Good Blogging Practice is going to complete its 10th post. Previously it has been discussed all about new theme installation.
Now the very task is to make your blog more productive, reader friendly, flexible, robust. Then how?
So, this can be done by,

• Plugins
• Sidebar Widgets (This is a plugin and comes under Presentation , it lets you to add more elements in blogs sidebar section)

First our discussion will be on Plugins. There are numerous plugins available but it depends as par your blog category and your need of different plugin. Some of them are necessary and some are not. But some plugins are necessary, like,

• Akismet (Filters out spam comments)
• Sidebar Widgets (Adds expandability of your blogs sidebar content)
• Wordpress Database Backup (It backups your database)

Among them Akismet comes integrated with wordpress but other two plugins sometime needs to be installed if you find they are not integrated.

Now the task is to Download them(from above link) –> Upload them (WordPress plugins directory inside of wp-content) –> activate them(login http://yourdomain.com/wp-login.php –> plugins).

To activate Akismet plugin you need WordPress.com API key. To get API key here is a simple step,

• Go to http://wordpress.com/signup/
• Check the box Just a username, please
• Sign up with your blog domain name as username or as par you choice
• Continue the signup process
• Login with username & password
• Go to My Profile
• Note down your API key
• Go to your previous blog
• Activate the Akismet plugin
• Go to Akismet Configuration
• Put the key no.
• Press Update options

Now your blogs comments spam filter is ready to work..
If the other two plugins are not installed then download them with following link provided and activate them from plugins.

So, basic plugin are installed. Now what next? To add more goodie goodie plugins and sidebar widgets to make the blog more productive, reader friendly, flexible and robust. But not now….Next…