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Just because you can doesn’t mean you should (Day 1-31 Kick Butt)

Written by Grant Griffiths in Kick Your Blog In The Butt

stopsign4c.gif 300×424 pixels.jpgWelcome to the first day 1 of 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt. As will happen on each day of this series, I want to give you two things to take away:

  • Some teaching points
  • A task or two to take and do something with

Teaching Moment

Today’s task/homework/assignment is for you to step back for a moment and take a look at your blog. Let me explain why this is important and why I have it for our first post in the series.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should when it comes to your blog’s design

Blogging is wonderful. It is easy to start a blog. And it is easy to add features to your blog. In fact, with WordPress there are literally 1,000’s of plugins and add-ons out there you could put on your blog. Thousands of bells and whistles you could add to your blog to give it all those wonderful functions. Thousands of things you could add to make it look, oh so wonderful. There lies the problem and why this is the first post in this series.

While I will admit I love WordPress and as far as I am concerned it is the premier blogging platform. It also has one drawback and that is all those darn plugins, bells and whistles you can add to it to make it look and do the things you think it should do.

However, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Stop for a moment and really take a look at how many plugins or add-ons you have or are thinking about putting on your blog. Do you really need them? Most likely you don’t. In fact you really only need maybe a hand full of plugins to make your blog do just exactly what you need it to do.

One of the problems with overloading your blog with all of these plugins is the fact you might actually be harming your ability to get and keep traffic on your blog. Putting all these plugins or add-ons on your blog may actually be slowing it down in the browsers people are using to visit your blog. Remember, your goal is to have your traffic become visitors, your visitors become readers and your readers to become your community. If they can’t get past the loading of their browser, they will never see just how wonderful your content or offerings truly are.

Don’t let your ego get in your way

Usually it is our egos which causes us to put all those things on our blogs we think we need. Or it is our inner child who thinks we need all the best toys and treats we can get. Either way, don’t let those things get in your way of having the best possible blog you can have.

What Plugins Do I Recommend?

Here is my list of must have WordPress plugins you should be running on your blog.

  • Akismet – to handle spam. I use it on all our blogs and our client blogs. It just works.
  • All-in-One SEO Pack – Also something we use on our blogs. However, now that we use our own Headway Themes to build our own blogs on and all of our clients’ blogs, we have this feature built in.
  • Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin takes the technical process out of creating an XML Sitemap
  • Gravity Forms – If not this one, make sure you have a form builder plugin on your blog. It just makes the job of building forms so much easier.
  • Related Post – It is very important to do some cross linking to your own internal post. This plugin will do that. And what is also important, give your readers a reason to stay on your site longer. And if you give them “related post” to look at, they will stay longer.
  • Subscribe to Comments – Remember blogging is a great way to have a conversation with your intended audience. And giving your readers a way to subscribe to the comments is a great way to encourage the conversation.
  • What Would Seth Godin Do – this is a plugin you can use to welcome visitors and even give them reminders to subscribe to newsletters or your blog’s RSS. It is one of those plugins which helps build your community too.

The list is not long. In fact it only includes seven plugins I would not be without.

Homework for Today

Spend some time in your blog’s Dashboard under the Plugin section. What plugins are you using? How many are you using? And, which ones could you really live without? Cull out those you don’t need or don’t get a benefit from. Get rid of the add-ons and plugins that only stroke your ego and do nothing to build your community or enhance your readers’ experience on your blog.

Tomorrow, we are going to spend some time talking about F.L.E.E.

October 1, 2009
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About The Author
Grant Griffiths is founder of Blog For Profit and co-founder of Headway, a premium WordPress Theme/Framework. You can follow Grant on twitter at @grantgriffiths
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  • Grant,

    Do happen to know if there is a plugin for exporting posts into Word and/or some kind of text file, and then importing them back? I need this for editing purposes.

    Thanks,
  • Why would you need to export to edit. You can do pretty much anything you need to do right in WordPress.
  • I'm a writer and professional editors work in Word. There are problems with WP editing.
  • While most of the time, when you write post in other formats and paste to WordPress, the formatting gets all messed up. What you can try is to draft it in Word.doc and paste it in the tool in the tool bar in the editor page for the post. If you don't see the clipboard with the W in it, open the kitchen sink, which is the last icon on the right hand side of the tool bar. It will drop down an additional toolbar with the paste from Word ability.
  • Donna Seyle
    Sounds to me like you were asking a junior high question and getting a college level answer. Grant tried to tell you the best way to accomplish what you were trying to do. Just because you didn't like the answer doesn't mean you get to belittle his. This is supposed to be a cooperative effort. If you don't like what you're getting here, there are many other blogging courses you can avail yourself of.
  • I use an HTML editor kompozer, when I want to make sure I get as close to the final product as I can and paste the source into the HTML tab. http://kompozer.sourceforge.net.

    This allows me to work with a number of templates, pages, etc... to get the look and feel I am going after

    But I think that this horse is dead.
  • If you are using a Mac, MarsEdit is awesome. I do all of my blog post with it.
  • Thanks for the tip on MarsEdit, I'll give it a look.
  • Actually, I think you got the answer -- you don't NEED a plugin. Just copy and paste but you'll have trouble with the formatting. Even if you use the paste from Word you'll have trouble since WP will reformat things on you.

    You can try using the HTML tab on the editor to reduce some of the problem if you are copying and pasting the HTML.

    If you want a way to bypass the WP editor completely then that is another question. To do any work on a post you will find the editor will mess with your code, even if you use the HTML tab.
  • Grant,

    I feel like I'm asking a college level question here and getting a junior high answer. I guess your real answer is "No, there is no plugin to export/import posts out of WP."

    It could be useful for the right person. I'm hoping to learn enough about WP one day to maybe code stuff like that.
  • Great idea to start with the plugin's I have a slightly larger list right now need to take a look at it but feel most are necessary.

    One I don't see on here is gocodes I have found this to be a great free plugin for masking and tracking affilate links.
  • Great post about plugins, I tend to get a bit carried away with using to many plugins. I am taking inventory of my websites to see which ones I can do without.
  • One way to measure a plugin's usefulness is to think about it from your readers point of view. Does it help with their experience on your blog?
  • I have been meaning to do this. Thanks
  • Hi Grant,

    I agree that is very important to take care with the plugins. Not only they can make your blog slow, but they can also bring security problems, since there are are lots of plugins that are not well programmed and can actually cause damage to your service. We should carefully think about when selecting our plugins.

    There is one plugin that I use that I think is very important for the type of blog I have. It is the Flickr plugin. I run a food blog and I think photography is essential, a very important part from it. I also use LinkWithIn instead of the Related Post, since it brings the pictures together. What do you think?

    Thank you for the valuable lesson!

    Regards,
  • Have been dithering about setting up my blog for ages so this will really kick start me. The forms plugin will be really useful as the one I have been experimenting with doesn't really cut the mustard.
    I am very much in favour of keeping things simple and elegant, particularly for performance purposes but as you say, some plugins are pretty much essential.
    By the way, I think you have the length of the lesson just right for a daily dose. It is was too long it would definitely put me off as time is limited but this works well.
  • Thanks, Grant. Yup, it's late. So much for the "homework" for Day One. lol. But, I did review my blog. I'm on BlogSpot (for the last 2 years), but now considering moving to WP. I'm hoping the lessons over this month will give me ideas as I make that transition. Looking forward to it, and thanks for the help!!
  • blog is California HOA & Law Blog. Don't use any plugins - don't have wordpress. Am in process of changing but not having these things has not hanpered my blogging experience., which has been great and awarding. I think my goal is a bit different than others. I am grooming my audience and don't mind that it is somewhat contained. I like quality not quantity - it is not intended as a site for arguing points, but rather a site to be inviting those who want to learn something. I don't have time to work with comments. And when a victim of too many plugins on other sites, I find that too much followup on me when I click on to a blog to read it makes me feel like the person is "hovering" like an aggressive sales person in a store. Don't like it so much.
  • Thank you for all of the suggested pluggins. I am a new blogger and found the pluggin directory to be overwhelming. I am excited about google xml sitemaps.
  • Dawn Elaine Bowie
    Well, as usual, I am hopelessly confused, but this is making this deadly CLE on federal retirement benefits in divorce somewhat more bearable. Thanks, Grant.
  • Thanks for the great information ! As the list of WP plugins that are available is extensive it's nice to have a short list of what is really good to use. Looking forward to the rest of the series !
  • OK, so here are my questions:

