Setting up a self-hosted Wordpress blog is one of the easiest way you can publish a professional-looking website. In fact, most bloggers choose Wordpress over any other platforms because of its ease-of-use and the huge number of free Wordpress blog plugin that it offers.
Note: There are 2 types of Wordpress sites: Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org.
Differences of Free Wordpress Blog and Self-hosted Wordpress Blog
Wordpress.com (free)
- Allows you to quickly register through their site and setup your blog
- You have access to free beautiful themes (no web design skills needed!)
- Allows you to connect and communicate with other bloggers
Wordpress.org (Self-hosted)
- Allows you to connect your blog to a hosting service
- You will have your top-level domain
- You will have access to MORE professional-looking themes just like you see on this blog
- You will have access to awesome and useful Wordpress blog plugin that will enhance your site’s performance and appearance
- You have full control of your blog
If you want to make money through blogging, I recommend using a self-hosted Wordpress blog to establish your brand. This way, you can add advertisements in the future and earn from them. Also, domains like myblog.wordpress.com don’t look professional. (No offense)
5 Reasons Why Wordpress is Great for Blogging
(Remember, we’re talking about Wordpress.org here, not Wordpress.com):- Ease-of use - Yep, all you have to do is buy a hosting and install a Wordpress app to your plan.
Related Post: How to Start a Blog and Make Money? These 5 Easy Steps Can Help
Get The WordPress Installation Blueprint that will help you setup your Wordpress site fast and easy.
- The community - There are times when you would encounter problems with your site. With Wordpress, all you have to do is type your issue on Google search (it would be better if you add the keyword wordpress.org as well) and you will find answers to your problems.
- Awesome themes for free - We love free things, and we love them more if they look so good to be free. WP offers hundreds of themes to choose from, whatever your blog is about, you will always find something that fits your niche.
- Great for ECommerce sites - You can also easily integrate an e-commerce site within your WP blog. I use Woocommerce for my e-commerce site, and believe me, it’s not as complicated as I thought it would be.
- Wordpress Blog Plugin - Of course, aside from having a great-looking site, we also need plugins to improve the performance of our blog. Most of the plugins that you will need while starting your blog are free.
What are Plugins and Why Do I Need It?
If you do not know how to tweak the codes behind your website, plugins will do that work for you. These tools are pre-coded - this means that when you need an additional feature for your blog, all you have to do is search for a plugin that can do the job for you.How to Install Wordpress Blog Plugin
Step 1. Search for the plugin by going to your Dashboard > Plugins > Add NewStep 2. Type the name of the plugin you want to install then press enter. Click the Install Now button.
Step 3. Wordpress will now start downloading the plugin to your dashboard. Click Activate Plugin.
That’s it! Depending on the plugin, sometimes you will have to configure its settings so you can maximize its benefits.
My Basic List of Wordpress Blog Plugin
The Wordpress blog plugin that you need depend on the nature of your blog. If you want your blog to run smoothly, some bloggers recommend to have at most 10 plugins installed. I tried installing only 10, but found that my site needs more.
1 Akismet
This plugin will help you manage the comments left to your blog. There are tons of spams that may leave comments that are not useful and may just mess up your comments section so I recommend using Akismet.My other blog does not have this plugin and I receive hundreds of spams per day. I don’t have the time to even sift through them anymore (to approve the real comments) because they quickly grew to thousands.
2 Auto Post Thumbnail (Optional)
If you have already started publishing a blog post, you will notice that you can set a featured image for each posts. Images will make your blog look nicer. I’m the kind of blogger who loves to add images before an article, and sometimes, adding a featured image will double the work.
Auto Post Thumbnail will automatically add a featured image to your blog even if you don’t set it, as long as you have an image within your post. This Wordpress blog plugin is extra helpful for when you want a featured image whenever you share your blog post to social media.
3 Broken Link Checker
To blog better, you need links within your articles, Broken Link Checker will regularly check your blog for broken links, or links that return errors. This way, you can fix the links earlier before Google, or a reader finds it.Disadvantages of broken links:
- Crawlers will stop crawling your page when they encounter a broken link. This means that your page may not get indexed.
- Visitors may leave your site early. This results to a higher bounce rate that will make the search engines assume that your site has low quality content, thus giving you a lower ranking. (You don’t want that)
4 CommentLuv
CommentLuv is a great plugin for bloggers who want to contribute to the community (of other bloggers). As you can see on my blog, I have this Wordpress blog plugin enabled so that when a blogger comments, their latest post will be featured after their comment.
