Check your plugins

Before you update your WordPress blog (If you are a WordPress blogger) make sure all your “Need to Have” Plugins have updates too. Do this by visiting the plugin author’s page.

If not, you could have a bunch of techie issues to deal with… Not fun.

For example,

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Contact form 7 WordPress Install Tutorial

Contact form 7 is not just a contact form. It can also be used as a full blown web-form with as many fields as you want.

UPDATE:  If you can not get this working like I did in the video, it’s beacuse the newest contact form 7 plugin for WordPress has issues. Please use this one for now until they work out the bugs. http://www.idiotproofblogging.com/reports/contact-form-7.zip

If things go wrong and they will

Do not do anything! Instead, sit back and think, “What was the last thing I did?” Did you install a plugin? Change a category name on your blog?

If you just think for a moment, it’s better than jumping into your blog’s admin and changing stuff at random which in most cases, just makes things worst for you.
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Most Important Plugins

Here is a question that comes up a lot, “What are the most important plugins?”

So let’s chat about this today.

There are many important plugins and it’s based on what you are trying to acomplish with your blog so answering this question is not easy because I have no idea what you’re trying to do.

However, for me, the most important plugin is Google Analytics for WordPress. (scroll to the bottom of the page for the plugin)

Why is because it tracks your traffic.

Where it’s coming from.

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plugins

Linda asked When activating the disclosure policy plugin I get a “fatal error” message. Any suggestions?

It may just not be compatible with the version of worpdress you’re using. I suggest you check the plugin author’s page to check. While you’re there, see if they have an update.

Let’s take this question as an opportunity to have a chat about wordpress plugins.

In the past with a normal HTML website when you wanted something like a nice looking contact form with a function to protect your email in box from spam, you’d have two choices, write the HTML code yourself or hire a coder to do the job.

Now, with wordpress you can just download a plugin, install it, activate it and you’re done.

Look now at the top navigation bar of this blog and you’ll see a link called “Contact Craig” next to the home link. Go ahead and click on it. A  plugin did that, not me.

If you don’t know how to install and activate a wordpress plugin, Click Here to see a video showing how to install a plugin I made for a member of the Warrior forum.

In the video I am teaching how to install a wordpress admin drop down menu plugin. This plugin is so cool. Click here to get a copy of that.

Someone asked me, “What are the best five wordpress plugins?”

I have no idea because it all depends on what you are trying to do.

When thinking of something I want a blog to do, the first thing I do is Google something like “Question and Answer wordpress plugin”, or contact form for wordpress plugin. I then read about what is available paying attention to any issues others are having with the plugin being recommended. No need downloading and activating if there are issues.

Here are a few plugins I like to use right away.

1. A contact form that keeps spam bots away. (  A Spam Bot is software that runs on auto spamming email forms of websites.)

Here is the next contact form I am going to use.
http://green-beast.com/blog/?page_id=136

2. Google sitemap ( Still need to install this one here )
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

3. SEO Plugin ( This helps your blog be more search engine friendly )

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

One thought to keep in mind is, if you load your blog with loads of cool plugins, come wordpress update time (Which is often) and you update, some of those wordpress plugins may not work anymore.

I’ll post about upgrading your blog easily soon but for now, keep the above thought in mind because if you have more than one blog, updating them with all the plugins you installed will eat time up fast!

If you know of some cool plugins you’d like to share, leave a comment.