When you first create a blog with Wordpress, I highly suggest that the first thing you do after customizing your Wordpress Dashboard Options is to install these 3 Plugins.

A plugin is like a utility for your blog that does something.

There are programmers all over the world who build these plugins to do little jobs for them and then they share them. Most of them are given away free of charge, so feel free to experiment with them if you like.

When I first create a blog for myself or clients, these are the first three I install and activate.

First 3 Plugins For Wordpress Beginners To Install

• Wordpress Database Backup
• Google XML Sitemap Generator
• Blog Stats

Why these three plugins?

Wordpress Database Backup Plugin - All your posts, links and any other data you input into Wordpress is stored in a database. If anything should happen to your blog or the web hosting server that it’s on, having a recent backup is pretty critical wouldn’t you think? The first plugin allows you to schedule a backup of your database tables hourly, daily, weekly or on demand. There are few options so that keeps it simple. Set it to email the zipped up database content file to you once a day or once a week depending on how often you blog.

Google XML Sitemap Generator - You have probably seen a sitemap but what the hell is XML? Not to worry, this one you don’t even have to understand, except for the fact that it tells Google, Yahoo and ASK.com about your new posts in a format that they can understand easily and effectively. Think “Marketing”. This plugin generates a search engine readable sitemap and then actually goes out and tells them about it (It pings the search engines and says “come look, I have a new post - here’s where it is!” ). This little plugin is extremely well built by Arne Brachold and I even gave a donation to him I was so impressed and appreciative of his efforts.

Again, with this plugin, simply download it, ftp it to your server using a free ftp client like FireFTP and then activate it. Once activated, go to options -> XML-Sitemap page and check off the fields that apply. Simple. There’s a lot of things the plugin asks on the options page, but most of the default options are fine.

Blog Stats - This one does just what it says, it gives you a nice little interface (within your free wordpress.com account) showing you your visitors, where they came from, what they’re viewing, how many came on which days, what they had searched for to find you and much much more. It’s not really critical at all, but it’s pretty good to know if you’re getting any traffic from your link building and especially knowing what your readers had searched for to find you. This little plugin was created by the Wordpress team at Automattic.

In order to use Blog Stats, you will have to have to have a username with wordpress. They show you your stats via an interface on wordpress. In order to see it, you have to login to your account AND you have to have an API code (Application Programming Interface code - like a unique id for your account). You’ll need this same API code for an anti-spam plugin as well, so if you already have it, you’re good to go.

To get the Wordpress Username and API code, go to www.wordpress.com (dot com, not dot org) and click on “signup”. You’ll see a page where you enter a username and a password for your account.

Below the fields where you enter your username and password you will see this question

Choose the second option as you see here. All you really need is the username so that you can get your API key.

To get your API Key, Follow the “where is my api key” instructions at Wordpress

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Tags: Beginner Blogging, Blog Tips, Plugins, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins