This is a guest post written by Helen Clough who writes on behalf of Integral IT Support. If you wish to write one, kindly check out our guidelines to write a guest post.
We all know WordPress is pretty amazing right out the box, but despite that, there are still room for improvements and ways to solve the common problems that webmasters and bloggers encounter when using it. Following on from a discussion we had in the, we put together 5 of the most useful plugins that should be a part of any WordPress install:
Backing Up WordPress
Let’s imagine your blog gets hacked, or you somehow corrupt your wordpress install…how do you retrieve all the posts you’ve spent hours writing and all of the comments your readers have left?
Do not believe this is a 1 in a million chance, it really occurs more than you may imagine But luckily, you need no server knowledge, and also the solution is not only simple, you are able to put it on autopilot. WP-DB-Backup is a wordpress plugin that backs up the entire wordpress MySQL database of tables that make up your blog. It also has the added feature of allowing you to schedule every day or weekly backups to be emailed to you. So if something does go wrong, you are able to restore it with minimum effort.
Redirecting Old URLS to new Ones
Maybe you have an outdated post, that’s now obsolete, and you’ve written a much fresher one. You want to direct any traffic landing on that page towards the newer version, and you are not experienced with 301 redirecting using the .htaccess file. Luckily, the Redirection Plugin has the answer. It’s easy to use and makes monitoring 404 errors very easy.
Keeping Your Visitors Engaged
A common problem is ensuring visitors navigate through your site and read much more of your content. The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) solves this. It automatically selects associated posts that might be of interest to readers and displays them in the bottom of individual posts. Increasing the opportunity of further engagement on your website.
Page Load Time
It’s important to make your page load times as low as possible to ensure your visitors remain on your site. Not only that, it’s essential for Search Engine Optimization as it’s a ranking signal to Google. WordPress can be quite slow, so the answer is – WP Super Cache.This is a caching plugin, it serves visitors static versions of often accessed pages, which decreases loading time as it no longer has to query the database thus enhancing user experience.
Letting Your Visitors Contact You
The easiest method to let your readers get in touch with you is obviously through e-mail, or perhaps yet, through a contact with form that will be displayed across your site, be it within the footer, the sidebar or on a standalone page. Contact Form 7 plugin permits this to be achieved with ease.
What are your favourite plugins that have helped you solve problems with your WordPress install?