You’ve installed WordPress and have built your site. It rocks, but it could rock more. You want more bells and whistles and more speed. You’re in the right place. Read on…

This post is sponsored by MailChimp: Send eMail Newsletters for free.

12 Essential WordPress plugins

  • Akismet – prevents comment spam (installed by default)
  • Analytics360 – shows your Google Analytics in the WordPress Dashboard
  • Broken Link Checker – scans your site in the background for broken links and notifies you about them
  • CryptX – encode email addresses to hide them from most spambots
  • Related Posts Thumbnails – keep people reading on your site with a professional “related posts” list
  • W3 Total Cache – the superman of caching plugins
  • pageMash – rearrange pages with drag and drop
  • Pretty Link Pro – create social media buttons, shortlinks, and more
  • Video Thumbnails – creates image thumbnails of embedded (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) videos
  • WordPress Database Backup – email yourself a backup of the database and sleep well at night
  • WordPress SEO by Yoast – arguably better then All-In-One SEO the olf WordPress favorite
  • WPtouch – creates a simple, mobile version of your site with good options and no coding