Often, writers are known to sit endless hours just to push out chunks of text for our reading pleasure. Unfortunately, the hermit life isn’t a perfectly productive one.
Occasionally, writing takes a back seat for the flimsiest of excuses, like the use of social media, and let’s not forget the notorious writer’s block.
Are WordPress Plugins Helpful?
WordPress is truly a writer’s playground. You have an array of plugins for different tasks ranging from writing to editing, even the inclusion of relevant data is possible using the right plugin.
Below are some outstanding plugins which you might find useful in your content creation task:
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin
This plugin, from the Yoast stead, was put together by several experts led by Joost de Valk.
Frankly, this plugin wasn’t created with just writers or the art of writing in mind, yet your content writing skill is bound to be given a boost if you could use it frequently.
The plugin helps you become keyword sensitive as you have to meet a minimum keyword requirement for posts uploaded to your website.
The keyword is applied to the different areas of each post like the meta description, headings, body, and several other areas.
The focus of this plugin is to ensure your posts are optimized for search engines.
It’s certainly a worthwhile tool for writers not familiar with the intricacies of search engine optimization as they don’t have to waste value time pondering on what keyword(s) go where.
Yoast’s Google Analytics
Another plugin, from the Yoast stead, is this Google Analytics. This isn’t the regular writing plugin, but it can be quite handy as it helps in being more strategic about your writing.
With this Google Analytics plugin, you can plan how to create the most suitable content for your website.
You no longer have to seek out data concerning content creation, this plugin puts such at your fingertips.
Everything which could sway your content creation decision including search queries, demographics, domain ownership changes are made available to you.
Knowledge of your audience, which can help in the finer details of your content creation efforts, is within your reach.
The Google Analytics plugin opens your eyes to what works and what doesn’t, so you can prioritize the former when creating content.
Posting timeline can also affect results and the plugin ensures you’re aware of this when uploading posts. You can easily observe the time of post that fares better and stick to that timeline for an improvement in the numbers.
Google Analytics plugin by Yoast is a rather general and jack-of-all-trades sort of plugin but writers will appreciate the changes it brings to their content creation act.
Just Writing
Often, when writing, you just want to keep your eyes on the target without any unsolicited interruptions, and that’s exactly what’s on offer with this plugin.
But Just Writing does more than merely keeping your eyes on the ball as it has additional functions that ensure you don’t get derailed.
The toolbar is available for customization with items that can ensure your text is crispy enough for your online audience.
It has everything from the basic stuff like copy & paste, heading editing, color changes, to a preview of your completed text, so you can decide if it’s something you are satisfied with. And you can decide what options stay on screen and what doesn’t.
WP Super Edit
With this plugin, customizing the WordPress visual editor, previously an impossible task, becomes feasible.
The WP Super Edit doesn’t just constrain you to the adjusting of buttons on the editor, you can go beyond that by adding some of your favorites plugins.
There’s no limit to what you can add to the visual editor using this plugin so the basics like tables, emoticons and the more complicated options like the CSS setting, and advanced XHTML can be added
FD Word Statistics
This WordPress plugin is put together by Flagrant Disregard, which explains the ‘FD’ tag in the title.
Considered an awesome readability check plugin, the FD Word Statistics can be deployed on WordPress websites to improve the readability of the uploaded posts.
This plugin achieves this feat with the aid of several renowned readability meters, namely:
- Flesch Kincaid readability test:
- Gunning Fog:
Calculates the readability ease of a WordPress post using the average sentence length and the average number of syllables involved in the text.
This is another readability test that works on deducing the number of words in a sentence and the complexity of the words to arrive at a certain grade.
Each WordPress post is graded based on the result from either of the readability tests. The grade gotten highlights the required educational prowess of a reader if the post is to be easily digested.
The recommended readability grade varies with your preferred writing style. Academic writing or technical posts reserved for a specific audience will require a higher readability grade.
A much lower grade – something around 6 or 7 – would be ideal for an informal text.
How the grades are presented defers with the readability test. Flesch grades in percentages, so you’ll have to aim for high scores. Gunning Fog scores range from 1 – 15, but your grade has to be closer to 1 for perfect clarity. An easy to understand post has a score hovering between 7 and 8.
Visual Editor Font Size
Writing directly on WordPress can be an unpleasant chore as the font size is rather small, especially if you have just made the transition from writing platforms like Microsoft’s Word Doc.
The visual editor on WordPress has a statutory font size that can’t be changed from the dashboard. Fortunately, this plugin makes it easy to do just that.
It might interest you to know that the font size, from a reader’s perspective, is unaffected by the effect of this plugin.
Proofread Bot
No one is above making mistakes, and this applies to seasoned writers as well. Fortunately, you don’t have to compromise your high standard due to this chink in your human armor.
The Proofread Bot plugin identifies possible errors in your text, highlights them so you can take the necessary action.
Blunders picked up by the plugin aren’t only grammatical. You’re also kept in the loop regarding alterations in paragraphs.
Information on the WordPress Plugin Directory reveals that the bot works on the principle of innovative technology within the natural language niche.
The Proofread Bot also helps in checking for originality, but don’t expect to be wowed as it uses the less popular Bing in scanning for copied text.
Its setup is a breeze, like most WordPress plugins. After installing the plugin on your WordPress site, a tiny box becomes visible on your dashboard.
To use the Bot, just click the button, and it gets to work digging up any flaws you might have missed in your post.
The underbelly of this plugin is the limited functionality available for free. The free trial isn’t compatible with long-form posts as the allowed word count is capped at 600 words daily.
And it only proofreads for free once in a day, which is surprising for a WordPress plugin.
Front End Editor
This plugin gives you a ‘first look’ at your content through the eyes of your reader. Editing content directly on the live site might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it makes discerning potential pitfalls in your content possible.
The Front End Editor plugin makes editing your text, in real-time, no longer problematic.
You can add images easily by the usual ‘drag & drop’ approach without switching to your dashboard. Adding user accounts and giving administrative rights are still possible through this end.
WP Revision Control
If you’d rather manually proofread your text, this plugin could be precisely what you need.
You’re entitled to having as many revisions as possible, and these are stored in a dedicated database, which can be accessed whenever you deem fit.
With the WP Revision Control, you are totally in charge of the proofreading process – no dependence on robotic aids. The revision window can be adjusted according to your needs.
Copyright Proof
Verifying copyright claims is no longer easy. Every WordPress administrator can attest to that. The last decade has seen an exponential increase in the content available online, and this only makes finding the source of the ‘now copied’ idea a strenuous task.
Having the Copyright Proof plugin on your WordPress site could be a means of securing your content against the machinations of online scavengers.
Using this plugin, you can append your digital signature on all your WordPress posts. To reinforce your ownership of the content, you can timestamp all the posts on your WordPress site, encoding your copyright claims into each post.
Regardless of Google’s efforts at curbing copyright infringement, duplicate content is still prevalent. The Copyright Proof plugin allows you to track possible culprits intending to use your content on their website. But this requires adding a certain feature.
It has the feel of a handy plugin, however, whether this would hold water in a competent court, is the question.
More Plugins, More Problems?
Without questions, most of these plugins are revolutionary. Their capacity to help the average writer, in maximizing the use of his WordPress site, is undisputed.
But there’s a dark side to these plugins.
It’s not the more the merrier with these plugins as more equates to a decline in site loading speed – online readers don’t like this.
A safer approach would be to add only plugins you intend to use, don’t add to decorate your dashboard. By doing so, your website is unscathed, and your overall productivity is improved.
