What are the minimal essential WordPress plugins
for our Monetizing Blog Experiment
As part of our Blog Monetization Experiment, I will first show you the recommended essential WordPress plugins. Most of them are recommended by John Chow. Two of the WordPress plugins are also recommended by George Brown – so you would think I would have them as “essential” WP Plugins. Read on to see why I didn’t install them.
Recommended Essential WordPress Plugins by “my” Internet Gurus
| WordPress Plugin | Recommended by | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| All in One SEO pack | George Brown, John Chow | use WordPress SEO instead |
| Optimal Title | (already part of WordPress SEO) | |
| Google XML Sitemaps | George Brown, John Chow | (already part of WordPress SEO) |
| Akismet | John Chow | comes with WP. |
| Subscribe to Comments 2.0 | John Chow | use Jetpack by WordPress.com |
| Sidebar Widget | John Chow | (already part of Jetpack) |
| After the Deadline | John Chow | (already part of Jetpack) |
| AdSense Deluxe | John Chow | no longer available. |
| Feedburner Feed Replacement | John Chow | no longer available |
| Related Posts (by Mr. Wasabi) | John Chow | no longer available |
| Recent Comments | John Chow | comes with WP (in widgets) |
| Show Top Commentators | John Chow | seems old and inactive |
| Digg This | John Chow | seems very old, with no new updates. Not found within WP Plugins Directory |
| RunPHP | John Chow | seems very old, with no new updates. Not found within WP Plugins Directory |
| Text Link Ads | John Chow | (need to be approved as Text Link Ad publisher first) |
I did not install all of the above recommended essential Word press plugins.
Why Didn’t I install all the recommended essential WordPress Plugins?
Based on the recommendations, the two most essential Word Press plugins would be:
- All in One SEO Pack and
- Google XML Sitemaps
I didn’t install either of them. Instead I installed WordPress SEO (by Yoast) – but only after doing much research. I chose WordPress SEO because:
- it comes highly recommended (sorry, I lost my research links)
- it’s popularity is climbing much faster than All in One SEO Pack at the moment
- from the comparison-image below, you can see that my chosen WordPress SEO (right) has better star ratings
- and though WordPress SEO has not been downloaded as many times, it must be kept in mind that the All in One SEO Pack has been around for a much longer period
- PLUS the WordPress SEO by Yoast comes included with XML sitemaps and the Optimal Title functionality. So I no longer need to install the other recommended essential plugins: Google XML Sitemaps & Optimal Title. Kills
twothree birdies with one plugin!
Comparing 2 top WordPress plugins for SEO
As you can see from the table on “Recommended Essential WordPress Plugins”, many of the recommended wp plugins are no longer available. And they are also, in my opinion, not entirely essential for me to get them right now. I may take time to find alternatives for them later on.
Three of John Chow’s essential WordPress plugins: Subscribe to Comments 2.0, Sidebar Widget, After The Deadline are included in the highly popular Jetpack by WordPress.com plugin. So I installed that instead. Killing another three birdies with one stone! And of course Jetpack by WordPress.com has
Akismet, comment spam killer plugin comes installed with a WordPress installation. So just activate it. API Key needed. Just follow simple instructions after you activate.
The AdSense Deluxe plugin, though John recommends it highly, does not seem to be available anymore. Hence, after researching, I chose to install Ad Injection.
My Starting Essential WordPress Plugins
This below shows my current set of installed and activated essential Word Press Plugins.
My Starting Point: Essential WordPress Plugins
How to Configure the WordPress Plugins
Because the settings and configurations on some of these plugins is not as straight forward as one would hope, I will cover them in detail. The links below in the Summary box should become active as each piece of how-to information is written.
I will also explain a bit more about what each of these plugins do when I deal individually with the how-to steps for each of these WordPress plugins.
How to Activate Akismet WordPress Plugin
Except for Akismet which is real easy – you just Activate it. You will be asked for an Akismet API key.
If you already have one, you can use the same one over multiple independent WordPress (self-hosted) sites.
If you don’t have one, just for the easy instructions to get one and activate the plugin.
How do I find the WordPress Plugins section?
For the true WordPress newbie, you get to your plugins (to edit settings, delete, and/or add) via:
Links to find the Source of the Plugins:
- Akismet
- WordPressSEO (by Yoast)
- WP Super Cache
- Jetpack by WordPress.com
- Ad Injection (I have installed this but won’t actually be setting it up nor using it till later. It is mainly for running ads – which it is advisable not to do till one has at least 30+ pages [Source: SBI (Site Build It) training]
Summary: Essential WordPress Plugins
As part of our Blog Monetization Experiment, this is a list of minimal essential WordPress plugins I install for any of my new WP sites. The order is not really important, but I have listed them in the order of how I did them anyway.
Installed Essential WordPress Plugins – click on link for how-to and configuration details.
- Akismet (see note above on how to activate Akismet)
- WordPress SEO (by Yoast)
- WP Super Cache
- Jetpack by WordPress.com
- Ad Injection
Reference for those who must have more:
- Make Money Online With John Chow dot Com (free e-book by John Chow, 2007)
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