RESULT:
5 Contact Form Maker
This is for contact pages. There are many plugins to choose from.6 Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (Optional)
This plugin will show you your site’s stats without logging into Analytics.Google.com.7 Huge IT Lightbox (Optional)
Instead of redirecting your viewer to another page, this Wordpress blog plugin will open a modal, or a lightbox, within the page whenever they click on images in your post.8 Insert Post Ads (Optional)
This is the easiest way I insert ads to within my blog post without messing up with the backend code of my site.9 Insights (Optional)
This is helpful for when you are interlinking articles within your blog. Interlinking is important because you want your readers to stay in your blog as long as possible. Insight will create another section below the page where you create new posts.Simply search for a keyword that’s relevant to what you are currently writing and your relevant blog posts will show up. You will need this Wordpress blog plugin especially when your blog is bigger and it becomes difficult to track your articles that were published months ago.
10 MailPoet Newsletters (Optional)
You want to keep your subscribers from forgetting you. MailPoet is a free tool like MailChimp that will let you send newsletters to your subscribers. What I love most about this free plugin is the ability to automatically send alerts to your readers after you publish a new post.11 No Self Pings (Optional)
To prevent your Wordpress from pinging you.
12 Related Posts
Like inter-linking, this will also help make your readers stay longer.
13 SumoMe
There are a lot of things to love about this Wordpress blog plugin. The two features that I use for this blog is the Email list builder (in case you saw a pop up that asks you to subscribe to my blog - that’s how it works), as well as the SumoMe Share (those social media icons you see floating on the left side). SumoMe Share is mobile friendly and will know if your user is viewing your site from a small screen. Instead of showing on the side, SumoMe will show on the bottom of the screen.14 WP Super Cache
This caches your pages whenever a visitor comes in. It gives the illusion that your site is loading faster than it really does. Happy reader = the longer they stay.15 Yoast SEO
One of the most important Wordpress blog plugin that I use. Yoast SEO will not only help you enhance your on-page SEO, it also has a built-in sitemap that is essential for indexing your site.Also, there are some Wordpress blog sites that encounter problems with featured images when sharing their contents to social media. Yoast eliminates this problem with their “Social” feature.
These are the 15 Wordpress blog plugin that I normally use to enhance my site’s performance and appearance. Do you have other plugins that you find helpful? I’d love to hear about them on the comments below.
This post is very helpful to bloggers who used WP for their sites. Unfortunately, I am using G+ for all my sites because it's easy to connect with Google plus which helped with my adsense all along.
ReplyDeleteHi Terinah, there are some great wordpress plugins listed here and Yoast for your onpage seo is very important. Wordfence is another good free plugin for security against hackers.
ReplyDeleteI use Wordpress, too. I think I have some of the plug-ins listed here but I stopped tweaking my site several years ago. I think I need a site revamp. I am still thinking about it though.
ReplyDeleteI like wordpress because of its professional look. It prefer self hosted sites because of more leeway on the features.
ReplyDeleteWordpress is easier to use these days compared to before and I really appreciate the plugins that they have, it improves blogging so much for me. It's perfect for beginners and for bloggers that are planning to switch to a different platform.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you that self-hosted site/blogs are better than the tempting free hosted platforms. I don't want to wake up one day and have my content deleted!
ReplyDeleteI started with a free Wordpress for about 2-3 years before I shifted to my self-hosted Wordpress blog. I agree with you that you have more control and lots of free plugins that can be useful to your site. I'm also glad to encounter some plugins you've mentioned here which I haven't heard before.
ReplyDeleteSo many options for Wordpress. I wish I read this when I was deciding which to go for between Blogger and Wordpress. I did not know that Wordpress.org is not the same as Wordpress.com. What is the difference?
ReplyDeleteNice article and a good checklist. I'm surprised I actually don't have a few of the above plugins!
ReplyDeleteChecking out MailPoet Newsletters now!
Great tips! I have a lot of these plugins! I agree that Wordpress has great themes.
ReplyDeleteGood one. Useful list of plugin. I use blogger though!
ReplyDeletei really needed this.. just bookmarked this post and i'll be reading it again as i'll be updating my blog in the next few day.. really appreciate this. Great blog by the way! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of shifting to wordpress soon, so this one is immensely helpful. I especially love the tips about the plugins
ReplyDeleteI'm not familiar with wordpress.. Been using blogspot for since I start blogging until now...
ReplyDeleteI am not a Wordpress user now, I shifted to blogspot.
ReplyDeleteActually my first blog post come from a Wordpress platform, but I stop using it because there are some things that I don't like about it.
Thank You! :)
ReplyDeleteIt's an awesome free newsletter plugin :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your recommendation :)
ReplyDeleteWordpress indeed gives you loads of options. I do use some of the plug-ins you have mentioned.
ReplyDelete