This is the first blog post  🙂 . Since I was in the process of setting up the site I figured it was a great time to review some of the plugins I like to use for WordPress. Plus, this is a much better first post then going on about how this site came about and all that other stuff you can read on the about page.

With no further delay I present to you 8 Great WordPress Plugins You Must Use:

1. All in One SEO Pack – A great plugin to improve the SEO on your site by giving your posts and pages unique titles and meta tags. It works great out of the box but is also highly configurable.

2. Contact Form 7 – Allows you to easily configure and setup a contact form on your site. Contact Form 7 is great for managing multiple forms. It supports captcha and Askimet to reduce SPAM.

3. DoFollow – This plugin will remove the ‘nofollow’ attribute from links in comments. I like to use this to reward readers who post great comments. If you use this plugin you will want to make sure to use Askimet and moderate comments to prevent your blog being abused with SPAM.

4. Google XML Sitemaps – Google XML Sitemaps automatically creates a new sitemap and submits it to major search engines every time you add a new page or post to your site. This plugin is great for quickly getting your site indexed by the search engines.

5. W3 Total Cache – This is a highly customizable plugin that will cache pages, objects, and your database as well as minify CSS and javascript. W3 Total Cache will increase your site’s speed while reducing server load. Check out How to Install and Setup W3 Total Cache for Beginners on WPBeginner for more information on configuring this plugin.

6. WP-DBManager – Don’t lose all your hardwork to a server crash or some other mishap. Use WordPress Database Backups to automatically backup and optimize your database. That way if something happens you can restore all your articles in no time.

7. WP Smush It – This plugin will automatically send all images you upload using the media uploader through the Smush It API. Doing this will strip out meta data, optimize compression and remove unused colors from JPEG, GIF and PNG files, which will reduce the files size. If you have an established blog it can optimize your site’s existing images.

8. Login Lockdown – You can configure Login Lockdown to limit the number of login attempts, if this limit is exceeded the IP is locked out for a period of time (which you can also configure). In addition to that you can also disable login error messages, which I recommend. This all helps to prevent brute force attacks on your blog.