Hi everyone. One of the perks that comes with using self-hosted WordPress is the unlimited numbers of plugins you can download to make your blog better. However, I try to limit the amount of plugins I have to just under 20 as it will eat up your disk space and I only keep active ones aka the ones that are needed to power up my blog.
I didn’t encounter much problems when I migrated from Blogger so these are some basic plugins you might need for the usual migration process. You don’t need all of them, of course, but I used them for my blog and I’m so happy with how it’s looking right now.
Admin Color Schemes: Activating this plugin will give you extra 8 colour schemes for your dashboard admin toolbar. You obviously don’t need this plugin but I get bored of the colour schemes provided so having an extra 8 is awesome.
Akismet: Allegedly the best way to protect my blog from spam. So far I’ve never had any spam comments coming through so I guess that’s good.
Annual Archive: The foolproof plugin to display all your posts in a page just by using shortcode. I just wish I can customise it and make it center, though.
Custom Post Limits: For some reason I can’t change the number of posts displayed on my homepage so I asked Kotryna to fix it and she installed this plugin. If I had known I wouldn’t have asked for her help. Soz.
Disqus Comment System: I thanked god I didn’t use Disqus back on Blogger ’cause I didn’t encounter any problems regarding transferring Blogger comments to WordPress so installing Disqus on my new blog was a breeze.
Easy Google Fonts: This is a terrific plugin if you want to use any fonts from Google Fonts. I did download it once, however, it didn’t really work on my theme as I have two separate coding for blog post font so I change my font manually.
Generate Post Thumbnails: A godsend plugin recommended by Kotryna. When I migrated, I have trouble with featured image not showing on my blog so Kotryna suggested this plugin and voila my featured image was automatically set!
Jetpack by WordPress.com: Possibly my most favourite plugin. You can do a lot of stuff with it but my absolute favourite are blog stats, blocking malicious login attempts, and image performance (Photon).
Official StatCounter Plugin: I hate Google Analytics and I’ve been using StatCounter for years and it’s just easy to use.
Shortcodes Ultimate: A godsend for a better post editor. The feature I use the most is their column layout but obviously you can do so much more with that plugin.
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin: A good plugin to backup your WordPress database. It syncs automatically to my Dropbox so I can access it everywhere even if I’m not with my laptop.
W3 Total Cache: Improving the speed and site performance by caching to reduce download times. There’s a lot of setting for this plugin but I only use what I absolutely need.
Yoast SEO: Anyone who makes a post about WordPress plugin they’re using will include Yoast in their list. Basically a plugin that will guide you into writing better SEO contents.
