Essential wordpress plugins for blogging

Maria
July 26, 2015

This is a list of the essential WordPress plugins that I use for blogging. It’s been sitting in my drafts for ages, and I have finally gotten around to finishing it. Have a read-through – do you use any of these already?

1. Broken links checker
This does what it says on the tin. A very useful plugin that lets you know of any broken links, images or redirects on your site. You can set it up to notify you by email or via your WordPress dashboard.

2. WP Smush
This plugin helps reduce the file size of your images without losing quality thus enabling your site to load faster. Once installed and activated, you simply continue to add images into your media library as normal, and it does all the work for you reducing image sizes by up to 10%.

3. WordPress SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly images automatically adds in alt and title attributes to all your image tags which helps improve traffic from search engines.

4. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
I’ve found this plugin so useful as it has meant that I don’t need to login to analytics separately to see my stats. I can see my analytic numbers just by viewing my WordPress dashboard.

5. Update drafts backup and restoration
If you have a blog or website its pretty essential to back up regularly and that means not just your blog posts but your WordPress theme, files and database too. This plugin allows you to set up a regular backup schedule that can be emailed or automatically backed up onto cloud services such as Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and more.

6. Revive Old posts
You can set up this plugin to automatically tweet out your old posts at set intervals, how many posts you want to share each time and also exclude any categories. For example, I have excluded anything under the “competition” category.

7. Thank me later
I use this plugin to thank readers on my site for commenting on my blog posts. You can set up a tempate for your thank you email and ask them to check back for a reply.

8. WordPress Editorial Calendar
This is very useful to see all of your scheduled posts in a monthly format (are any of you that organised because I seem to be much more of a write then publish sort of person?) On the occasions where I have been organised enough though – this has come in very handy. The great thing is you can also drag and drop posts directly into the calendar and edit them from there too.

9. WP Drafts for friends
This plugin is great if you want to send a post to be proofed or checked over by a brand or a friend without actually publishing the post live. It cleverly generates a unique link only they can access and you can also set how long the unique link can be visible for. I’ve used this a couple of times and it’s really simple to use.

10. Custom Pinterest Pin It button
There are alot of pinterest plugins out there but I was looking for something where I could add my own custom “Pin It” image to be inline with the design of my blog. This plugin does the job nicely.

What are your WordPress essential plugins? Drop me a comment – I’d love to know what they are.

About The Author

Hello and welcome to Suburban Mum! I'm Maria and I'm mum to two boys - E who's 14 and M who's 11. This blog is about my family, the ups and downs of being a working mum and everything in between. If you want to find out more about me and my family head over to our About us page.

11 thoughts on “Essential wordpress plugins for blogging”

Fola Lewis
26th July 2015 at 11:04 pm

Fab recommendations, i’ll have to keep coming back each time I try one and then try another. Great post, thanks for sharing!

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1. Suburban Mum
  1st August 2015 at 1:44 pm
  
  Glad you find it useful – I have loads more I use so may write another post in the future
  
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alison
27th July 2015 at 6:04 pm

This is very helpful, thank you. I’m planning on switching over to a Premium WordPress site in a few months, so this will come in very handy. #brilliantblogposts

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1. Suburban Mum
  1st August 2015 at 1:46 pm
  
  Good luck with the switch Alison. If you need help with any of it give me a shout as I may be able to help x
  
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Julie S.
28th July 2015 at 8:39 pm

Ooh this is a great list. The WP Smush and the SEO images are new to me, I’ll have to check those out 🙂

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1. Suburban Mum
  1st August 2015 at 1:47 pm
  
  WP Smush is great and so easy to use!
  
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A Cornish Mum
31st July 2015 at 10:50 pm

I already use some of these and will definitely be checking the others out! Thanks for linking up to #TenThings Stevie xx

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1. Suburban Mum
  1st August 2015 at 1:48 pm
  
  Thanks for hosting Stevie! I use loads of others too so may create another post in the future. x
  
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Dianne
1st August 2015 at 8:37 pm

I use blogger platform for my blog, but will definitely look at some of these plugins – especially no 5 for our Company website which is WordPress based #TenThings linky Dianne

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A Moment With Franca
7th August 2015 at 4:24 pm

Great list! I have some of them but there are a few that I haven’t tried so will check them now! Thanks for sharing, x #TheList

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Davis Brown
13th August 2015 at 7:50 am

Thanks Maria. Very informative write-up. Wasn’t aware of these plugins you shared. Worth Sharing . I am going to add some of these essential plugins on my WordPress blog templatetoaster .

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