Step 4 - Download Wordpress Plugins
Step 4 is just about downloading files and will take you about 15 minutes to download and organize your chosen plugins.
What are Wordpress Plugins?
Wordpress plugins are small building blocks that enhance the functionality of your Wordpress blog or site. There is a very large community of programmers building plugin that will do pretty much anything you can imagine or need for your blog. Need an enhanced photo gallery? Done. Need to connect your blog posts to Twitter? Done.
Which Plugins Do I need?
That's what Step 4 is all about. We walked through every single Wordpress plugin to find the best of the best (we'll continue to blog about new plugins as they appear almost daily). Below you'll find 2 lists. The first are the essential plugins that you need to download to complete this step. The second list has a breakdown of the best plugins that you will probably need in the future or might appeal to you right now. Download these if they sound like they'll help with what you're planning for your site.
The Wordpress Plugin Chart
We've searched and read through every single plugin available to Wordpress bloggers and our chart will show you:
- Which plugins you must have for all Wordpress blogs
- A general list of other cool plugins that might inspire your creativity and help you achieve your goals.
Begin Downloading Plugins
As per Step 3, you should have a 'One Night Site' folder on your desktop. Create a Plugins folder inside this now.
Essential Wordpress PluginsPlease download ALL of these to the 'Plugins' folder you just created in the 'One Night Site' folder. Just click the big red shiny button on each page to download. |
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| Plugin Name | Description | Download Link | Notes |
| Google XML Sitemaps | Creates Google compliant XML sitemaps for your site and updates them whenever you write a new post. | Download Google XML Sitemap Plugin | Lets Google know when you make an update. |
| HeadSpace2 | All-in-one SEO management plugin for your blog. Allows you to simply define all SEO elements for your pages. | Download Headspace 2 Plugin | Allows you to have an SEO ready site with very little knowledge. |
| Redirection | Allows simple and powerful page redirection (301) and analysis of missing page (404) errors. | Download Redirection Plugin | Can be used to create vanity urls. |
| Shadowbox JS | A lightweight and code framework-independent (jQuery, Prototype etc.) Lightbox solution that presents photo, video, audio and other media in an attractive layer with darkened background. | Download Shadowbox Plugin | Ideal for photo galleries. |
| Twitter Tools | The Twitter Tools plugin integrates seamlessly with your Twitter account to send automatic updates whenever you write a post. Can also publish content to your blog in the form of daily/weekly summaries of your twitter activity. | Download Twitter Tools PLugin | A great time saver for notifying a portion of your social network. |
| Limit Post | Allows post excerpts to be truncated and appended with ... to fit nicely into your Wordpress theme (design). | Download Limit Post Plugin. Download and unzip it to get the plugin file. | Ending can be customized to show '...' or 'read more' etc. |
| Yet Another Related Posts Plugin | YARPP as it's commonly called, gives you a list of related content from your site at the bottom of each post you write. Relevance is based on criteria you set in the plugin setup. | Download Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) | Great for providing automated navigation paths to relevant content at the end of your posts. |
| Viper's Video Quicktags | Allows simple one-click addition of video files to your blog posts. The button appear in your standard Wordpress edit post screen and provide compatibility with all major online video providers (YouTube, Meta Cafe, Google Video, DailyMotion, Vimeo etc.) | Download Viper's Video Quicktags | Makes posting YouTube videos a breeze. |
| Wordpress Thread Comment | Allows your discussion threads in your comments to stay properly indented within one another as appropriate. Keeps the comments really tidy. | Download Wordpress Thread Comment | You'll often see nicely threaded comments in theme previews but it won't work without this plugin. |
12 Other Useful Plugins(Optional - Get them if they sound relevant to you) |
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| Plugin Name | Description | Download Link | Notes |
| WP Greet Box | Shows a different greeting message to people arriving at your site via different social and search engine destinations - encouraging the to support you by clicking on a Digg or Facebook icon etc. | Download WP Greet Box | Also provides a level of personalization that can make people feel welcomed. |
| Breadcrumb NavXT | Builds automatic breadcrumbs for your pages to provide the classic and simple hierarchical navigation bar. | Download Breadcrumb NavXT | Also increases the amount of internal linking on your site which is good for SEO and users alike. |
| WordPress Admin Bar | Provides a new navigation at the top of your Wordpress admin (or site) installation. Provides quick and easy access to all functionality in a simpler way to how Wordpress built it themselves. | Download Wordpress Admin Bar | We suggest you turn in on for the admin site but not the public site (which we'll cover in a later step when we set up your Wordpress Plugins. |
| Get Recent Comments | Gets a list of the most recent comments made on your blog. Can be used as a sidebar to let people engage in the most recent discussions. | Download Get Recent Comments | A good community plugin. |
| WP-MostCommentedPosts | Another great plugin that provides a list of the most commented posts on your site. | Download Most Commented Posts | Set this up as a sidebar to provide instant access on all pages to your most important content. (Great to prevent excellent but old articles from falling off the radar). |
| WP-Polls | Add poll questions to your site to engage your audience. | Download WP-Polls | Fully configurable for visual style. |
| sCategory Permalink | Fixes a limitation in Wordpress when posting the same post to multiple categories. Typically WP creates the url (permalink) from the category with the lowest ID. | Download sCategory Permalink | Scategory allows you to post to multiple categories and CHOOSE your own primary one to use for the permalink. |
| WP Super Cache | Creates static pages from your dynamic Wordpress site to greatly minimize server load and improve the speed of your site. This is especially worthwhile if you get a lot of traffic or are at risk of getting a ton of traffic in a short spike from a site like Digg. | Download WP Super Cache | Not essential with a new small site. But one to keep in mind. |
| WP Post Ratings | Allow your users to rate your posts using a 5-star mechanism (and a few other methods). | Download WP Post Ratings | A great community feature for customer feedback. |
| SimpleModal Contact Form | Uses jQuery (a Javascript framework) to produce a very cool contact us form that appears on top of the site (in context) in a similar way to Lightbox. | Download SimpleModal Contact Form | If you wish to have multiple places where you want the contact option available, then this allows you to provide it with very little real estate usage. |
| Digg Digg | Social networking plugin that places Digg, Reddit, Dzone and Yahoo Buzz voting buttons at the end of your posts. Configurable to include only the ones you want. | Download Digg Digg | Sets it up so that your readers can give you some social love (which leads to more traffic) if they like what you write. |
Unzip Plugins
Most of the plugins you just downloaded are ZIP files. You need to uncompress them (unzip them) and put the folder you get into your plugins folder.
When you are done you should be looking at your plugins folder and seeing this:
Step 5 - Social Networking Profiles »
