{"id":1546,"date":"2010-03-06T20:55:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T03:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=1546"},"modified":"2012-09-07T06:31:56","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T11:31:56","slug":"6-critical-wordpress-plugins-you-should-have-installed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/06\/6-critical-wordpress-plugins-you-should-have-installed\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Critical WordPress Plugins You Should Have Installed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written by <a href=\"http:\/\/sixrevisions.com\/wordpress\/6-critical-wordpress-plugins-you-should-have-installed\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jacob Gube<\/a><\/p>\n<p>WordPress, the ubiquitous open source publishing platform that powers many of your favorite blogs and web publications, also powers <a href=\"http:\/\/designinstruct.com\/\">Design Instruct<\/a> and Six Revisions. By using WordPress plugins, site owners can extend and tailor their WordPress installation to meet their needs. However, using many plugins can affect a <a href=\"http:\/\/sixrevisions.com\/web-development\/10-ways-to-improve-your-web-page-performance\/\">website\u2019s performance<\/a>, and thus, you must be highly selective in choosing the plugins you install.<\/p>\n<p>Design Instruct and Six Revisions <strong>only uses six WordPress plugins<\/strong>. We\u2019ve kept our plugins to the bare essentials\u2014any other features we add to our WordPress installation, <a href=\"http:\/\/sixrevisions.com\/tutorials\/web-development-tutorials\/using-xampp-for-local-wordpress-theme-development\/\">we develop ourselves<\/a> specifically for our sites.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh3.ggpht.com\/_TXdnLKoYLHQ\/S5MfruldHfI\/AAAAAAAADXM\/8pbsEIeQxjw\/s800\/02-01_wordpress_lead_image.jpg\" alt=\"6 Critical WordPress Plugins You Should Have Installed\" width=\"550\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In this article, we share with you the <strong>WordPress plugins that we use on our sites<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article is part of <a href=\"http:\/\/sixrevisions.com\/site-news\/design-instruct-week\/\">Design Instruct Week<\/a>, a weeklong celebration of our newly launched site, <a href=\"http:\/\/designinstruct.com\/\">Design Instruct<\/a>. This week on Six Revisions covers topics that deal with running websites and design, written by the founders\/editors of Design Instruct and Six Revisions. Be sure to check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/designinstruct.com\/articles\/site-news\/design-instruct-twitter-giveaway\/\">Design Instruct Week Twitter Giveaway<\/a>, which gives out different prizes every day of Design Instruct Week.<\/em><\/p>\n<h5>1. <a href=\"http:\/\/ocaoimh.ie\/wp-super-cache\/\">WP Super Cache<\/a><\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ocaoimh.ie\/wp-super-cache\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh3.ggpht.com\/_TXdnLKoYLHQ\/S5MfsLS74iI\/AAAAAAAADXQ\/5d1IxDO4WNo\/s800\/02-02_wp_super_cache.jpg\" alt=\"WP Super Cache\" width=\"550\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>WP Super Cache<\/em> speeds up WordPress posts and pages by creating static HTML versions of them, updating them at an interval of your choosing. This cuts back on the need for server-side processes to generate a post or page whenever a visitor requests them. After <a href=\"http:\/\/designinstruct.com\/changelog-upcoming-features\/#version-0-2\">page performance testing<\/a> on Design Instruct, we discovered that WP Super Cache single-handedly <strong>improved page response times of unprimed caches by 259.1%<\/strong>, lowering the average total page load time from 9.56s to 3.69s for the <a href=\"http:\/\/designinstruct.com\/web-design\/how-to-make-a-vibrant-portfolio-web-design-in-photoshop\/\">most content-heavy post<\/a> we have.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/wp-super-cache\/\">WP Super Cache Download Page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>2. <a href=\"http:\/\/akismet.com\/\">Akismet<\/a><\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/akismet.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh4.ggpht.com\/_TXdnLKoYLHQ\/S5MfsWx_onI\/AAAAAAAADXU\/zVBg925UKVY\/s800\/02-03_akismet.jpg\" alt=\"Akismet\" width=\"550\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The biggest annoyance a WordPress site owner will encounter is moderating comments to weed out the ones posted by guileful spammers. <em>Akismet <\/em>abates this burden by filtering out known comment spammers that are registered on their blacklist database. In the two years that Six Revisions has been using Akismet, it has caught over <strong>124,000 spam comments<\/strong> with 99.3% accuracy. This plugin saves us a lot of time so that we can focus on what\u2019s truly important in running websites: creating and publishing content.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/akismet.com\/download\/\">Akismet Download Page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>3. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.polepositionmarketing.com\/library\/wp-spamfree\/\">WP-SpamFree<\/a><\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.polepositionmarketing.com\/library\/wp-spamfree\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh3.ggpht.com\/_TXdnLKoYLHQ\/S5MftKQfr6I\/AAAAAAAADXY\/4THYr8Bs-lk\/s800\/02-04_wp-spamfree.jpg\" alt=\"WP-SpamFree\" width=\"550\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Although Akismet is great, it works only through a blacklist database of reported spammers. <em>WP-SpamFree<\/em> adds an additional layer of spam protection by using cookie-based and JavaScript-based techniques to ensure that the comment form submitter isn\u2019t using remote-site scripting or client-side scripts to automatically post comments on your site. WP-SpamFree is similar to a captcha in that it tests to see if a comment form submitter is human. This plugin eliminates the need to use a traditional captcha system that can affect <a href=\"http:\/\/sixrevisions.com\/usabilityaccessibility\/10-simple-web-accessibility-tips-you-can-do-today\/\">website accessibility<\/a>. On Design Instruct, WP-SpamFree has captured over 130 automated comments in under a month, which would have been about <strong>26% of all the comments on the site<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/wp-spamfree\/\">WP-SpamFree Download Page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>4. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arnebrachhold.de\/projects\/wordpress-plugins\/google-xml-sitemaps-generator\/\">Google XML Sitemaps Generator<\/a><\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.arnebrachhold.de\/projects\/wordpress-plugins\/google-xml-sitemaps-generator\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh4.ggpht.com\/_TXdnLKoYLHQ\/S5MftpXmllI\/AAAAAAAADXc\/6xqUC_9YNJU\/s800\/02-07_xml_sitemap_generator.jpg\" alt=\"WP-SpamFree\" width=\"550\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sitemaps.org\/protocol.php\">Sitemaps XML<\/a> file is crucial to have if you\u2019re interested in helping search engine spiders like Googlebot accurately index the content of your website. The <em>Google XML Sitemaps<\/em> plugin automatically generates and updates your Sitemaps XML file for you. It also pings search engines to let them know that there\u2019s new content on your site waiting to be indexed every time you publish and update posts and pages. For regularly updated web publications such as Design Instruct and Six Revisions, this plugin bails us out from having to manually rebuild the file and notify search engines whenever new content is published.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/google-sitemap-generator\/\">Google XMP Sitemaps Download Page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>5. <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/all-in-one-seo-pack\/\">All in One SEO Pack<\/a><\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/all-in-one-seo-pack\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh3.ggpht.com\/_TXdnLKoYLHQ\/S5MfuBhrHWI\/AAAAAAAADXg\/Ot-OJmlMfWE\/s800\/02-06_all_in_one_seo.jpg\" alt=\"All in One SEO Pack\" width=\"550\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The <em>All in One SEO Pack<\/em> WordPress plugin is packed with features that improve search engine visibility of your content. On Six Revisions, with over <strong>450,000 visitors from Google searches<\/strong> alone in the month of February, this plugin is critical in helping visitors find your content through search engines.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/all-in-one-seo-pack\/\">All in One SEO Pack Download Page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>6. <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/wp-pagenavi\/\">WP-PageNavi<\/a><\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/wp-pagenavi\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lh6.ggpht.com\/_TXdnLKoYLHQ\/S5MfuYCJyNI\/AAAAAAAADXk\/Aje0krd2Gdg\/s800\/02-08_wp-pagenavi.jpg\" alt=\"WP-PageNavi\" width=\"550\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>WP-PageNavi<\/em> is a convenient WordPress plugin that adds a pagination feature on your site so that readers can navigate to older posts easier. It\u2019s highly configurable and customizable to the way you want it to look and function. You can see WP-PageNavi in action at the bottom-left of the home page and category pages on Six Revisions, and bottom-right on Design Instruct.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/wp-pagenavi\/\">WP-PageNavi Download Page<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What WordPress plugins do you consider critical to your website or blog?<\/strong> Share it with the rest of us in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Jacob Gube WordPress, the ubiquitous open source publishing platform that powers many of your favorite blogs and web publications, also powers Design Instruct and Six Revisions. By using WordPress plugins, site owners can extend and tailor their WordPress installation to meet their needs. However, using many plugins can affect a website\u2019s performance, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5488,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/5488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}