The reputation of WordPress as a content management system (CMS) is solid. The evidence is when publications like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, National Geographic, and Forbes all use WordPress for their online presence, you know it’s good.
And the one thing that the organizations above have in common is that they all employ writers – writers who use WordPress to create their news stories, their articles, and their blog and social media posts.
WordPress as a standalone CMS is amazing and, because it is open source, great developers from all over the world continue to improve it. With advanced plugins and themes, you can build more than 35+ type of websites with WordPress.
One might create a WordPress plugin for a great e-commerce shopping cart and checkout process; another might create a plugin for enhanced SEO or project management.
Just What is a WordPress Plugin?
A plugin is a piece of software, crafted by a developer, that will add features to WordPress. It is standalone, meaning that it can be added to any WordPress site (or not) depending on whether the owner of the site or blog needs or wants it.
Over 52,000 of these plugins are housed on the WordPress.org/plugins site, and WordPress users can search by category, find features they like, and add a plugin to WordPress sites they currently operate. Most have free and premium versions.
10 Plugins to Make a Writer’s Life Easier
Over the years (about 16), there have been a number of plugins created to make the lives of writers easier. In fact, a search on the WordPress plugin page will bring up 22 pages of them. Here are just 10 that writers will find useful.
1. Yoast SEO
Developer: Team Yoast
Any writer who wants his/her work found in a Google search will want this SEO plugin. It was created by the Yoast team, under the leadership of Joost de Valk.
To date, there have been over 3 million installs. It will analyze the SEO compatibility of any piece of writing with search engine algorithms, including the keywords, catchy title, content, and meta description and tell a writer what should be “fixed” to enhance SEO.
2. Editorial Calendar
More than 50,000+ users are already using this powerful plugin to make their writing process faster and better.
This plugin gives you an overview of all of your posts and when they’ll be published. Drag and drop feature lets you easily and quickly change the post dates.
You can quickly add new posts to drafts to edit drafts, posts titles, date and content quickly in a pop-up window, no need to visit post editor page to edit the content.
WordPress doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled and this free editorial calendar plugin gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published.
3. Edit flow
Developer: Daniel Bachuber, Automattic, and others
A brand new tool for the empowerment of the editorial team. Now you can forget about the lost deadlines, missed events and planned post.
With Edit flow you can create a built-in editorial calendar, where you get the vast list of functions, like status edit, notifications, content budget and important details on your editorial.
4. TinyMCE Advanced
Developer: Andrew Ozz.
If you are sick of the endless rows of the buttons in the edit window, and lose your concentration, or, vice versa, you need more functions, then you should definitely use this gizmo.
TinyMCE adds 15 different plugins integrated into one that can be adjusted according to your needs. It greatly enhances the features of WP editing menu and simply saves your time from additional edits.
5. Post Title Formatter
Developer: Get Good Grade.
This handy tool was developed by Get Good Grade., a professional writing service. No more looking up which words in a headline or title should be capitalized or if and where punctuation should occur.
Just type in your title, all in lower case without any punctuation, and the title formatter will generate a grammatically correct one for you.
6. Just Writing
Developer: Greg Ross
Such plugins as this one has the useful set of functions, that make the writing routine easier. This one is helpful when you are tired of reopening the editing menu of the site.
Instead, you can do it right from the menu. Moreover, you will get the great set of automatic functions, like spell check or block color change in real time.
7. Speech to Text
Developer: BizTechc.
If you are an author who hates the keyboard but has the “gift of gab,” this plugin is for you. Armed with Chrome and a microphone, you can speak your text, dialogue, and more and have it automatically translated to the written word. Once that is accomplished, you can review and edit.
8. WP WriteShare
Developer: Fandon Entertainment LLC.
WordPress serves all writers, not just bloggers. This plugin is ideal for long-form writing projects, as well as the community, sourced writing. This collaborative tool works for academic content, business journals, even fan fiction.
9. Image Optimization : tinypng.com and compressor.io
These are two online services, we have been using for a long time to optimize images for our blogs. Many plugins are also available but we don’t like to install too many plugins that why we use these two online services.
No post or article can be published today without images – visuals are what make content engaging and attractive.
These two online services are “must-use” because they can reduce file sizes of images automatically, up to 70% in fact. Saving kilobytes means a site or post gets maximum performance. And the technology used keeps the quality intact.
10. Browser Grammar Checker
Developer: Grammarly
Not exactly the WordPress plugin, but this is the most professional and comprehensive set of grammar, spelling and vocabulary check on the market.
Based on the professional dictionaries, and constantly improved with the machine learning and team of professional linguists, it is able to work with your text and find even the minor mistakes.
Grammarly is freemium, so with the paid version, you receive strict plagiarism checker and advanced mistakes analysis.