    1. I have the following plugins that I'm not sure if I should delete: Add to any - share, Add to any - subscribe, Guest blogger, Insights, SEO Smart Links, Social Homes (for sidebar),TweetMeMe, Twitter Tools & Twitter Tools - bit.ly

    2. When I tried to find gravity forms, it came up with Clickbank Ad Feed

    3. When I tried to find related post, I got a whole page of different plug in options

    4. For What would Seth Grodin do, it mentioned it takes some work - is there more configuration needed other than just activating it?

    5. Should we also install the plug-ins mentioned by lone wolf?

    OK, those are my questions for day 1! Thanks, Grant
  • There are links to all of the plugins I mention in the post. Including Gravity Forms and Related Post.
  • How is YARPP better than other Related Post Plugins? I have a RP Plugin already that I think works fine, but am not sure that this is the best one.
  • Chris - If the one you have works and works well, I would stick with it.
  • Grant, you are awesome for writing about the inner child and ego on day one! Totally made me smile when I read it this morning, and got me even more excited for these 31 Days!

    When I first played around with my blog design, my ego compelled me to put up things that "everyone else" had on their blogs. My inner child compelled me to put things up that I personally liked, but that weren't really adding to the value for readers. It's good to note those initial reactions for plugins and addons.

    But then to step away and taken an objective look at the overall design and structure, to make sure it's really doing what it needs to be.

    Today's lesson reinforced the no-clutter design principle for me, and introduced me to the no-clutter principle as it applies to the backend/blog structure.

    Thanks!
  • Hi again Grant

    I've put the Related Posts plugin on now and it's coming up with "No related posts". I put the match threshold low like Mitcho suggests, but still get nothing. Too early days for my blog, or is there something else I can try?

    (I see from your earlier comment that you're going to talk about Related Posts later in this series, so tell me to wait if I'm getting into stuff that'll be covered down the track!)
  • I am wondering if perhaps you don't have enough post on the blog for the plugin to pick up. It might also take a bit for it to kick in. The other issue might be whether you are assigning categories to your blog post. That may be causing it to not pick them up.
  • I am running Headway too. Does this mean I should not bother using All in One SEO? I configured it on my last WP blog that I just shut down. I have a new blog on a new server so I haven't configured All in One at all. It's on my to-do list. But maybe I don't need to.

    Thanks!
  • With Headway, you don not need to run All in One as we build those great SEO features right into Headway. Just scroll down to the bottom of the Edit Post page and the Edit Page page and you will see some of the SEO features.
  • Some people have mentioned this really quickly as a plugin they use, I but think a really important plugin is a backup plugin. I use WP DB Backup plugin which emails me everyday a copy of my database.
  • I'm learning Wordpress and the first thing I did was play with every plugin known to man! Then I had to organize a cheat-sheet to remind me which did what, and where I'd made changes in Thesis, the Wordpress theme I use.

    Then, it seemed the sites were loading slowly and I had to stop and wonder about all those lovely plugins! :-) Now, I'm trying to figure out which to dump, so this first post is perfect.
  • There are other plugins that you should include in the list as well. There are lots of links in this comment, so I hope Askimet doesn't kill it 8=)

    I use Yoast Breadcrumbs and Sociable to help with SEO and social media. Some themes will have breadcrumbs built in so you may not need that plugin. The Sociable plugin may not be important to your needs. I don't have enough traffic at my sites to see if it is worth having yet.

    I also use     Google Analyticator which adds code for both AdSense and Analytics, but it does have a fairly big impact on speed. This is a trade off between impact and ability to get stats. I suspect there may be other analysis methods that are faster, but make sure that your GA code is in the right place -- i.e the footer. This plugin allows you to put your AdSense code in the header and Analytics code in the footer if you use both.

    For the RSS side of things, I have Feedburner Feedsmith to make sure all my RSS feeds go through Feedburner. I also have RSS Footer but that is probably not a requirement. I don't believe it has an impact on the browsing though, so it shouldn't hurt to have it.

    There are also some important admin plugins which shouldn't affect the user experience, but which are vital. WordPress Database Backup, MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer and Broken Link Checker are at the top of the list for me. I also like FlashFreeze (but mostly because I wrote it 8=) to keep the Flash media dialog from coming up when I add photos. It doesn't work well with my system.

    Plugins that affect the admin side of things (or RSS) shouldn't have a tremendous impact (if any) on the user experience of the site. The big issue is with the forward facing ones. The theme can have an impact here as well, but I suppose that is another topic. It is also harder to work with.
  • Great suggestions for the list of plugins, thanks! And you were right, Askimet did put your comment in spam.
  • That alone shows the value of Askimet!
  • I just added Related Posts and love it. I hope that my bounce rate drops and my time on site and page views increase.
  • The Related Post plugin is one of those everyone should be using. You are right, you should see a decrease in your bounce rate. It is important to get your readers to dig deeper. And on that note, we will spend a lot of time talking about that in a future post in the series.
  • One follow-up: Here's a list of the plugins I'm currently using. I'm a little abashed to admit that this is PARED DOWN from what I used to have in operation!

    Plugins I'm using include:

    Akismet
    All in One SEO Pack
    Comment Email Responder
    CommentLuv
    CommentMailer
    Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
    Favicon Manager
    Google XML Sitemaps
    Secure WordPress
    Share This
    Subscribe to Comments
    What Would Seth Godin Do
    WordPress.com Stats
    WordPress Database Backup
    Wordpress OpenID
    wp-cache
    Wp-ContactForm
    WP-EMail
    WP-Security Scan

    Normally, I also use Quotes Collection too but just haven't set it back up since I re-did my site's theme.
  • Carolyn- I would pare this down even further. You have some duplicate plugins not sure you need. Why two Sitemap generator plugins for example? As to those plugins which are there to interact with your readers, can you limit them some too. The key to those type of plugins are whether they are there for your ego or to actually aid in the interaction between you and your readers.
  • Great post, Grant!

    For beginning bloggers, I think plugins become a huge distraction. When they should be concentrating on content, they find themselves staring at WordPress's endless list of plugins trying to figure out which ones will look cool or flashy.

    Plugins are simply tools to make the reader's experience effortless and the blogger's goals easily and efficiently achieved.

    Looking forward to the rest of the series!
  • I meant to ask one more question - I'm using Headway - do I need All-in-one-SEO or any other SEO plugins, or can I delete them?
  • You do not need All in one SEO Pack with Headway. We have extensive SEO features built in, including something similar to AIOSEO. In fact, Michael Martine of http://remarkablogger.com help us a lot with making sure we have the SEO features of Headway right. So far, the results of those using Headway has been awesome as it goes for SEO.
  • Great start Grant! I had a lot of plugins and got rid of them several weeks ago. I'm now in the process of making sure I have the right ones up and your first lesson is wonderful.

