A Word About Plugins

When building a blog or doing your research on blogging, you probably heard the word “Plugin” used frequently.  So you are probabaly wondering what this is and what it does. Good Question.

Most Wordpress blogs are designed to work right out of the box.  Just install and start typing. That’s a good thing.  For most people, that’s ok because they aren’t really doing much with it other than reporting what they watched on TV last night.  But if you want your blog to do more than just sit there and look pretty, you may need some plugins.

A plugin is an added piece of software that helps make your blog do amazing things.  Its a version of customization. There is a plugin for just about anything you want it to do. Usually they are developed after someone asked themselves “why can’t my blog do this?”  and they set about making a plugin that does “that.”  Most plugins are free, but some require payment.  The free ones always ask for a donation to help spur further development.  Pay it forward people… They will work with or without the donation.

If you were to look at the Wordpress Plugin Directory you will see over 7,000 plugins available.  Plus others that don’t use this directory for marketing.  That’s a lot of plugins.  The good thing is that you will never need THAT many plugins, but it does show the variety and the customizations that are available for your blog.

What Do I Need??

For a business blog, you want it to run lean and mean.  So don’t short change yourself by using a free theme.  Free themes are coded(designed) more for its ease of use and to look pretty out of the box than for its ability to produce and be stable.  You will need a lot of plugins to compensate for what it lacks in power and design.

Think of it like this:  A plugin is like an additional part to a car.  The more you add, the more weight you get, the slower and less efficient it will run.  The less you add the better it will run.  In this case you are adding more lines of code and more databases with each plugin.  Giving the search engines more to work through before they find your content.  And That’s Not Good.

When I build a blog, I use premium themes that are designed for business.  They are designed for speed and durability.  The Plugins I use are there to improve what it already has and to enhance what it needs to be found faster by Google and Bing.

Each blog comes with several already installed plugins.  I will remove the ones I know I will never use and keep the ones I may.  Than start looking for the ones I really know I need.  Again, keeping it lean and mean.

I have a plugin for spam.  A plugin for building a site map for Google and other search engines.  A plugin for secure contact form, one to twitter and one to manage affiliates.  That and maybe one or two others.  That’s it.  Lean and mean.  Each with its own specific purpose and each fine tuned for that particular blog.

As I said earlier, if you use a free plugin and the designer asks for a little donation… Please feel free to reward him for the help.  They aren’t asking for much, just something that says “Thanks.”  Most accept PayPal.

I hope this helps

Mark Anthony
Internet Marketing Coach