Plugins are wonderful because they allow us to customize our blogs the way that we want them. Do you want to showcase your most popular posts? Get the plugin! Do you want to add an author box? Get the plugin!
The five plugins that I’m going to share with you today are all plugins that help your blog run more smoothly. Some will help it run faster and others help protect your blog.
Unless otherwise mentioned all of the plugins can be found by going to the add new plugins search in your WordPress dashboard.
Cbnet Ping Optimizer - This plugin prevents your blog from getting tagged as a ping spammer.
When you update a page or edit a published post a ping is sent out to let the search engines know that you have published a page. Each time that you edit and update those pages and posts a ping is sent out, not only when the page or post is initially published.
The only way to resolve this issue and not have ping after ping sent when you are editing and updating is to use this plugin.
Fake Traffic Blaster - Have you ever checked your stats and notice that one day out of the blue you have a huge spike in traffic? That one day is double or triple your typical daily traffic.
It seems exciting at first because it looks like you have made some progress with your traffic. But it can actually be “fake traffic” attack to hurt your blog’s ranking, stats and more.
You can prevent these attacks with this plugin. Read more about the Fake Traffic Blaster plugin and how to download it.
TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner - This is one is very important because it can save you a lot of time and stress due to a security breach in your blog. In other words this little plugin can protect your blog from being compromised or even hacked!
Jane Sheeba from Problogging Success ran into this very issue not too long ago and she wrote up a very comprehensive post about why this is an issue and how this plugin can prevent it.
P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) - I love this plugin which shows you which of your plugins are slowing your site down! It takes the guesswork out of optimizing your site’s speed when it comes to the plugins.
I have removed several plugins because I didn’t like how much they were slowing down my site. Some plugins are neat and fun but when you see the effect it has on site speed you may change your mind as I did.
Now the one slows down my site the most is one that I won’t get rid of because of the benefits, WP Database Backup which emails me a backup of my blog daily! (That’s a bonus plugin that you should have.)
WP-Optimize - This plugin helps to optimize your WordPress database by removing unnecessary items and optimizing your database tables. This will also help with your site speed!
It will remove all of your:
- Post revisions
- Auto draft posts
- Remove all spam posts
- Remove unapproved comments
To Your Success,
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Thank you for reading! I'm Stacy, the owner of this blog. You can learn more about me here.
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Oh, a very vital topic. While we all talk about flying high with blogging, these little technical issues always stand in our ways! Thanks for the heads up Stacy and thanks for the mention too
Jane @ Successful blogging invites you to read… 5 Tips to Help You Become A Problogger
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 7:50 pm
Hi Jane,
Thanks for providing posts with great value! It was unfortunate that you had to deal with the issue that you did but you ended up being able to provide valuable information to other bloggers!
Stacy
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I use all of these except the P3 Plugin Performance Profiler. That looks like an awesome plugin as I’m often caught in a situation where I don’t know which plugins is causing a problem on my site.
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 7:49 pm
Hi Richard,
It sounds like you have a lot of great plugins that you’re using!
Stacy
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Awesome!! I am always looking for new plugins to help optimize my site, as well as keep spam away and keep my site from being too spammy (with pinging all the time).
Great plugins, thanks so much!
Morgan@Sociable Boost invites you to read… I’ve Fallen In Love With Buffer & Why You Should, Too
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:17 pm
Hi Morgan,
I’m glad that I could help!
Stacy
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I have a WordPress blog and use supercache so my site doesn’t collapse due to a spike in traffic.
Re WP-Optimise. I don’t think I would want to remove unapproved comments before I had the chance to see them. Sometimes even readers I know well end up being marked unapproved.
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Hi Evan,
With the plugin you can choose what gets optimized and what doesn’t. I always check my spam folder myself.
Stacy
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Those plugins you have shared us here Stacy are all awesome especially the Fake Traffic Blaster and it looks really interesting for me…Thanks for your thoughts here…
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:18 pm
I’m glad I could help!
Stacy
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No I am not using these but you better believe I will now! Thanks for being such a great resource for us, Stacy.
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:19 pm
Hi Amy,
I’m glad to help!
Stacy
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Thanks for the list. I have several plug-ins on my blog but not one of those you mentioned. Got to try them out. Thanks!
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
Hi Doree,
I’m glad to help!
Stacy
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Hi Stacy,
I use wp-optomize and love it. I use MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer 2.2.5, and it seems to be doing the same thing that Cbnet Ping Optimizer does.
I did add P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler), and I’ll have to spend some time checking the results of this so I can understand them.
I also read Jane Sheeba’s post on the TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner and will look into this. Thanks for all the good info. Sally
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Thanks, Sally! I’m glad that this has helped!
Stacy
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I haven’t experienced a huge spike in traffic, but I do know there are a lot of bots or automated things that visit. Some are welcome, and others not so welcome or friendly. I am not sure if the Fake Traffic Blaster helps for things like these or not. Worth checking into though. The P3 Profiler I do use and it is a very handy tool.
