Small Business Owner Insights

One of the great things about WordPress and the chief reason I use it as the foundation for all my blogs is the incredible amount of customization you can achieve using plugins. I was helping someone set up a blog for the first time this past weekend and I thought about all the plugins I use that I take for granted.

Here, in no particular order, is a list of the Plugins I use on this blog:

1. Sidebar Widgets: The best way to customize your theme. I hard coded everything on every blog for about 6 months, then saw the light and switched to Widgets. One of the best things I ever did.
2. Top Commentators: Another must have, this plug-in allows you to have a list of commentators in your sidebar, noting the number of comments each has made. IMHO, anything I can do to help build a sense of community is a good thing.
3. Get Recent Comments: I spent all morning one day hunting this plug-in down after I saw it (or one similar) on Wendy’s blog. I liked seeing the recent comments and trackbacks, and I liked the traffic I got from her readers who clicked on my name on her homepage because of it. Note: Out of the box this plug-in is not that impressive, but it is VERY customizable.
4. Sociable: This is how we get those cool buttons at the bottom of the post where you can submit the post to Digg, Stumbleupon, or the like. [We dropped this one for stylistic reasons]
5. WordPress.com Stats: A new toy for those of us who are stats addicts. The thing I like most is that it tells you what links were clicked on. That is good stuff to know.
6. Akismet: If you have no other plugins on your blog, you simply must get this one to virtually eliminate comment spam from your life. This comes preinstalled on Wordpress, so there is no excuse for not using it. The software does require an API key however. You can get a free key by signing up for a WordPress account.
7. FeedBurner FeedSmith: This plugin takes all my feeds and pushes them through Feedburner, so I can get an accurate count of subscribers. (You should subscribe so you can get in on the fun!)
8. Dofollow: I have talked about this plugin in greater detail in the past, but the short version is it allows Google to follow the links in the comments so each comment “counts” as far as page rank is concerned.
9. WP-ContactForm: This handy plugin creates a customisable form (see mine on my Contact page) that will prevent email spam.
10. MyBlogLog Widget: This one puts in the pretty list of readers in the sidebar. Click on anyone’s picture to be taken to their profile page and see the blogs they author.
11. Subscribe To Comments: This places a check box under the comment form. If checked, the commenter will receive an email when a new comment is made to the post. Another community building thing.
12. What Would Seth Godin Do: This plugin allows a custom message to be displayed to new readers of your blog. Now, the first 3 times a new visitor reads my blog, they get asked to sign up for my RSS feed. After that, they are left alone.
13. All in One SEO Pack: Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog

Just as a side note, I noticed the overwhelming majority of the plugins I use are focused on community building of one sort or another. In the past, it was all about how many people came to your website. The future, however, will be built by the people who build the best communities.