I don’t consider myself an expert but I must have installed wordpress a couple of hundred times, there are some things that I do everytime, plugins I install and settings I follow, hopefully these will help some people.
Permalinks – I wish wordpress would do permalinks from the get go but I understand because of the multitude of servers they go on, they don’t work on all of them.
Recommended Permalink Structure : /%category%/%postname%/
(However if you think your blog should be in google news, use this one /%category%/%postname%-%year%%post_id%)
Feeds – Activate feedburner / feedproxy / whatever google feels like calling it this week, but activate it with mybrand, I’ve outlined how and why to use mybrand before but its a great way to keep track of your subscriber levels and find out a bit more about them.
Plugins -Wordpress now has this great ability to install plugins without going to the wp.org site, which means I don’t have to link to the plugin pages anymore I can just give you the name to search for in your installation, but because i’m a proper blogger now, I will 
.
Headspace2 - I used to use all in one SEO but I was recommended Headspace2 and switched immedialy, not only does it do the correct title tags, it also has some get extras like connection to the yahoo term extractor for tagging.
Feedburner Feedsmith – Handles all the redirection for you to feedburner, even works with mybrand
Twitpress – Automatically posts a New Blog Post message to twitter once, you’ve published
YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, the best related posts plugin I’ve seen so far to be honest
Subscribe to comments – this is a great plugin that allows people to get a notification when someone responds to a comment on a post, get to build up a bit of dialog
RSS Footer – Sticks your blog url on the bottom of each post in the RSS feed, perfect for defending against scrapers.
Permalink Redirect – redirects all the urls with funny shite at the end ?&= to the proper urls
Google XML Sitemaps - not 100% convinced but it can’t hurt
Thats it for now, I’m sure I`ll come back to this post and update it but is there anything that you do? any plugins you recommend, do you agree or disagree?… let me know
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A good list there – if I hadn’t removed the StumbleUpon toolbar in the name of productivity I’d have clicked ‘I like’ – have you thought about adding a social bookmarks plugin to the list?
I must apply some of those to my own blog – cobbler’s children problem and all that, eh?
I’d also mention that it’s worth learning how to install plugins by hand, because the repository doesn’t cover all plugins possible – non-GPL aren’t allowed, and WordPress have a pretty antsy attitude to anyone who writes plugins or themes but also happens to build non-GPL code.
David Coveney’s last blog post..Using Hysteria and Useful Idiots to Drive Law-making
With TwitPress, just make sure to only use that if you also twitter regularly about other stuff (I know this isn’t a problem for you Dom!) because there is nothing worse than a twitter feed full of “Read my new blog post!” posts.
I agree, unless its a twitter username dedicated to that service, like some of the major blogs have, twitter is becoming the new RSS to some people
Some other things I always set up:
- Akismet to protect against comment spam (Or a suitable captcha)
- Google Analytics for Wordpress (http://yoast.com/wordpress/analytics/)
- Robots Meta – let’s you set meta tags so that date archives etc. aren’t indexed (http://yoast.com/wordpress/robots-meta/)
- Secure Wordpress – removes version info etc. and some other bits and bobs (http://bueltge.de/wordpress-login-sicherheit-plugin/652/)
- Sociable (http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/)
- For twitter integration I found Twitter Tools the best for me – it can even create blog posts from your tweets (http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress)
Top of my list is Akismet … already saving me hours of spam moderation time on http://barcampsheffield.net.
I’m going through the process of setting up my blog at http://mundojumbo.net and also thinking about SI CAPTCHA for registration/comments. Not decided yet, but if you have any experience of it, I’d be interested to hear your views.
Agree with you on the permalink and feeds suggestions. Interesting you’ve suggested Headspace – I wasn’t sure which SEO cureall to try, but that’s a good a one as any to the uninitiated such as myself I guess
As far as social bookmarking stuff goes, I think I’m going to give ShareThis a whirl. Again, register as the brand is a good mantra.
Nice linkbait article
Frog’s last blog post..Frog gives piggy yet another outfit for her blog
Not doing so bad yourself http://www.thefloatingfrog.co.uk/frog-blog/2009/01/90-twitter-browser-plugins-mashups-and-applications/
Feedburner Feedsmith is only compatible with versions of WP up to 2.5, according to Google help page. I assume this is out of date. Anyone have any problems with installing it on WP 2.7?
James Ward’s last blog post..jamesward: @Caius nice one! Thanks. (I forgot some apps have their settings there).
I’m using it on 2.7 and its working fine
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I had no idea about the RSS Footer plugin! Awesome list as always!
.-= Frog´s last blog ..Neurofeedback for migraines =-.
Very helpful list of plugins – I’ve been using All In One, but will now definitely check out Head Space!
The one thing I wouldn’t be happy about letting plugins do for me is post to Twitter automatically. I’ve seen a lot of tweets where people have, probably without knowing it, told Twitter every time they’ve hit Update as they’ve been working on a blog post. The tweets all say the same thing, and completely blow their sender’s credibility.
I generally have my TweetDeck or Seesmic screen open when I’m working, anyway, so it only takes a moment to send a tweet manually when I’ve got the post the way I want it and am ready to have people come and see it.
.-= Aislinn O’Connor´s last blog ..Fake RT Replies – The Latest Menace To Hit Twitter =-.