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
Ray,
It really is a handy tool!
Stacy
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This is very interesting post! Thanks for being such a great resource for us.
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
Thank you for stopping by!
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I’ve tried out the P3 plugin but it doesn’t seem to run well on my site as it maxes out the SQL available before a report can even be formed. Am using Total cache and it does speed up my site.
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
I’m sorry to hear that but I’m glad that you found one that works!
Stacy
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I don’t know which plugins is causing a problem on my site.
Thanks for being such a great resource for us.
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
I hope the p3 will help solve your problem!
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Wow. The plug-ins you recommended are awesome. Now I’m assured that my blog is protected. Thanks!
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 7:37 pm
I’m glad to help!
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I have not installed any one of these but these plug-ins are very essential to work on WordPress.
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Stacy Reply:
March 29th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
I’m sure they will help!
Stacy
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The two plugins that have helped out my site a ton have been WP Better Minify and W3 Total Cache.
My site seems to load about as fast as I can blink my eyes! (Well… close anyways).
These work great – even with thesis!
The Minify plugin will take and squish (ok – I know its not a technical term) your *.css files into one file so it takes less requests to pull up your page. It can also do this for your *.js files as well.
I’ll have to take a look at the ones you listed though. The only one I probably won’t run is the timthumb as Thesis already runs a customized one (I confirmed with them at diythemes too).
Jason Mathes@plugins,wordpress,blogging invites you to read… 15 Must Have WordPress Plugins for the New Blogger
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Hi Jason,
Thank for sharing those plugins!
Jane did mention in her post (that I linked to) that Thesis users are covered. You just have to make sure that you don’t have any other inactive themes because if you do they could cause you problems with timthumb even though they are inactive!
Stacy
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P3 is really awesome plugin.Just installed it today and was simply amazed by it .
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 7:33 pm
I’m glad that you liked it!
Stacy invites you to read… How Often Should You Post For Optimal Results?
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When I used WP-Optimize it erased my entire database of posts and pages, so be careful using this one and get a back up before you use it.
I use a simple line of code that limits the amount of revisions my blog keeps in the database, I set mine to 3, but you can set it to whatever you want.
This code goes into the wp-config file that is in the root folder of the blog.
Right after this line:
* @package WordPress
*/
Place This code:
//Limit WP revisions. Value can be any positive integer number.
//Create a maximum of 2 revisions, plus one for auto-save.
define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 3);
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Stacy Reply:
March 30th, 2012 at 10:01 am
Hi JR,
Thank you for sharing those tips, that is really good to know!
Stacy
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Thanks for the info about this 5 awesome plugins, all these plugins are definitely important for a BLOG.
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Stacy Reply:
March 30th, 2012 at 10:02 am
Hi Balu,
I’m glad that this helped you!
Stacy
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[...] 5 Plugins You Should Use But Probably Aren’t [...]
I haven’t used these plug-ins yet but I’ll definitely give them a try. I’m especially interested in the ping optimizer as I am constantly editing and updating pages and I don’t want to get tagged as a ping spammer.
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 5:09 pm
I do that too so I’m grateful for the ping optimizer!
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Hey Stacy
I agree with you plugins are wonderful for customization but I personally avoid plugins because it’s highly impact website loading speed and security.
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Stacy Reply:
April 1st, 2012 at 4:58 pm
Hi Rizwan,
It’s good to be aware of what the plugins can do. One thing that I forgot to mention in the post is that it’s good to install one at a time and make sure that it runs right before installing another.
Stacy
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great post thank you for sharing it with us it is full of information that is very useful. i will be looking into all the information you have offered to us to make my blog better.Thank you.
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I had no idea that there were so many plugins. Thank you for sharing your plugins with us. By the looks of thing i need to do some research and see how i can benefit from plugins. Thank you for an informative post, very interesting.
Sarah invites you to read… Oracle’s Latest JavaFX move: Too little, Too Late
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Thank you very much Stacy! it turns out, I had the TimThumb vulnerability going on and I had not a clue. I just can’t imagine the hassle of being hacked, thanks once again.
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Great post Stacy, Bulletproof security is one of my favorite plugins as it protects the security of my blog with just a few clicks. It is really slick and doesn’t slow the site down. bullet-proof allows you to add .htaccess website security protection from within the WordPress Dashboard. just search for “BulletProof Security” it is free.
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I am using only WP-Optimize
BTW thanks for sharing this names with us.
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I never thought about this before.Thanks for sharing this great plug-ins, I really need this because I am planning to have my own blog site soon, I think that these would help me.
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wp-touch also take-down performance of the site….but did not find any replacement till now…
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You enlighten me particularly on the ping optimiser. I was not aware of ping spammer. Thank you.
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