In this post I am going through my basic blog set-up on the back end of the wordpress environment. Wordpress is probably the most popular blogging platform because it is so customizable so easily. With a few clicks, you can make your blog look or perform differntly.

A shout out to kozmonaut (a ragingly successful internet entrepreneur) on the chat for showing me the basis here, which I am now sharing with you.

So, to sum up, plugins matter. The most important ones come in two basic categories: user-friendliness and search engine friendliness. You need both. So here's a quick run down of the plugins that I am installing on sellingputsforincome.com:

Akismet - This comes installed by default (at least on hostgator). It helps prevent comment spam.

All in One SEO Pack - This plugin sets up all the meta data and keywords the search engines see in the background for each and every page on your blog.

Digg Digg - Digg Digg adds all the social media sharing buttons, like "share on facebook" and "tweet on twitter" kinds of things.

Disqus Comment System - A comment management system. It also integrates with social media profiles so someone can log in with the Facebook (or whatever) profile.

Google Analytics - This is used to install all the tracking code that Google needs to record your hits. Obviously this is only necessary if you are using Google Analytics.

Google XML Sitemaps - This generates sitemaps for your site that search engines like

MailChimp - This plugin works with mailchimp.com to create an opt-in newsletter. Creating an email list sets the stage for more and different kinds of contact with your readership in the future.

SEO Smart Links - This is a handy little plugin that will automatically add links to your posts for keywords you set. Say you want to link to an affiliate sale on Amazon. Put it in your smart links list and it will take care of that for you any time you mention the key phrase.

W3 Total Cache - Improves the performance of your blog for the user.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - This little guy will automatically create links to related posts based on the contents of your current post. It's very useful if a reader wants to learn more about a particular topic.

That's it for plugins so far.

I also changed the permalinks structure to have the category in the URL. This should add some SEO juice to my deep pages.

That's it for this post. Next up, adding some content!