10 (Less Obvious) WordPress Plugins For (Book) Bloggers


There are a lot of articles out there on essential/best plugins for WordPress blogs, and even a few by book bloggers. One thing I have noticed is that they tend to recommend the same major plugins, and while Askimet is important, I wanted to see what other plugins book bloggers are using.

So, perhaps to encourage some sharing and give you some ideas, here are a few of the plugins I use here on blog.Catherine (and Bibliodaze and Bloodsucking Feminists).

Ultimate Book Blogger

The only paid plugin on this list, I recommend it for anyone who is super serious about their book blogging, because it streamlines everything. It gathers book information, formats it nice and tidily on your review, and creates nice tidy archive lists for your reviews. And that is just the start of it.

If you are posting reviews on the regular the time and effort that it will save you makes the plugin well worth the money.

Editorial Calendar

This one gets recommended a lot, and it’s not hard to see why. Schedule posts, re-order them, and just plain see how regularly you are – or aren’t – posting. A tool useful for any blogger, not just the bookish ones.

Easy Footnotes

I’m not a big footnoter in general, but when I do want to use footnotes in my reviews and posts[note]Like this![/note], Easy Footnotes is the way to go. I’ve used a lot of footnote plugins over the years and Easy Footnotes is the one I prefer. So clean, so simple.

Comments Not Replied To

I try and do my best to foster conversation on my blog (although given the lack of comments even on freebie posts it’s clear I have plenty of work to do on that front) and one way I find that helps is to reply to comments. But if you were to get a lot of comments over a lot of posts, surely some would get lost in the shuffle, right? Well with Comments Not Replied to, right from your comments page you can easily see which comments you have replied to and which ones you haven’t. Simple!

Comments Not Replied To

 

Comment Reply Notification

This plugin works great when it tandem with Comments Not Replied To, as once you’ve replied to their comment, a commenter can get notice that you or someone else has replied, thus continuing the conversation – and bringing people back to your site.

CommentLuv

I used to use the old CommentLuv plugin for several years, but when I restarted this blog I decided to go with Nosegraze’s update of it, as it’s slimmer, cleaner and just easier. Seeing it on another’s blog always encourages me to go and visit someone else’s blog after reading their comment, so make it easier for others to do the same on your site.

Revive Old Post

When you make a new post on WordPress you can choose to have the announcement shared on social media like Twitter. Revive Old Post does the same thing with older posts! Pick how many times a day and a max cut-off time to choose from and let the plugin run – and hopefully bring people in to your older (but still amazing) reviews.

Regenerate Thumbnails

Now this one isn’t one I use on the regular, but it is handy to know about because when you need it, you need it. I last used it when we did the big theme update for Bibliodaze and all of a sudden the thumbnails were all the wrong size. It looked terrible. But this plugin fixed everything in one click and a few minutes of waiting, and soon all the thumbnails were perfectly sized for the updated theme. So if you’re planning on changing your theme, make sure to run this plugin.

WP-PostViews

While you can track your stats through things like Jetpack or Google Analytics, sometimes it’s nice to quickly see how well your posts are doing, and WP-PostViews lets you do that right from the posts page.

Tablepress

Like footnotes, I don’t often make tables in my posts, but when I do something like Tablepress is so handy to have. It makes things beautiful and so easy to create that even though I could code them by hand I don’t.


So that’s my list of 10 (Less Obvious) WordPress Plugins For (Book) Bloggers! Were you using any of these? Will you give any of these a try? And do you have any recommendations for plugins that I should check out?

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5 Comments

  • Lynda
    January 22, 2017 at 7:51 am

    Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge. I shall have to investigate these further 🙂

  • Kate @ Parchment Girl
    January 22, 2017 at 8:44 pm

    Thanks so much for mentioning my list! Some of the plugins you included on this list are new to me and I’m so glad I am discovering them now! Regenerate Thumbnails and Comments Not Replied To are going to come in VERY handy I think.

    I really wish the creators of Comment Reply Notification would update the plugin. I used it for a long time but eventually, stopped. they haven’t updated it in two years, which isn’t great for security.

    • Catherine
      January 22, 2017 at 9:27 pm

      Thank you for commenting! You’re right about Comment Reply Notification, and I think it’s becoming rather obsolete as people code that sort of function directly into the theme.

      Regenerate Thumbnails is one of those ones I find I use very rarely, but when I do use them they are super handy. Like p3 Profiler, which I run occasionally to see what’s slowing down my site (if at all).

  • Kristen @ Metaphors and Moonlight
    February 13, 2017 at 9:33 am

    I had no idea there was such thing as a comments not replied to plugin! I try to not miss any comments by always responding to them in order on my comments area, but even that’s not always foolproof. I’ve noticed a few times when I accidentally missed a comment (then found it later, but that means there might be others I never found). Anyway, point is, I’m gonna check out that plugin lol. I also use the comment reply one and Nosegraze’s commentluv. I love how she makes such simple, slimmed down plugins!

    • Catherine
      February 13, 2017 at 9:39 am

      I was super excited to find the “comments not replied to” plugin as well (although it’s not as important for me as you, as I get nowhere near the amount of comments you do!). If you install it I hope it serves you well. 🙂

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