Top Ten WordPress Plugins for 2019

This is a question that pops up in EVERY conversation about WordPress:

What are the plugins you recommend?The list changes, of course, but here are the top 10 WordPress plugins I use in 2019 (and have been for a few years), in my order of importance:

#1 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Updraft Plus. This is the ultimate WordPress plugin for backups. It backs up your entire WP install, or your database, files, etc. individually. You can save your backups to your hard drive or to cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive (to name just two – there are many more).

It does full backups as well as incrementals.

This is a MUST-HAVE plugin!

#2 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Thrive Leads. Don't be like me. I spent years running websites that generated tons of traffic and didn't have a way to capture email subscribers.

Thrive Leads lets you integrate with all of the major email service providers like Aweber, Active Campaign, Get Response, and Mail Chimp.

And their forms are numerous, easy to use and modify, and super effective.

#3 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Thrive Architect. I don't know about you, but building landing and squeeze pages in WordPress kinda sucks.

Strike that. Totally sucks. There are alternatives, like Beaver Builder, that do similar, but Architect is drag-and-drop WYSIWYG easy. And it integrates seamlessly with Thrive Leads.

#4 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Wordfence. You need a firewall. Period. This is the best. There are free and premium versions. I'm cheap, so I use the free one.

#5 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Caching plugin. I recommend ANY of the top-rated caching plugins in the official WordPress directory. There are many to choose from and there is no clear choice, IMHO.

#6 Recommended WordPress Plugin

WP Compress. There are a few of these “smushing” plugins, too. This is the one I use. It typically compresses image files down to about 20 to 30 percent of their uncompressed sizes, with no apparent quality loss.

#7 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Google Analytics. You need a quick view of how your website traffic is coming along. This plugin allows you to see, at a glance, how much traffic is coming your way.

#8 Recommended WordPress Plugin

No Follow. Why the hell WordPress makes your links (inbound and outbound) “do follow” as the default, I will never understand. This plugin makes links external to your site not only “no follow” but also open in a new link (“target=_blank”).

Now, you can do that right in WordPress, but I often forget. So this helps with that.

#9 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Pretty Link Pro. This is a must-have for affiliate marketers. It cloaks affiliate links and makes 'em “pretty.” It also tracks the traffic you get from your links. There are some neat auto-text replacement capabilities, too.

For example, any time I type “Aweber” (without the quotes) in a blog post, Pretty Link inserts a hyperlink (up to a limit I set – so if I type Aweber 17 times it will only insert the hyperlink 2 times, for example).

#10 Recommended WordPress Plugin

Yoast SEO. Many themes now have some cool onsite SEO features. But most don't. This plugin helps me remember to use good titles and keywords, and reminds me to write a good meta description tag.

Plus, it generates good XML sitemaps that I can send to Google for indexing & ranking purposes.

By the way, in this post, I shared my top plugins back in 2009. Note that the list today is completely different from it.

Things change. Get used to it. For now, though, I consider the above plugins “must-have” for WordPress.

That is, until even better ones come along!

8 Important Admin Tasks to Do When Launching a New WordPress Blog

I do all of these, every time, and a few more. Want to know what they are? Make a comment.

Your new blog has finally gone live. But before you tell the world about it, here are eight Important admin tasks to do when launching a new blog.

Source: 8 Important Admin Tasks to Do When Launching a New Blog

How to Install WordPress from Scratch

Below is a quick video I put together that shows you how to install WordPress from scratch:

Just Move On…

Sometimes, you just have to move on.

Sometimes, life–and business–doesn't go as planned.

I've been really consistent with going to the gym every weekday (weekends I go outdoors).

Except today.

Yesterday was a weird day. I was tired all day. Grumpy, too. Fell asleep on the couch at 8pm and woke up at 1:30.

Couldn't go back to sleep. Didn't want to work (so I didn't).

Around 5:30 (normally, when I get up to go to the gym), I got really sleepy.

So I went back to bed.

There's still a chance I'll go to the gym.

If, by chance, it is meant as “zero percent.”

Regrets? Yeah, sure. I could have been productive those 4 hours I was up in the middle of the night. I could have just forced myself back asleep and got up at 5:30 as usual.

But what's done is done. Can't do anything about “lost time.” Time to move on.

Speaking of lost time…

You can't get back lost time. Ever.

But you can certainly get better at using the time you do have more effectively:

• Read this post. Carve out about 30 minutes. Or…
• Just go get this: Headline Optimizer.

Jumping to #2 is certainly a time-saver. But I highly suggest you read #1 eventually.

Anyway, Headline Optimizer is a new WordPress plugin from Thrive Themes. Already a member? You're set.

If not, get it today. I rarely recommend software that I haven't extensively tried. But this just came out this week, the price will increase, and I have had nothing but good experience with this company and its products.

Top notch stuff.

Do Your Blog Post Titles Suck?

Blog post titles matter.

Do you write blog posts that don't get read?

No engagement? No comments, likes, or shares?

Is anybody even out there?

Does it bug you that you spend hours writing good content, yet nobody reads it?

I know it bugs the heck out of me. I bet you feel the same way.

Would you be surprised if just changing one thing drove your engagement up by a factor of 10x?

Intrigued?

Read this post. Carve out about 30 minutes. Or…

Just go get this: Headline Optimizer.

It's a new WordPress plugin from Thrive Themes. Already a member? You're set.

If not, get it today. I rarely recommend software that I haven't extensively tried. But this just came out today, the price will increase, and I have had nothing but good experience with this company and its products.

Top notch stuff.