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The Best Wordpress Plug-Ins For Business | Toilet Paper Entrepreneur Blog

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1. Security Plugins Baby!

I'm sure there are a TON of fun plugins that will be shared here today, but I have learned the hard way how important security plugins for WordPress websites are. I recently had a client have her website hacked into even though we had added the security plugins we knew to be important. There is so much more to keeping your blog secure than I realized, and those evil hackers get busier every day coming up with new ways to wreak their random havok on vulnerable sites.

Thanks to Norma Maxwell of Norma Maxwell Internet Marketing | Web Design

2. SEO Blogger

This sits in Mozilla so not *technically* a plugin. But extremely widely used by wordpress bloggers http://labs.wordtracker.com/seo-blogger

Essentially it helps you optimise your text and add keywords on the fly.

A must have for any SEO!

Thanks to Max Holloway of Wordtracker

3. A Little Birdie Told Me...

My favorite WordPress plugin is Favorite Tweets (or Tweet-stimonials) because it is the easiest way to provide visitors to my site social proof about my business. Simply 'favorite' tweets directed at you or your business that you want to share with others and, once installed, Tweet Favorites will do the rest! Nowadays, traditional testimonials are going social. Keep up with Favorite Tweets!

Thanks to Tara Nelson of Design Flirt

4. Hmm... Hard To Have Just One Favorite Plugin

It's hard to have just one favorite because functionality without security is a recipe for disaster. BUT, if I had to choose just one, it would be the All In One SEO plugin, because without traffic, there is nothing to protect. Also, it helps create the functionality for using WordPress as a website and not just a blog.

Thanks to Anthony Kirlew of AKA Internet Marketing

5. Widget Wrangler

I love the Widget Wrangler for Wordpress. It is a way to organize and arrange widgets per page. If you use wordpress and want to display unique sidebar content on each page, you need Widget Wrangler by Jonathan Daggerhart.

Thanks to Kimberly Miller of Leaflet PR

6. Coding For User Friendliness

We build a lot of Wordpress sites and mainly for other users. A nice addition to WP2.9 and later 3.0 was the ability to create Custom Post Types allowing users to not only "Add New Post" but also to have a section for "Add New Job", or "Add New Testimonial", or really any other posting that's not your traditional blog post.

We have been able to do this programmatically for some time now, but we really save a bunch of time by using the Custom Post Type UI plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/

Not only can you easily set up custom post types, but also taxonomies. It makes it easier to turn Wordpress into a fully functioning CMS.

Thanks to William Wnekowicz of Altum Design, Inc.

7. My Favorite Wordpress Plugin - Redirection


My favorite plug in is Redirection. It allows us to ensure any pages that have been moved or no longer exist on a redesigned site are redirected properly using a 301 redirect. The 301 redirect is important to make sure search engines know the content has been moved permanently, so our clients don't lose any page ranking they have acquired.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

Thanks to Alex Garcia of KGBTexas .communications

8. Mingle Provides A Focussed Discussion Forum

My current favourite WordPress plugin is "Mingle" and "Mingle Forum" that allows you to create a community on your WordPress blog. I'm a "solopreneur" running a personal branding business for people looking for work or starting their own businesses and people have questions! I'm not the only one with suggestions or answers - so we're mingling.

Mingle is a non-commercial plugin that is easy for someone with a moderate familiarity with WordPress to install and run.

Thanks to Beth Campbell Duke of CampbellDuke Personal Branding

9. Easily Customize Widgets... Without Code!

TS Custom Widgets allows you to easily select customize which of your sidebar widgets appear on each page/post of your blog, giving you a ton of customization without having to do a lot of coding! All you have to do is click on the widget and select which posts/pages you would like it to appear on... this has saved me TONS of time (and my clients $$) in programming!

Thanks to Lisa Tarrant of HelpMeLisa

10. Unleash Your Wordpress Searches With Search Unleashed

We like Search Unleashed because it improves the standard WP blog search engine widget with full text searching across posts, pages, comments, titles and URLs. Searches take into account data added by other plugins, and all search results are contextually highlighted. You can also highlight incoming searches from popular search engines. Shows full log of searches/referrals. Plenty of options and control. Very neat!
http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/search-unleashed/

Thanks to James Prior of IRIS Legal Software & Services

11. The Only Backup You Need

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/backupwordpress/

It doesnt matter who you are… everyone needs to backup their website! And with this wordpress plugin, its a snap! BackUpWordPress backs up database and files in one click, which is extremely convenient. You can even schedule it to do so automatically.

Thanks to Ben Thompson of Studiofluid | Los Angeles Branding & Design

12. Automatically Schedule Update Ads And Content!

I love AdRotate - it allows you to easily add and manage ads, set them to go up and down on certain dates, and more. The interface is incredibly easy-to-use, it offers a preview of what the ad looks like inside the Wordpress dashboard, allows you to add the ad groups via PHP code or an easy shortcode, and more.

For me, it's a must-have in scheduling ads to go up or come down at a certain time. No more having to manually switch ads at the stroke of midnight!

Thanks to Carrie Isaac of Denver Bargains

13. SlideDeck Brings Sites To Life

One of my favorite WP plugins is SlideDeck: http://www.slidedeck.com/. SlideDeck's plugins can be used to showcase media galleries, featured content, product demos on your site, and more. It gives website owners the ability to share their content in a clear and engaging way, by breaking content up into bite-sized slides that provide an overview to users/readers and a clear path to learn more about whatever they choose.

Thanks to Morgan Brown of ScoreBig

14. WP Blog To Membership Site In Less Than One Minute

If you work with clients, have a membership site or even offer downloadable products, you need to have WishList Member for your WordPress Blog. WishList Member is a plugin that automatically turns your WordPress site/blog into a membership-based program! I currently use it to run our membership area for the International Association of Women Entrepreneurs Online (IAWEO). It's so easy-to-use that you can have a membership site up-and-running in less than one minute!

Thanks to Jenna Drew of International Association Of Women Entrepreneurs Online

15. Google Found Me Because Of All-In-One Seo Pack

Do you write great blog posts but are waiting around for people to actually find them? Search engine optimization is a great way to get your content found and ranked high in a Google search.

Google's algorithm focuses more on context than content. The plug-in All-In-One Seo Pack for WordPress, allows you to place your targeted keyword phrase in the title, description and keywords section of your webpage. This is exactly the type of context that Google is looking for.

Thanks to Paul Tobey of Business Training

16. Add SEO Value When Using Scripts

My favorite Wordpress plugin is Exec-PHP because it allows me to execute PHP code within my posts and pages. This means that I can get SEO value from autogenerated script content such as RSS feeds, coupons, and product catalogs.

Thanks to Tricia Meyer of Helping Moms Connect

17. Don't Let This Kill Your Blog Stone Dead!

Many Wordpress blog owners are a little hazy about the back end working of their blog. Your blog stores all of your valuable posts etc in a database on the hosting server. If those valuable databases get lost, or corrupted, then your blog is gone for good!

Don't let this happen to you!

My favourite plugin is the WP-DB-Backup plugin that saves backup copies of these valuable databases. So, letting you, and your blog, breath a sigh of relief if anything goes wrong.

Thanks to Ian Greenwood of Www.IanGeenwood.com

18. Speed Is Everything!

I've tried many Wordpress Plugins on my sites, and the most useful that I've found is WP Super Cache. Essentially, it speeds up your site. It does it by generating a static html file and display it to the majority of your visitors. In this era, nobody has enough patience to wait for your site to load.

Tests at Amazon can attest to this: every 100 ms increase in load time of Amazon.com decreased sales by 1% (Kohavi and Longbotham 2007).

Best thing about it? FREE!!!

Thanks to Ken Siew of 180-Day Marketing

19. Best WP Plugin

My favorite Wordpress Plugin is W3 Total Cache.
It's not an obvious plugin that readers will see. But what it does it help my site load faster and more efficiently, factors that Google's search engines are taking into consideration now.
Having a great looking site is nice, but if it's too slow to load a reader won't stick around to see it. Then everything you've worked hard for becomes moot.

Thanks to Craig Brokowski of Free From Broke

Compiled by Mike Michalowicz, Author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

via toiletpaperentrepreneur.com