Extend your WordPress blog’s features and security

No matter how hard WordPress (WP) developers are trying to add more and more useful features, there’s just no way they can meet every user’s individual needs. After all, there are many different ways and purposes for using this platform.

This is where plugin developers step-in. There is one problem though — currently WordPress Plugin Directory has over 5,000 plugins — how do you know what to choose? Well, that’s where we come into the picture. In this article we are going to share a couple useful plugins that enhance your blog’s features and security. Of course we are not claiming that this is the ultimate list or that you must use these plugins, however, you should at least check those plugins out, especially if you are new to WordPress.

First plugin already comes with WordPress, but it’s disabled by default. Akismet is an anti-spam plugin developed by WordPress developers themselves. To activate it, you will need to get WordPress API key which is freely available when you register on WordPress.com. Why bother? — you might ask. Well, even though it might be true that at the very beginning you will receive very small amounts of spam comments (or none at all), you will start getting more and more as your blog becomes more popular and is indexed by Google and other search engines. Take our word for it — you won’t regret.

Spam bots might prove to be not the only problem you have. By default WordPress comes with somewhat of a bug — if you enter a wrong username or password, WP will display which one of them is wrong. So if you are not using some random string of letters for your username, which you have no reason to do, someone with evil intents can quickly guess your username and then apply brute force attack to try and guess your password. Here’s where Login LockDown will come-in handy. By default, this plugin will block an IP for one hour if someone fails to login 3 times within 5 minutes. Of course you can change the default values, but let’s face it — it’s quite hard to get your own username and password wrong three times in a row.

If you want to track how many RSS subscribers you have, you will probably turn to FeedBurner service and burn your feeds through them. However, just linking a new feed from the website will not be enough. If a user clicks RSS icon the the address bar in Firefox for example, his or her subscription will not be reflected. In order to redirect all old feeds to FeedBurner, you will need to use a plugin called FD FeedBurner Plugin. It will redirect all feeds seamlessly, so you will not have to bug your readers and tell them to change feed address.

Since we’re already talking statistics, you will probably also want to track your visitors with Google Analytics (GA). If you are already using it, you know that GA required a piece of code to be placed on your site. It’s not a problem to do once, but what if you are changing WP themes quite often? Placing the code manually each time might become a real pain. Here’s where Google Analytics for WordPress will be really handy. This plugin will not only add GA code without the need to edit the template, but it will also add it’s own features such as displaying the visitor count on the website or tracking exit links (where visitors go when they leave your site).

Speaking of Google, you probably want your site to be found by it’s bots quite fast. You could sit and wait for them to come-over, but that is the opposite of fast. What you should do is submit sitemap to Google, so that it’s bots know where your blog is and what it has to offer (in terms of content). Google XML Sitemaps plugin is irreplaceable in this task. It will ping Google with your new sitemap every time you post something new. This can dramatically influence how quickly Google indexes your site.

So here they are — a few essential plugins every blogger should at least consider. Of course, we have some more up our sleeve, but we’ll keep them for later. In the mean time, would you want to share what your favorite plugins are? Maybe you already use some of the ones mentioned in this post — what are your experiences?