by ARWB Gal Alison Chino

Ok y’all! This might officially be the nerdiest blog post I have ever written, but how much do you LOVE it when you are trying to make a change to your blog and you find the EXACT right plugin to make the magic happen?

When I find the right plugin for the job, for just a second, I feel like a computer GENIUS!

Until the next time.

Conversely, it can be super frustrating to search for hours and hours for a plugin for your blog and come up empty.

So I thought it would be fun to share my favorite plugins and why I love them, and hopefully, this is just a start to a conversation. I want you to share your own favorites in the comments and maybe together we will create a great resource of go to plugins for Arkansas Women Bloggers!

I am a WordPress user, so all my plugins will be for WordPress (self-hosted) but often they are available on multiple platforms, but if you use Blogger or another platform, be sure to mention that in the comments as well.

My Five Favorite Plugins

Jetpack, of course. Because. Everything.

Jetpack gives your self-hosted blog the features from WordPress.com. The analytics, the comments, the social sharing and many other things you don’t even see. My personal favorite feature is that if your theme is not mobile friendly, Jetpack can make it so, which is so important since almost everyone reads from their mobiles these days.

I know lots of people use other plugins for comments and for social sharing besides Jetpack, but I find that most of those options (specifically Disqus) are not mobile friendly.

Yoast SEO for helping your blog be found by Google.

This plugin makes it SUPER easy to optimize your blog posts for SEO, by pointing out what you still need. And there is a little light by the plugin that changes color as you optimize your post. When the light turns green, you’re golden! It’s like a little game for me to get it to turn green.

Easy Instagram for a sidebar full of your Insta-Life.

If you know me, you know that I LOVE Instagram. So of course I want to share that love on my blog. This plugin drags your latest IG images (you choose how many) into your sidebar. If Instagram is not your thing, there is a similar one available for Pinterest, so you can show off your latest Pins!

Picasa Express for dragging in your Google+ photos.

I’ve already talked at length about how much I love using Google+ photo albums and this plugin makes it so easy to pull the images to my blog. And because they are hosted on Google, the page load time is faster.

Engageya for Related Posts.

I always hope that when someone finishes reading a post on my blog, they will want to read more. This plugin makes suggestions based on the last post someone finished. There are lots of plugins out there that do this, but I like this one because it specifically suggests posts that are similar to the one just read instead of just pulling four random posts off my blog. There is also a feature available to add content from other sites, which means content from your site can be listed elsewhere as well.

Honorable Mentions: A plugin that chooses your giveaway winner, one that gives you access to pretty social media icons, one that replaces your 404 error page with a link to sponsor a child at Compassion and one that gives an option to subscribe to comment responses.

I know that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is available via plugins, so share away! What are your favorites and why?