    Thanks!
  • Hi Grant,

    I added the plugins you recommended (and removed a few too). Several of the plugins indicate that they haven't been tested with the current version of Wordpress that I am running. I installed them anyway but wanted to know if I should wait until they are updated. I don't want to mess up my blog.
  • I have not experienced any issues. But, if you want, load the ones that have not been updated to the new version of WordPress one at a time to make sure they won't affect your blog in a negative way.
  • Hey Grant

    Thanks for the update. I had the same compatibility issue as well on 2 of the 3 blogs I am building. I've not seen any problems, but I am still testing on my ISP's servers.

    I am build 2 sites from the ground up with your help, and I am moving 1 site from the current Joomla! 1.0 to WordPress 2.8.4 - It would be great to have a tool to archive my post from Joomla to WordPress. Are you aware of anyting?
  • I don't know of anything off the top of my head. But, let me see if I can find something.
  • Grant - good start for the series. I actually had someone tell me that he liked my site for the "less is more" approach, so I wonder if I've gone too far the other way.

    Question - is Gravity Forms useful for subscribing readers to an Aweber list, or should I use their code?
  • Joe - you need to use Aweber's provided code and form so you can make sure you are doing a double opt-in.
  • Good post! I'm guilty of making my page load slowly. I just switched to a new theme and haven't put all my plugins and widgets back yet. Now, I may not!

    I'll try the Seth Godin plugin; that's the one I'm most skeptical about. It makes me feel like a nag to my visitors. I set it to where it only pops up two times.
  • Great first post - We've just removed a 'who's talking here' cloud which looked wonderful (and DID get a lot of page hits) but it was using up masses of resources.

    We also just removed a visitor map, which likewise was stopping the pages loading well.

    I like the sound of the 'what would Seth' do however, and will check it out - thanks!
  • Hello Grant

    This is useful as it's not something I have even particularly thought about. At the moment I only have Akismet (a Godsend!!) and subscribe to comments on my site.

    One question that may unfold over the next days: what might I use a form builder plug-in for? Also, like Rosemary, I can't see what the related post link relates to!

    I know I sound like a baby but it's kind of fun being allowed to be - I feel as if I'm going learn some serious stuff in the next days!

    Best wishes

    Christine
  • You can use a form building plugin to build a Quick Contact form to put in your contact page. You can also use it to build any form to gather any information you might want to gather from your readers. On the link to the Related Plugin, I have replaced it with the "official" link. Hope that helps and thanks for being part of kicking some butt.
  • Hi Everyone.

    Looks like 'were all in this together'.

    This is a good way to start - even though Im on Blogger and not on WP!

    However, I'm already a little lost with the Related Post Plugin.

    When I look at the site I have no idea what it's about, without alone what I'm supposed to look at and consider downloading. Admittedly it is 10 pm but ..... Anyone help?
  • Gary and Rosemary - I updated the link to the Related Post plugin. Thanks for the heads up on the strange link.
  • Thanks for the tips looking forward to the next 30days of them. The link to the related posts opens a web page that is just an ad farm website with no real content is there another particular related post plugin you recommend?
  • All good thoughts. I like the idea of a welcome message and a simple look. There seem to be so many plug ins out there that I try for a bit and then drop. I can't really tell which are necessary until the numbers come in.
  • Grant, appreciate this first lesson. I'm new on Blogger for the moment and trying to understand WP before moving my blog, and you've just underscored an important point.

    I hadn't realised how much my plugins/widgets were slowing down my blog.

    Thank you.
  • Great idea to start off with plugins!

    I have a tendency to add one a bit too often. I end up going through my plugins every 6 months or so to get rid of the ones I tried and found little value from.

    Recently I heard someone fairly new to blogging say that his first goal was to learn everything there was about plugins... an interesting first goal, but it seems a bit lopsided to me.

    Of course, there are some great basic ones, but after that I think several factors come into play.
    - Your theme and how you want to connect with your audience are 2 big ones for me.
    So I think you also need real blogging experience with your audience before you can find the right set of plugins to use.
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