As you probably know, WordPress is the way to go and the tool to use for a fast and painless online business project. The only problem with that is the way how WordPress works. It has some core features that allow you to create posts and pages… and maybe one or two more things. And that's pretty much it. The good thing is that there are like thousands of widgets and plugins out there that allow you to DRASTICALLY change the way WordPress operates. Rest assured I'm not about to talk about all of them now. I don't even know most of them. To be honest there's no need to do that, because once you have a need for some feature or, simply put, functionality, you can just go to the Plugin Directory section of WordPress.org and search to your heart's content.
Now. let's get down to business. I'll give you a few examples of WordPress plugins and widgets so that you can get the general picture of how all this widgets/plugins thing works in the WordPress world.
Akismet
First things first, you need to make sure that your blog does not get cluttered up with that pesky spam within a day or two. And in order to avoid that, you just need to set up your Akismet plugin. The really neat thing about this plugin is that it comes pre-installed and you just need to specify your Akismet API key. And that means just copying and pasting. That done, you're good to go
Mailchimp
The second thing you should take care of would be to make sure that your visitors can sign up for your newsletter. That might sound a bit weird, but in fact that's very logical and crucial to enable such a feature asap. The reason for that would be the fact that once you have your visitor's email address, you'll be able to contact him or her by sending your newsletter. And that will help them to check out your blog again or even become a regular there. For the newsletter feature, I'd recommend the Mailchimp widget, but you can use whatever works best for you. I like specifically their services because they allow to use it for free till you (your online business) become really big. Plus the user friendly editor they've got on board is really worth your while. Learn how to create a mailing list for your blog.
Contact Form 7
Now you need to make sure that your audience can contact you in case of need. So, let's go ahead and install the contact form 7 plugin that easy to install and set up, though you might want to go all the way deeper and add features like captcha, radio buttons and what not.
WordPress Editorial Calendar
I can tell you from my personal blogging experience there will be times when you really want to write and contribute to your blog's success, but keep in mind that you'll also have those harsh times when you're kinda in the blue and don't really want to do anything for your blog. And that's why you should consider writing a few posts when you feel like doing so. Having composed a few posts, you can publish one or two posts on a later date. The thing is that sometimes it is unbelievably hard to keep track of what date you set your post to be published on, how many posts for future publications you've got and the like. You can just install the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin that allows you to drag-n-drop your posts and see when your next post is due. I strongly recommend using this plugin because it'll save you days of frustration.
GetSocial
In this day and age – unless you live under the rock – you need to take all the things social into account, because otherwise you can land in hot water in terms of SEO and overall success of your online business. As it is really easy to install a widget that will magically take care of that, you don't really have an excuse to ignore it. Having installed the widget, you'll have a new floating box (or rather a rectangle) on the left of your post (or page). That box will have the default social networking features, such as Tweet, Like, Google+. In addition, it allows you to add custom buttons so that you can slice and dice it to meet your needs. This is a must have for anyone looking for wordpress social media plugins.
The Bottom Line on WordPress Plugins
As you can see, the more widgets you install the more things your blog can do. Though some widgets and plugins are really optional and may either work or not in your case, the must have plugins I've just touched on will enable your blog to work properly almost out of the box. If you want to be certain that you've installed all the necessary plugins and just for more info, check my ebook about must have WordPress plugins. Plus each plugin/widget chapter has a companion video so that it is really easy to follow along.
This guest post was written by Ken Von Raunch of Webdesy.com. Feel free to visit his web site to download his free wordpress guide.
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