WordPress Plugin Basics
There are a few wordpress plugins that are musts with any wordpress installations. These are my favorites and I intalll them in wordpress website that I develop:
- Ultimate TinyMCE
Ultimate TinyMCE gives your editing the look and feel of Microsoft Word. It makes it so that you do not have to do any coding, but easily can add links, bullets, styles, font colors, lines, embed video and much more. It makes it so much easier to use your wordpress website to make posts and edit pages. This is just a sample of the possible look of your editing tool bar. Free with a premium version.
- Super Simple Google Analytics
This plugin makes it easy to add google analytics tracking to your website. After installing this plugin, set up your google analytics account and get your UA code. This code looks something like this: UA-12345455-1. If you then go to settings>super simple google analytics, enter in the code, select before <head> tag and save. You should notice that google begins tracking your website within a few hours. - Ultimate SEO
Ultimate SEO allows you to enter in custom meta descriptions, meta keywords, and title tags through out your website. This plugin also allows you to track your 404 pages. The plugin is well maintained and updated often. Ultimate SEO also allows for additional tracking and editing if you are SEO and computer savvy. Free with a premium version. - Wordfence
Wordfence Plugin is one of the best security plugins. First the plugin scans your website weekly and will send you notifications if there are any issues. These issues include plugin or WordPress core updates, as well as if you have been hacked. There are additional features if you get the premium version, but the free one is all you need. Free with a premium version. - BotBlocker
Botblocker is one of the few plugins that I recommend but it has not been updated in a while. Usually I reccommend avoid any plugin that is not updated often, but it is a basic plugin that should not lead to any security issues if not updated. The only thing that is does is switch fields in your comment box so that computer bots can’t not spam comments to you. The bots can only enter in one way and so switching it prevents them from posting. Free. - XML Sitemap
The sitemap creator does just that, it creates a sitemap that you can submit to your Google Webmaster Tools account to make sure that all your pages are being indexed. Free.