WordPress is a fantastic platform for building a blog or a website. It’s easy to use, but also highly customizable. No two WordPress websites look exactly the same (unless of course you leave your blog set to the default theme), and there are tons of free WordPress plugins available for further customization and functionality. I gathered a list of the top 10 free WordPress plugins here, and I’ve been dedicating a blog entry to each plugin. So far I’ve covered All in One SEO Pack, No Duplicate Comments, Akismet, and Similar Posts.
Today, I’m going to be discussing our fifth free WordPress plugin called Post Teaser, which solves an annoying blogging problem. On most WordPress themes, your main blog page will show the entire text of all your posts. If a reader hasn’t been keeping up with your blog and they want to find something you posted last week, they often have to spend some time scrolling to find it.
That’s pretty annoying, right? Also, I think when the entire blog posts shows on a blog, it ends up looking kind of cluttered. I think it looks a lot better to just show a preview. Plus I think it holds the readers attention a bit more. If they’re not interested in your first post, it only takes a second for them to see what else you’re writing about. This makes them more likely to stay on your blog for a little while longer.
Well, this is exactly what Post Teaser does. If you install Post Teaser, instead of showing your entire blog post on the main page of your blog, Post Teaser allows you to show just a “teaser.” It will show the main image, first paragraph of your post, as well as the word count, number of images in the post, and estimated reading time. I have Post Teaser installed on this blog, so if you look at the front page, you can see an example of what Post Teaser does and how your blog will look if you install it.
Post Teaser is very easy to find and install. Simply use the sidebar in your WordPress home to navigate to plugins, and search for Post Teaser. It will be the very first plugin that shows up. Installing this free WordPress plugin is very simple, and I think well worth it.
What are you favorite free WordPress plugins? Do you use Post Teaser? Feel free to share your experiences in the comment section.
[...] and so far I have covered All in One SEO Pack, No Duplicate Comments, Akismet, Similar Posts, and Post Teaser. (I use all these plugins on this blog, by the way.) Today, I’m going to talk about number 6 on [...]