Unlike other CMS, WordPress does not have a built-in feature that’ll allow you to take your website to maintenance mode (or under construction) from live mode, but, like I had mentioned in my previous post that WordPress is flexible and allows you to install add-ons or rather plug-ins to your blog. There’s one such plug-in called the Maintenance Mode Plug-in which allows you to display a custom message on the homepage of your blog.

Once the plug-in is activated, visitors are displayed with a message as shown below.

This message can be fully customized of your desire.

Download Maintenance Mode Plug-in

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform loaded with tons of features. Most of all, its flexible and you can change it the way you like it. Open Source. It’s an advantage. Though WordPress is loaded with features, it still lacks those features that are essential for a blog. And therefore, the plug-ins originated. WordPress community developers and professional PHP programmers develop plug-ins to extend the features and make the blogging platform function even better.

Definition of WordPress Plug-in: It is a program, or a set of functions, written in the PHP scripting language, that provides specific features to your WordPress blog.

There are about 10,231 plug-ins developed which are hosted on WordPress site and are available for download. Not all 10k plug-ins are essential. That’s crazy to think something like that. So, below is a list of few essential and most important plug-ins your blog will be in need of.

Post Related:

WP-Note: This plugin allows you to create nice «notes» in your WordPress posts or pages. There are five tags namely note, important, tip, warning and help.

WP-Post Views: Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed.

Yet Another Related Posts: Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.

WP-Post Ratings: Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

Social Media:

Social Bookmarks: The Social Bookmarks plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.

Lifestream: Lifestream displays your social feeds and photos much like you would see it on many of the social networking sites.

Twitter Tools: Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Digg Digg: A social plugin that use to add Digg , Reddit , Dzone and Yahoo Buzz button into WordPress content.

Comment Related:

Thank Me Later: Thank Me Later is a plug-in which will automatically send a thank you email to readers after they post a comment. It can be set to send the message a time after the comment was posted (an hour, day, week, month, etc).

Ajax Comments-Reply: When a reply is made to a comment the user has left on the blog, an e-mail shall be sent to the user to notify him of the reply. This will allow the users to follow up the comment and expand the conversation if desired.

WP-Spam Free: An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin for WordPress that virtually eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

Subscribe to Comments: Subscribe to Comments is a plugin that allows commenter’s on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments.

KeywordLuv: Reward your commentators by separating their name from their keywords in the link to their website, giving them improved anchor text.

Ad Management:

Who Sees Ads: Who Sees Ads is an advanced ad management plugin that lets you decide who will see your ads, for instance Adsense, depending on user defined conditions. You can manage ads in your templates (eg sidebar.php) or within posts and pages.

Amazon Context Links Ads: Use this plugin to enabled Amazon context ads in your blog start earn money from Amazon affiliate

Ad Coder: Ad Coder is an easy way to spread adserver banner code or other html/js code over your blog or page content

WhyDoWork: WhyDoWork Adsense is a WordPress plugin that allows you to insert Adsense ads on your blog without modifying the template.

Got Banners: Got Banners is a simple banner rotating plugin for WordPress. Unlike other banner rotators, Got Banners displays all the banners provided simultaneously. But, in a different random order each time.

Developer Plugins:

All in One SEO Pack: Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

WP-Ban: Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name, user agent and referrer URL from visiting your WordPress blog. It will display a custom ban message when the banned IP, IP range, host name, user agent or referrer URL tries to visit you blog.

Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator: This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

WordPress.com Stats: Installing this stats plugin is much like installing Akismet, all you need is to put in your API Key and the rest is automatic. Once it’s running it’ll begin collecting information about your page views, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave.

Security:

Ask Apache Password Protect: This plugin adds some serious password protection to your WordPress Blog’s admin directory. It adds a 2nd layer of security to your blog by requiring a username and password to access anything in the /wp-admin/ folder.

Force SSL: This plugin will force HTTPS connections for security purposes. Of course, you will need a web server “equipped” with a proper SSL certificate to use it.

WP Security Scan: Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions. Scans Passwords, File Permissions, Database Security,Version Hiding, WordPress admin protection/security, Removes WP Generator META tag from core code

Login Lock Down: Login Lock Down records the IP address and timestamp of every failed WordPress login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range.

Are you a beginner? Just started a new blog or did you just shift your blogging platform to WordPress? Well, that’s really awesome if your blog is powered by WordPress. We love it. Everyone loves it and you will also

WordPress enables you to install plug-ins, which basically is used to power up your blog even more. In other words, plug-ins help you to extend your blogs functionality. There are thousands of WordPress plug-ins that are available for download (free and premium). You just need the right plug-ins to tweak and extend your blogs functionality.

So, are you worried about to which plug-in you should install? Confused about it? Hmm, need not be anymore The following is the list plug-ins that I’ve created for you and the reason, why you need to install them on your new blog even before you go ahead and make your first post.

1. All in One SEO pack:
   This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for WordPress SEO. This plug-in is mainly used to optimize your blog for Search Engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on…Some features
   • Canonical URLs
   • Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
   • Generates META tags automatically
   • Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
2. WP-Super Cache:
   Your blog loads it’s pages pretty slow? Then this a want you need to install. WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.Too geeky? Forget it then. Just install this plug-in. It helps you to load your pages faster. Simple!
3. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator:
   Sitemaps are simple and easy way to keep Search Engines informed about the pages existing on your site/blog for crawling. It lists the URLs and META data along with the URL as a small description for Search Engines for better results. This XML-Sitemap format is supported by Google.com, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.comP.S. The XML-Sitemap format was introduced in 2005 by Google and adopted in 2006 by Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask.com so that’s why it’s often called “Google Sitemaps”.
4. ShareThis:
   “Sharing is Caring” Your readers on your blog might really appreciate and love the way you blog. Why not ask them to share it among with their friends? Sounds like a great idea to me This plug-in adds a “Share This” button at the end of your posts and enable readers to send it to their friends or submit it to social media websites.
5. Enhanced Contact Form:
   He there! Your readers are desperate to talk to you! Give them a chance to speak to you. This plug-in loaded with features and enables visitors/readers to contact you without disclosing your email address.Scared of those stupid SPAMS!? Not to worry. This plug-in protects SPAM messages reaching you. We hate SPAM. All hate SPAM!
6. Google Analyticator:
   Every blog needs a statistics system to keep track of things. Hence, there exists Google Analytics. Thanks to Google If you don’t have a Google Analytics account then go get one, now!You need to put in the Google Analytics tracking code into your theme by editing it. to make it work. Does that sound too geeky to again!? Don’t know coding? No problem! This plugin, Google Analyticator allows you to add the tracking code to your blog without having to edit the template and make you go mad.
7. WordPress Database Backup:
   Okay, now that you have installed these basic essential plug-ins and your blog is running smoothly and effortlessly and you should be definitely happy with it. But what if something goes wrong with your host provider? There are chances of server crashes and not every host provider backups your blog regularly. And if they do, there’s no guarantee that you could get your hands on it. (unless you are rich enough to shed some cash!)So, never take the risk of depending on your host. Just install this plug-in and put in your email id and tell it how often you want it to make backups in the setting page. It automatically mails them to you at those scheduled intervals you have set. Sweet! Isn’t it ?:)

Well, there you go. These plug-ins will definitely help you and your blog’s performance. Enjoy blogging

P.S Here’s another list that I’ve created. You must be interested in it – Collection of WordPress Plugins for Better Blogging Performance

P.S.S Oops! Did I miss something? Something that is really worth a mention? Then please, use the comment form below and share it with us. Like I mentioned, “Sharing is caring”