6 of the best WordPress Plugins for your Blog

This is my ultimate list of the best WordPress plugins (in my opinion) that will benefit your blog. From preventing spam to backing up your blog or speeding up your site, these plugins make blogging a hell of a lot more easy!

Whether you’re a newbie blogger or have been blogging for years, it’s never too late to update your plugins. I’m constantly adding in new ones I stumble upon and deleting old ones that slow my site down.

Just a note of warning, be careful and selective with the plugins you do install. I’ve had my blog hacked years ago via an insecure plugin, and another pesky plugin caused my site to crash a few weeks ago. Not sure which plugins are slowing things down? Check out P3 Profiler which creates a performance report for your site.

1. Backup Buddy

You back your blog up weekly, right? No? If the idea of dealing with FTP servers and manual backup is a bit overwhelming, then something like Backup Buddy is an easy to use and hassle-free option. With the click of a button, Backup Buddy backs up your site including its content and files, which you can download onto your computer/USB or send to your Dropbox account. It costs $80/year but I think it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.

2. Akismet

I get loads of comment spam on the blog, and Akismet does a fine job of capturing 99% of it. In fact, it’s saved me from 94,563 spammy comments in the past 6 months! It’s easy to install and set up, and it’s free for personal blogs.

3. W3 Total Cache

This plugin optimises your content to ensure your site runs smoothly and loads more quickly. My web host actually recommended this plugin to me when my site was lagging and it’s sped everything up considerably!

4. Easy Recipe

If you’ve ever wondered how I get my recipes so nicely formatted, it’s all thanks to the Easy Recipe plugin. The recipes are displayed in an easy-to-read format, stand out from the rest of the post and there is a handy print function so readers can print your recipe out to make it.

5. WordPress SEO by Yoast

This is consistently rated the best SEO plugin, optimising your blog’s SEO (that’s search engine optimisation) to hopefully increase the number of visitors to your blog by ranking your posts higher in search results.

6. Simple Share Buttons Adder

I’ve gone through a lot of social media sharing button plugins, and found the majority either ugly, not user friendly or a serious drain on performance. Simple Share Buttons are easy to customise (I made my own custom buttons below that suits my colour scheme) and I put the share buttons at the top and bottom of each post to encourage readers to share it with their friends.

Please note these plugins are for WordPress.org users only. There are only a very limited set of plugins available to those who use WordPress.com. If you’re serious about blogging, I highly suggest making a move to .org as you get so much more control of the look and functionality of your blog.

Do you have any other favourite WordPress plugins you love?