Since I am in the process of getting my brand new blog, Sly Mom up and running, it seemed the perfect opportunity to document some steps to take when starting a new WordPress blog.  It is far easier after you have done this a few times.  For brand new WordPress bloggers the process can seem a bit overwhelming.  I will try and save you some  time, by helping you sift through the available plug-ins.  You may decide to switch in the future but these are some of the best plug-ins, in my opinion.

To install these, just open your WordPress dashboard in another window, click plug-ins, then click add new,  the page that comes up, will have a search bar.  Simply copy and paste the plug-in titles, and the search will bring up the required plug-in.  Click install, then activate.  When you install each, pay attention to which ones have settings options.  These options enhance the usefulness of the plug-ins.

Topsy Retweet Button~ This is the button in the top right corner of my posts.  It is an effective and easy to use retweeter, which has several different color options to coordinated with your blog’s theme.  While, many other retweeters are clumsy, requiring the user to tweak results, or fail to add a @yourtwittername to the tweet, this one effectively does it all.  By the way, you want the @yourtwittername in the retweets, because it helps promote your twitter account, to new audiences. Settings: Make sure to select the color you want, type in your twitter name, and select the shortener service you prefer (I just use the second (is.gd) option, since it is the easiest).

Google XML Sitemaps ~ This plug-in creates a search engine friendly map of your site.  It only takes a few seconds to install, and makes no visual change to your blog, but ensures that all your pages and posts can readily be crawled by search engines. Settings: Default settings won’t require much change for most bloggers.

SexyBookmarks ~ The SexyBookmarks plug-in can be seen at the bottom of each post here at SlyMom.com.  It is easy to install, and has a wide array of social networking buttons to choose from.   I have tried several similar plug-ins, but this is my personal favorite.  Making it easy for yourself and visitors to spread the word about your posts, can help both traffic and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), for your blog. Settings: SexyBookmarks has so many social buttons available, that you are better off deselecting some, and rearranging the ones you keep (simple drag & drop procedure), get rid of those in languages you are not targeting, those for topics you don’t cover and ones you have never even heard of.

Subscription Options ~ If the theme you are using does not have a full set of subscription options built in, this plug-in will come in very handy.  It will provide a widget that you can drop into your sidebar, that supplies email, rss, twitter &  facebook buttons. You can activate all of them, or just the ones you need, and resizing them to fit your sidebar nicely, can be done  right in the widget.  Recently, the plug-in upgraded to give you color choices for the buttons, as well.  You may opt to go with custom buttons designed for your site later, but these work great and are super easy to install. Settings:  This plug-in has all it’s functions built right into the drag and drop widget.  Just drag it over, fill in your info and select size and colors.  So easy.

Platinum SEO Pack ~ This is the free premium version of the  All-in-One SEO plug-in.  If you already have that one installed, you can migrate your info right over to it.  In this case we are skipping that step and going straight to the better performing option.  This will help you set up metatags, properly formatted urls and set up nofollows for sections and posts on  your blog. Metatags and proper url format are a good base to start your your search optimization.   Easily being able to select  nofollow on individual posts is absolutely essential, if you plan on doing any sponsored posts.  Google will penalize you for not doing so. Settings: Fill in the title, description and keywords.  Nofollow category listings on pages, posts, archive pages, archive posts and tag pages.  Most other selections should be left on default settings.

There are many other useful WordPress plug-ins, which should be installed early on in the process of starting a blog.  More will be covered in part 2 of this article.