Like power plugs, WordPress plugins help your website do essential tasks.

Are you setting up a WordPress website – one you host yourself? Many people ask what plugins to use. Most of your choices depend on what you want your site to do.

However, there are a few basic jobs any WordPress website needs to do. Blocking spammers and promoting friendly sharing are two top jobs. Here are two plugins I recommend for these activities when you’re just setting up your site.

Akismet

The Akismet plugin blocks spammers from posting to your blog. You want to take an active role in blocking spam comments because they waste your time in needless review. Plus these comments may link your site to low quality, spammy sites which is bad for your own rankings.

Akismet comes already installed in your self-hosted WordPress program.  You just have to activate it – the steps are coming up shortly in this article.

Jetpack

Jetpack also comes pre-installed with the latest version of WordPress.  There are many plugins in the Jetpack bundle that are worth using. You should be judicious in which ones you activate, because you want your site to perform with optimal speed. (You want to avoid needless interaction with the server, which may increase as you turn on more plugins.)

Two plugins in Jetpack to on for your blog are found under these labels:

• Sharing
• WordPress.com Stats

The Sharing plugin is the easiest safest way I know to enable your visitors to share, print or email your content with a click. WordPress.com Stats show you at a glance what traffic you are getting – and what content is doing the best at bringing it in. All from your own dashboard – no need to visit another site or wait for a weekly report.

How to activate Jetpack and Akismet

Jetpack Activation
In order to get Jetpack working, you need to set up a WordPress.com account. Set up just a username – you don’t need a blog there.

The option to do this appears in the small print next to the form to start a blog:

You create a username and password to set up your WordPress.com account. This username and password allows you to activate the Jetpack plugin on your site. Go to Dashboard > Plugins > Installed Plugins to see Jetpack, which is automatically installed with the current version of WordPress.

Once you have Jetpack running, you’ll want to set up the Sharing plugin to make it easy for people to socialize about your content. A free tutorial about setting up sharing is a topic for another post.

Akisment Activation
Wordpress.com no longer provides free API keys for Akismet. You get the API key from Akismet.com, for $5/month for business sites and free for personal ones. You need the API key to activate the Akismet spam blocker. You can get your key at https://akismet.com/signup/

These are just two of the recommended plugins for just about every WordPress website you run yourself. Other important tasks include backing up your data and your design. At this point you may be wondering what tasks you can accomplish with Plugins.

(Photo credit: “Power Plug 6″ by dhester on sxc.hu)

Got a question about plugins that you didn’t get answered here? I believe every honest business deserves a powerful engaging website. Please share your question in the comments: