10 free WordPress plug-ins for bloggers

TipsMake.com - If you are a blogger using WordPress, the following article will provide you with free powerful support plug-ins, help you build a perfect blog.

In today's blog boom, anyone can publish a page of their own. However, to stand out, a blog needs to have many other factors than its content appeal. Well-designed news pages need a reasonable presentation layout, providing all the necessary tools for authors and readers to post, search and share information easily.

Content management system (CMS) is a means to manage data and tools, in which WordPress is one of the most popular CMS. One reason for the popularity of WordPress is the huge plug-in support repository with over 4000 plug-ins, providing endless bloggers with the option to expand and customize the blog.

Here are the 10 most essential WordPress plug-ins for bloggers:

1, Dagon Design Form Mailer

When visiting any website, you always see 5 basic sections: 'About' page (About), 'Contact' page (Contact Us), search box, RSS and 'Site map' (Site map). In it, the 'Contact' and 'Site map' sections need to be created using plug-ins.

If you want to give readers a way to contact you without having to publish your e-mail address, you can ask for help from plug-ins to create a contact Webform. Although WP Contact Form is an extremely easy-to-use plug-in, Dagon Design Form Mailer excels in flexibility. This plug-in provides a lot of input methods for your readers, such as the text field, radio button, checkbox (checkbox), dropdown menu, and calendar. Data can be saved on the server or e-mailed to both the sender and the recipient.

With the flexibility of this plug-in, accompanied by a complete documentation, you can apply it to receive feedback from readers, schedule events, create registration forms, create a booking form. etc .

2, Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

Dagon Design Form Mailer author also offers another great plug-in that is Dagon Design Sitemap Generator for WordPress. This plug-in allows you to create a site map - a tool that makes it easy to get a complete overview of website content.

To use Sitemap Generator, you just need to activate it and set aside a page that contains this HTML tag to call this plug-in (the 'Site Map' page). From then on, every information you post on your WordPress blog will be recorded in your site map (except, of course, you don't want to).

3, Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator

Add a plug-in you should use, which is Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress. This plug-in creates a special template page map that Google uses to identify the content of your blog. Putting the page map in XML on Google Webmaster Tools not only improves the likelihood of your blog being found by Google but also helps you detect broken links and inaccessible pages.

4, Google Analyticator

It's hard to serve readers well if you don't get some information about them. For example, where do they come from? Which operating system and browser do they use? Which pages and articles are read?

You can find all the above information thanks to Google Analyticator. Sign up for a free account on Google Analytics, activate this plug-in, then the necessary code will automatically be added to all pages on your blog. The collected monitoring data helps you to know how many visitors visit your blog every day, which pages on the blog get a lot of views. From this very useful information, you can understand readers' preferences, thereby selecting the appropriate content to post in the next time.

WordPress.com Stats is also a plug-in with similar capabilities but more limited analytical information. Indeed, with a free service like Google Analyticator, the information you get is amazing.

5, Simple Tags

The version of WordPress 2.3 that appeared in September 2007 updated the function of adding tags (tags) to the article, helping the author classify articles by keywords. However, when the number of posts increases, the number of keywords becomes massive, cumbersome, difficult to manage and exploit effectively without the help of plug-ins such as Simple Tags. Simple Tags add three items to the post menu, which are: Manage Tags, Mass Edit Tags and Auto Tags. Manage Tags provide the ability to add - edit - delete keywords in bulk. Mass Edit Tags lists all keywords, allowing you to edit keywords of 100 items at once. Auto Tags will automatically add keywords to articles that meet your predefined requirements.

Also Simple Tags has a number of other options, such as: searching for special words in the article and linking it to the list of articles with those keywords; allow authors to put keywords for each article or for each page; search and suggest relevant keywords; Search for articles with similar keywords and list them as 'Related Articles' on blogs, on RSS or both.

If you are a person who likes to write articles without considering article subdivision and linking, perhaps Simple Tags will not be of any benefit. However, this is really a very useful plug-in, making it easy for both you and your readers to find and search information.

6, All in One SEO Pack

Search engine optimization (Search Engine Optimization - SEO) is 'miracle' according to an expert on ComputerWorld. In fact, taking care of content and code to improve website rankings on search engines like Google brings many clear benefits.

If you want your blog to be easily found by search engines, you can consult and follow SEO tutorials. However, if you want to save time and still achieve the same effect, All in One SEO Pack will be a great choice for you. With this plug-in, you can set descriptions and keywords for your blog as well as each article by default. All this information will be placed in the HTML section of the blog - where readers do not see it but the search engines see it clearly.

The main object you target - frequent visitors to your blog - are your readers, and your blog is written for them. But with 'miracle' All in One SEO Pack, please be assured that readers will come to you first.

7, Exec-PHP

WordPress is written in PHP flexible scripting language. However, it is impossible to directly use PHP code in blog posts. This is if you don't have Exec-PHP.

Why do you want to embed PHP code in your posts? There are many cases, such as when you want to turn off the auto-formatting feature of WordPress's text - just one line of PHP code is enough. Sometimes you can't find any plug-ins that accomplish what you want, but only a few lines of code, the problem will be solved.

By default, WordPress does not allow embedding PHP code, partly because of security issues. If a malicious piece of code appears on your blog, WordPress will ignore it safely. Use Exec-PHP carefully to exploit the benefits of this plug-in.

8, NextGen Gallery

WordPress 2.5 version introduces a library that allows uploading and managing files. But this library is only suitable for storing photos or PDF documents to insert into the article. If you want a real photo management library, try the NextGen Gallery.

NextGen accepts uploading images via HTTP or FTP with both image formats (* .jpg, * .gif, etc.) and compressed formats (* .zip). Once in the photo library, each photo will have its own title, description and keyword based on the original information from the Exif or XMP metadata of the image. The photo library can be arranged automatically using the above information, or you can manually arrange by drag-and-drop. Related photos will be combined into an album. Thumbnails and display sizes of images can be adjusted arbitrarily, making it easy to fit in with your blog.

If you intend to build a real photo blog site - providing and presenting photos - integrate professional photo services like Flickr. However, if your blog only needs occasional photo demonstrations, or you want everything to be integrated right into WordPress without having to sign up for another service, NextGen will be the right choice.

9, Subscribe to Comments

A complete blog is an indispensable interaction between the author and the reader. You need to listen and respond to your comments, creating useful discussions and exchanges. One advice for you is to help readers send comments as easily as possible.

Subscribe to Comments adds an optional check box to the comment section. Normally WordPress always requests to enter an e-mail address when sending a comment, which Subscribe to Comments will send a message to the commenter's mailbox every time a new comment is made.

Without this plug-in, there will be many cases where visitors to your blog leave questions without returning to the answers. Subscribe to Comments acts as a bridge between you - the blog owner - and the reader, as well as between you reading together.

10, AJAX Comment Preview

You probably won't want to post an article without clicking the 'Preview' button to preview it. Therefore, if you are a reader, you will also want to preview your comment when submitting it. The AJAX Comment Preview plug-in is exactly what you need.

With the AJAX Comment Preview, your comments will be converted as if they were posted without having to refresh (refresh, reload) the site. Thanks to that, readers can revise their comments for comments before pressing Submit button. Not only is an effective preview tool, AJAX Comment Preview is also a great tool to try to see if your blog accepts HTML or BBCode, making formatting comment more convenient.