Last Saturday was an exciting day for me! I organized the second #MeetTalkBlog event with a totally different setting than the first one. You know you plan things weeks or months beforehand and it is so amazing to see everything coming together how you envisioned it.
I am organizing these kinds of events because,
1. I just absolutely love to do it. I honestly get a kick out of helping others.
2. To bring bloggers together
3. Create an opportunity to help each other to improve our blogs
After this second edition, I haven’t only learned plenty about WordPress but I also have learned a whole lot more about event organization, which will be beneficial for future events 😉 It’s a scary thing to do, but I really believed in this concept, so I jumped into the deep and started with planning.
Hearing the incredibly sweet reviews from the attending bloggers gives me even more motivation to keep following my heart.
So a big thank you to all the bloggers who attended this fun afternoon and of course Internet Advantage to make the WordPress workshop possible with the location and knowledge! Below you will see a few shots of this afternoon, you can find all the photos here.
Didn’t or couldn’t make it to the #MeetTalkBlog event? Don’t you worry. We have talked about a lot of subjects during this workshop. Today I share with you the 15 relevant plugins that we have discussed during the workshop (by Marten Schuurman):
1. SumoMe
SumoMe provides the tools you need to grow your blog by engaging your readers. With this plugin, your readers are able to subscribe or share your amazing post.
2. BackupWordpress
Always BACK UP! BackUpWordPress will back up your entire site including your database and all your files on a schedule that suits you.
3. JetPack
Jetpack is a single plugin that gives you the most powerful WordPress.com features. For example, I use this plugin to see the stats of my blog (especially for the clicks stats).
4. UpPrev
Display cool, animated flyout or fade box with related content. I have installed this plugin last Saturday. If you scroll to the bottom of this post, you will see a box with an other page suggestion fly in on the right side. This is a great tool to help you get more page views.
5. CustomLogin
This plugin is really for yourself. You can customize you login background etc.
6. Manycontact Bar
ManyContacts is an attention¬-grabbing contact form that sits at the top of your website and helps to collect subscribers (email addresses for example) for your blog. This plugin could be useful if you want to send out newsletters to your followers.
7. WordPress SEO Yoast
You should not underestimate this plugin. It forces you to choose a focus keyword when you’re writing your articles. Ever since I used this Yoast to write my articles I can see a tremendous growth in my visits through search engines, all because of this plugin!
8. Editorial calendar
The editorial calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog. Super handy if you work ahead with articles.
9. WP hide post
This plugin excels in giving you full control over the visibility of your post. Sometimes, you want to create a “low-profile” addition to your blog that doesn’t belong on the front page, or maybe you don’t want it to show up anywhere else in your blog except when you explicitly link to it. This plugin allows you to create such “hidden gems”.
10. Liveblog
If you want to update your readers as quickly as possible, then this plugin is the most flexible publishing environment to make that happen. You can use this for example to make a fashion show report or when you are at an event.
11. Lockdown WP admin
You can customize your WordPress security. For example by changing the admin login page URL will reduce the chance to be hacked.
12. Login lockdown
Limits the number of login attempts. For example, you can set 2 times and after inserting your login incorrectly 2 times it will block the IP address. This will help to prevent brute force password discovery.
13. Relevanssi
It should give better search results than the default search engine from WordPress. Relevanssi replaces the default search with a partial-match search that sorts results by relevance. It also indexes comments and shortcode content.
14. W3 total cache
Speed is among the most significant success factors on web sites. In fact, your site’s speed directly affects your income (revenue). With this plugin you can optimize the speed of your blog/website.
15. Askimet
We all hate spam. It’s annoying. Filtering it manually is confusing and time-consuming. This plugin will help you to filter a big part of the spam for you!
I didn’t have the chance to implement all the plugins and test it yet. It is all about experimenting. There must be a few plugins you can use right? Do you have one to add to this list? Feel free to leave it in the comments below 🙂
