’ll probably never want to give it up.