WordPress Plugin Tools Explained

Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 11:07 pm

WordPress plugins or WordPress plugin tools are snippets of programming code, sometimes called scripts, that add custom functions and features to your WordPress blog so that you can tailor it to do the things you want to do. The WordPress core code is the stuff the programmers wrote to make it run on your computer. It’s designed to be lean to minimize code bloat yet have maximum flexibility and so it would be impractical to include more than a couple of plugins.

Two plugins come with your copy of WordPress. One is Akismet, a script that checks comments made on your blog to see if they may be spam. It saves what it thinks is spam for a period so that you may examine it. It automatically deletes it after 15 days.

The second default plugin is Hello Dolly, the world’s first official WordPress plugin. It places a random lyric from “Hello Dolly,” sung most famously by Louis Armstrong, in the upper right of your Administration Panels on every page but the Plugins panel. It has no other function except to symbolize hope and enthusiasm.

Most WordPress users only need a few, if any plugins. They will do well with the default Akismet plugin for dealing with comment spam and maybe one to assist with customized post listings.

Advanced WordPress users may want plugins that will provide frequently updated weather reports, post word counts, rating systems, and improve the search engine optimization of their blog.

Internet marketers use blogs as well as static sites as tools to earn their living and they need WordPress plugin tools that will make WordPress into a money making tool for them. The plugins they use position AdSense and other advertising on their blogs, and help them sell their products or products they are affiliates for.

They also need and use plugins for search engine optimization, attract and analyze traffic, place advertisements, build and manage content through data feeds and RSS feeds, and many other things the WordPress core was not designed to do and cannot do by itself.

There are hundreds of plugins available for WordPress, and more are being created everyday. Most of them are free and many can be found at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/. This is the “official” source. There are many more sources for free plugins. Google will help you find many of them as well as sources for premium and highly specialized plugins. I’ll be posting more sources, both free and premium, in future posts.

Plugins, whether free or not will come in one of six categories.

Fixes and tweaks is one. Though WordPress is the best blog system available, you’ll find a thing or two that doesn’t do the job just as you want it done. I’d also include the automatic updaters in this category.

Functionality plugins is the second category. Though I can appreciate trying to keep code bloat to a minimum, there are some things that should have been built into WordPress. For example, a good site map generator should be built in. Fortunately, there are very good ones for free.

Analytics and metrics plugins are not just for internet marketers. Everyone needs to know what is going on with their blog. A couple of these plugins will give you information about who’s coming to your blog, how long did they stay, and where did they come from.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugins will help you get more traffic to your blog. Though WordPress is a well optimized content management system as it stands with out a plugin, it could use a little help in maximizing incoming traffic.

Social media plugins are key to getting a lot of traffic to your blog. The linking that you get through social media works hand in hand with your blog SEO.

And finally, tools for the internet marketer will complete the categories. These are, among others, the plugins that are used by affiliates to import product data feeds from online and offline stores, the plugins that automatically add content to blogs, and plugins that place and rotate advertising on blogs.

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