Margie Barkley: WordPress Plugins How to Use Them (2019).

Wordpress Plugins

WordPress plugins can enhance your WordPress blog’s capabilities. There are literally thousands of WordPress plugins to choose from, but I’ll make it easy for you.

Below is a list with descriptions of the most commonly used WordPress plugins and a description of how I use them. You can access each plugin by going to your WordPress Administration Panel and clicking on Plugins > New. After that, enter the name of the plugin in the search bar at top right of the page.

Ad Inserter Ad management software by Igor Funa permits advertising (such as Google AdSense Ads, DoubleClick and Amazon Native Shopping Ads Ads), to be placed anywhere on your WordPress blog. It checks your comments against Akismet to determine if they are spam. You can also review any spam it has caught under your “Comments” admin screen. The screenshot below shows that Akismet has protected my blog from 377.052 spam comments. Akismet is used on all of my blogs.

Akismet will require an API key. Follow the instructions to activate the plugin.

Wordpress Plugin - Akismet

Broken Link Checker Just as the name implies. This plugin is a great addition to my blog. It is now on all of my blogs. I love it when I use it.

However, there is a huge caveat to this plugin. It was years ago that the Broken Link Checker sent so many empty clicks to CJ merchants, that they sent me an advisory letter to stop its use. My CJ account almost went bankrupt. However, the account was actually suspended for a time! The new Gutenberg block editor was introduced with WordPress 5.0. I now use it sparingly. This plugin allows you to use the WordPress classic editor as well as the Edit Post screen in the old style with TinyMCE and Meta Boxes. This plugin supports older plugins that expand this screen.

It has helped me get rid of a lot of frustrations! !

To ensure that Exex-PHP doesn’t break any php code in pages or posts, you must deactivate the Visual Editor. If you use the Visual Editor to modify, or save a blog post containing php. The visual editor is almost non-existent for me. I prefer to use the “Preview Changes” button to preview how the post will look.

ExecPHP ExecPHP is used to execute PHP code within posts, pages, and text widgets. Also see the ‘Deactive Visual editor’ plugin.

External Links Marks outbound hyperlinks as such. There are many effects that can be configured under Settings / External Link. I have set the plugin so that all outbound links will open in a new tab. Now I can use Search and Replace for all the target=new coding! !

Faq Tastic plugin that generates multiple FAQs. Faq Tastic is used on my FAQ page. It would be equally easy to create a list with questions and link to the answers on a FAQ page.

GDPR Cookie Consent This is a simple way to prove that your website conforms to the EU Cookie Law/ GDPR. This plugin was the subject of an article I wrote at “Is Your Website GDPR-Compatible?”

Genesis Plugins I have Genesis plugins because Genesis by StudioPress is the theme framework I use on all of my blogs. I’ve also added Genesis-specific plugins in order to improve the functionality of my themes. These plugins include Genesis Simple Hooks (Simple Edits), Genesis Simple Sidebars (Simple Sidebars), and Genesis Simple Hooks (Simple Edits).

Grammarly is technically not a plugin, but Grammarly can be installed on your computer and works within your WordPress blog to correct grammar and spelling errors. Grammarly has saved me many embarrassing moments. !

Indeed, Social Share & Locker Pro Social Share & Locker Pro are the best Social sharing plugins that I have found for WordPress.

Pinterest Pin it Button on Image Hover and After Post & Page Content The Pinterest pin button appears when a visitor hovers over an image on your website. It makes it easy for visitors to pin blog posts, pages and images to Pinterest account boards. You can try it by clicking the image at the end of the article.

Pretty Links Pro Pretty Links plugin for WordPress allows you to track, track, organize and share all your links on your domain or server. Learn more about link cloaking and its importance for affiliate marketers by reading “10 Reasons to Cloak Affiliate Link Links”. Pretty Links Pro has two versions: a free version (the ‘lite’) and a paid version that is more powerful. The latter is what I use.

This plugin is a favorite of Search and Replace! As name implies, Search and Replace allows you to search and replace anything in your ID, post-content, GUID, titel, excerpt, meta-data, comments, comment-author, comment-e-mail, comment-url, tags/categories and categories-description. If you don’t have a redirect page, Search and Replace is a great tool for changing links in your blog. Find out more about the Search and Replace plugin.

Search Exclude Hide any page, post or page from the WordPress search results by clicking the checkbox within a page.

Subscribe to Comments Reloaded – Allows commenters sign up for e mail notifications. A subscription manager is available for commenters to use to unsubscribe from certain posts or suspend all notifications.

TablePress Embed tables in your pages and posts with no code.

UpdraftPlus Backup/Restore You have the option to take backups locally or back up to Amazon S3, Google Drive, Rackspace (S)FTP, Google Drive, Rackspace and email on your own schedules.

W3 TotalCache W3 TotalCache increases the SEO and user experience on your blog. It improves website performance and reduces load times through features like content delivery network (CDN), integration.

WP No Category Base Completely Removes the mandatory “Category Base” from your category URLs.

WP Forms Manages multiple, customizable contact forms. Super simple installation. The plugin impressed me so much that I wrote an article on WPForms.

WP-Polls adds an AJAX poll to your WordPress blog.

Another Related Posts plugin Displays a list (or pages) of posts or pages that are related to the current entry. This allows the reader to navigate to other content on your site.

Yoast SEO is a plugin that Joost de Valk (and his team at Yoast) have created from scratch to improve your website’s SEO in all aspects. This WordPress SEO plugin does a lot to improve your content writing skills. WordPress SEO requires you to select a focus keyword for your articles. The plugin then ensures that you use the focus keyword throughout.

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Cheers,

sig-ros