Plugins for AutoBlogs
AutoBlogging Goals
The point of this page is not to spark endless argument about the benefits of one plugin vs another. The point is to hopefully inform you about some cool new plugins that you don’t currently use – that will boost your autoblogging efforts. There are some really solid ones here that you may not have heard of 
Before the list, here are 3 solid steps to a successful autoblog that these plugins will help you achieve:
- As many pages as possible
- As much traffic as possible (hopefully targeted)
- As many clicks to your offers as possible.
Performance
- WP Super Cache
Should be on all your blogs. Speeds them up massively. - WP Minify
This is currently broken with WP2.9 but it’s worth mentioning as it will rock once it’s fixed. It combines all your css and JS files into one – meaning users have to download less files from your server. - TanTan S3
If you’ve got an Amazon S3 account to store files online then this plugin integrates your account with WP. All images uploaded to WP are stored with Amazon. This helps takes some of the strain off the cpu and your bandwidth.
Autoblogging
- WP Tweet Bomb
I can’t not mention this. Does too many things to mention in a couple of sentences. Should be the only “core” autoblogging plugin you need.
Admin
- Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
Gives the WP admin area of horizontal admin bar across the top of the page. This gives more space to what you’re doing and makes things neater. - Redirection
Useful if you need to redirect people from one place to another. Probably a bit like using a chainsaw to crack a nut, but it works. - WP-DB-Backup
Schedule daily or weekly backups of your entire autoblog’s database to be emailed to you. Can be a lifesaver.
SEO
- WP Tag Bot (coming soon)
WPTB does this automatically but I’ve been wanting to make a (free) WP tagging plugin for a while. The alternatives are either broken, overly promotional or lacking features. - KB Linker
Once setup will link any keyword in blogs posts to a specified url. Great if you want to link to a specific affiliate each time “weight loss” is mentioned, for example. - Platinum SEO Pack
Some basic improvements here. The other big one in the “All in One SEO Pack”. Which ever you use – make SURE you UNCHECK any “no index” checkboxes. This is crazy – especially for an autoblog as the category pages (and sometimes tags pages) can be some of the most powerful on your site. Make sure they are indexed. - Google XML Sitemaps
Automatically rebuilds your site map regularly and pings Google, Ask, Yahoo and Bing. - Global Translator
This is good for 2 reasons. Firstly it lets people read your blog in different languages. Secondly – it multiplies your number of pages by something like 50. More pages is a good thing. - WP 2 Ping.fm
Looks interesting as it will update a bunch of services and accounts with each post. 2 downsides: you’ve got to create all the accounts yourself (although this can be outsourced) and you can’t do it in bulk. - SEO Super Comments
This is a damn fine plugin. Very simple as well. It just gives each comment on your blog it’s own page as well as being displayed in the normal place. This means more pages with content on. - SEO Image
Gives images nice alt tags and title attributes. Helps nicely for getting image traffic from Google.
Enhacement
- Lightbox Plus
Will automatically link all in-post-images to a lightbox, which looks nice. Helps to give your autoblog a professional fell. - WP Greet Box
An in-post JavaScript popup asks your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. It trys to target th welcome message to the visitor’s referrer as well. - Contact Form 7
Depends on the autoblog, but sometimes you’ll want a contact form. If so – this is the one. - Sexy Bookmarks
Pretty cool (and now efficient) plugin that gives each post some sexy bookmark-this-post options. - WP-Cumulus
This is a widget that uses flash to render a floating ball of your tags or categories. Looks pretty cool and it just appears as a list of links to Google and friends. - Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Great for Google and better for readers. Adds a decent quality “Related Posts” block below each post.
Related posts:
6 Comments
DR NET
16 Dec 2010
Dude, this is a good list of plugins, I would say upward of 40% of them I have not heard of or used. I am pretty well versed in wordpress as well and it is always good to see other people’s approach to plugins and why…
Thanks for this information
DR NET
oxford moron
21 Dec 2010
Thanks Andy. Just what I was looking for.
A list of recommended plug-ins.
Is there a maximum average in plugins that are considered too many?
Are there any that are not compatible with Tweet Bomb?
Good Job!
admin
20 Feb 2011
Thanks.
I try and keep the number of plugins I use waaay down. Each one that's on your blog (activated or not) uses resources.
I see some people with 30+ plugins on the blog and it's killing the server performance - especially on shared hosting.
Try it now - disable all the plugins on your blog and browse around the admin area. You'll see the difference.
Also AFAIK all plugins are WPTB compatible. If you find one that's not just let me know and I can tweak the code.
nik
11 Jan 2011
For Global Translator for translation service do u use ?
Just don’t tell me that you use google translate as it translate on the fly and don’t make extra pages on your domain.
admin
20 Feb 2011
I don't as the quality usually isn't good enough for my tastes.
I have done in the past however, with custom scripts.
I find the English->Spanish->English gives the best results from the available languages switches.
Jerry Tellier
16 Jan 2011
Read about you on Warrior Forum and I’m sure glad I did. Being new to web building and such, your listings and reasons of plug-ins was well thought out and explained.
Great articles, thanks!
Jerry
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