5 WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Should Have (Updated for 2014)

Wordpress

I have been running my blog for seven years and using WordPress for close to 5 years and Plugins are one of the main reasons why I made the switch and have been such a WP fan for so long. While I’m running quite a few plugins on my blog (it’s one of my favorite addictions) there are five that really stand-out.

Here’s the thing though, my five favorite WordPress plugins from last year aren’t necessarily going to be my favorites this year. New plugins come out all the time and I’ve also found that some of my old favorites don’t update soon enough leaving them unusable as new version of WordPress rollout.

So, drumroll please, here are my five favorite WordPress plugins of 2014:

1) VaultPress – let’s just say I’m all about safety and security, I drive a Volvo and VaultPress is my favorite WordPress plugin for the exact same reason, peace of mind. If my blog is attacked by hackers and every single post and page is deleted I can have it back up in under and hour thanks to VaultPress.

2) Akismet – okay, so your blog is now safe and secure but your comments are full of junk. Akismet is like magic. You setup the plugin and your comment spam drops by 95%, this is an absolute must-have for every WordPress blogger.

3) Ads by DataFeedr – if you look to the right you’ll see all of my incredibly awesome sponsors. I want to give each one of them equal time in every spot, DataFeedr makes it easy to randomize the order of the ads and has a few other cool features that make it my #3 pick.

4) Jetpack by WordPress –  so the team over at WordPress built this awesome suite of plugins, wrapped them all together, and then gave it a cool name – Jetpack. This is a free plugin and it gives you access to things like visitor stats, easy subscribe-to-post options, contact forms, etc.

5) WooCommerce Newsletter Sign-up – this is a new favorite of mine. When you came to my blog you probably noticed a pop-up for my awesome newsletter. Okay, so maybe you decided not to sign-up and that pop-up annoyed you, but it actually is the #1 way to increase newsletter sign-ups and once it’s gone you can still click the big blue button on the left to sign-up which helps even more.

Now it’s your turn, what are some of your favorite WordPress plugins? Comment and let you voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton