Our Top WordPress Plugins
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I’ve been meaning to write up about the WordPress plugins I use for my blogs for some time now. Well this is another task from ‘things to do’ that I can mark off for today. 
AdRotator
AdRotator wil rotate any size banners to display one at a time each time page is loaded. Currently used in our header file.
AdSense Deluxe
AdSense Deluxe allows you to insert code into your posts from a drop down menu button on the edit post page conveniently positioned below the default WordPress edit buttons. Use the ‘Options’ in your admin panel to cut and paste your own collection of AdSense Codes, giving them a name and description for easy reference. Once this is set up you can use the drop down menu to insert AdSense ads anywhere you desire in your posts.
Askimet
To use Askimet you just need an API key which you can get free from WordPress.com. This captures the time almost all incoming Spam message dead in its track. On a few occasions REAL comments may accidentally end up in the Spam list, however you can ‘Select’ and click on the ‘De-spam marked comments’ button to send misdirected valid comments to your moderated comments list. Life would be another thousand more clicks a week or more of manually deleting Spam WITHOUT Askimet!
Bumpzee
Adds the Bumpzee widget to your blog with your unique Bumpzee code. You can see mine located at the footer/end of this blog.
FeedBurner FeedSmith
Now managed by Google and originally created by Steve Smith. This plugin will automatically redirect your default RSS feeds to your FeedBurner feed URL. So you will not lose any of your valuable subscribers. This is another gem of a plugin I don’t think I could live without.
Get Recent Comments
With this plugin you can display the most recent comments or trackbacks on you blog.
Google XML Sitemaps
A simple and practical way to build a ’search engine friendly’ sitemap for your blog. Currently supports Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Updates automatically after new posts are published.
Got Banners
Got Banners is a simple plugin for rotating banners such as the popular 125 x 125 pixel banners on your site displaying a series of banners that make random changes in disdplay order with each page view. Helps to combat ad blindness as the ads appear in different places and grab your attention in the process.
Jerome’s Keywords
Easily add essential keywords to each blog post. You can also use this plugin to create tag clouds, meta tags, site tags or make create Technorati tags.
ShareThis
An easy way for your visitors to ‘share‘ your posts with others by posting to social bookmarking sites and sends your post to a friend via email.
Simple Yearly Archive
As the title suggests the Simple Yearly Archive plugin will lists your archives by year. Ideally I would prefer to use Compact Monthly Archive for its ergonomic user-friendly format which looks so INCREDIBLY well organized down at ProBlogger. Hat’s off to the programmer for creating such a cool streamlined plugin.
Sociable
Adds social bookmarking icons below each post for people to share with others.
Subscribe To Comments
Allows one click subscription to comments on any particular post by sending you an email announcement whenever additional comments are made. Once installed and activates you don’t have to do anything. Very good for people who do not want to subscribe to comments through a feed and can access exact posts that are of personal interest to them.
What Would Seth Godin Do
Built on the principles of Seth Godin’s ideas to use cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site. A customized welcome message is shown to new visitors based on their cookie inviting them to subscribe to your RSS feed an email updates. A great way to get a High Profile A-List Blogger to check you out!
WP Grins
Adds fun smilies to your post with just one click. After activating this plugin you’ll find a variety of smilies in a row just under your edit screen. Smilies also appear on the comments section for your use by your visitors who leave a comment.
OnlyWire AutoSubmitter
I’ve saved the best for last!
I regularly use OnlyWire to submit to Social Bookmarking sites and wondered if there was a better way. So I did a quick search and found this genius plugin which will automatically login and submit to my OnlyWire account for each post I publish. OnlyWire Auto Submitter should save me a lot of time posting to 22 social bookmarking sites. This is a new addition to my currently plugin inventory so I need to personally test it out to check if it really does submit to OnlyWire with little or no problems. If anyone else has used this plugin your feeback would be appreciated.
WordPress 2.0+ Benefits
WordPress has grown up and finally taken into account the changing face of the Web 2.0 and widget mania. With an abundance of widget themes being designed and the amazing value all for free from programmers and the help from people at the WordPress Community Forums who provide mostly lightening fast responses to any problems you may come across.
Many blogger’s have revamped their blogs with a huge preference for wider layout, wigetized sidebars making adding images, link etc a breeze. No more searching through code to edit your template anymore which is the surest ways to screw things up if you forget to save the original unedited PHP files.
Arggggh no more!
WordPress have developed the 2.0+ series to incorporate ‘tags’ into the default script which they have taken from Jerome’s Keywords .
Remember they do not get paid per download unless on the rare occasion the plugin requires pre-purchase. Whereas the majority of WordPress plugins are completely free to use. Donations and tips are present on the download sites but I wonder how many of us have given a contribution to express our appreciation for the benefits they have given us through their hard work!
I have noted that some plgins once installed display a ‘Reward the Author’ link when you go to view or edit from the admin panel.
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Yikes!
This would be just as difficult and cumbersome as going into admin and manually changing every post to a redirect in my HTACCESS file. The result of which would seriously slow down my sites page load times. Imagine making just one typo error, my whole domain would go down. For those who don’t know, just one mistake or missed typed url (htp:// instead of http://) URL or character in a HTACCESS file can bring your whole site OFFLINE.
Now with WordPress version 2.2+ redirection of changed Permalinks is BUILT-IN to the blogging software.
Phew!
This new feature came just in time as not too long ago I changed my Permalink structure (during November 2007) from the default setting to POSTID and POSTNAME.
Default settings => http://www.miriadz.com/blog/?p=39
Using the default Permalinks structure your potential web site visitors have absolutely no clue as to what the article content would entail so after considerable thought I elected the postname and post number.
I know many people have opted to use “Postname” only Permalinks for their WordPress blogs but after reading the literature from the codex:
Using only %postname%
“If you use postname as the only element in your permalinks to create a structure such as example.com/post-title, the rewrite rules may make it impossible to access pages such as your stylesheet (which has a similar format) or the /wp-admin/ folder [is this true in Wordpress 2.0+ versions?]. It’s best to include some numeric data (e.g. the post ID or date) in the permalink to prevent this from happening. Additionally, WordPress v1.2.x requires the use of a date structure in order for some features, such as the calendar, to function properly. /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ is always a good start.”
Source: WordPress Codex
I just didn’t want to tempt fate. Best to be safe than sorry in a few months time or so!
WordPress Database BackUp
I just log into my web hosting account to use CPanel and quickly back up all of my databases for WordPress and other scripts now so I am not going to install this plugin. I know that after Skippy moved away from WordPress to other venture there has is a new plugin, BackUpWordPress.
Conclusion
Overall I’m glad I chose WordPress as a blogging platform but this hasn’t always been the case. With past upgrade issues and having to remove so many plugins due to compatibility issues or the authors leaving ship as they have had enough from the barrage of upgrades, theme break issues to name a few. Well I’ve done my fair share of cursing the day I installed a blog let alone several blogs I and my family use. However I do appreciate the automatic updates that appear in admin to let you know about the latest version of any plugin.
I haven’t personally tried this yet but I will for the next upgrade. At least that way there shouldn’t be too much disruption to site visitors. But as you already know with upgrading you never know what may happen!!
Take good note of the few listed plugins that are compatible with each other, in other words, when they are both activated there will be problems. Deleted old files that are no longer compatible or I don’t any more. It has been known that old or obsolete version of WordPress could make your blog or site vulnerable open to hacker acttacks.
Recomended Resources:
Unrestricted License PLR Articles
Google Video Tips By Matt Cutts
Have you had the opportunity to view some candid Q & A sessions by Matt Cutts in which he candidly answers questions on video and goes into more detail regarding common concerns expressed by webmasters.
Issues such as whether sitemaps what factors determine or influence the frequency of update and whether the process is dependant on page views.
- Making sure that you have great content
- Making your site unique so that people will bookmark you and want to return. Duplicate Content
- SERPS [Search Engine Results Pages]
- Google Terminology Explained and more.
Matt also suggests that you can use a text browser like Lynx to view your sites as the search engines would see your site. If you can view your site in text only format then you’re going to be easily crawled by search engine spiders.
After watching some of the videos and taking notes where necessary I felt that this was a very helpful way in which to answer personal questions for a wide audience of people. We know that Google have an growing database of ‘How To’ videos. However Matt Cutts gave the whole Q & A session a more human and personal touch and was by far a more enjoyable experience.
You need to establish a ‘hook’ in order to compels visitors come back to your site on a regular basis. This could be by signing up to your newsletter or for regularly updated content like a blog or review site.
Think about your site content and what your initial goals and objectives are and work on converting browsers into regular returning visitors.
I hope you get to view the free Google Videos and take in a tip or two to help you make the right and rational decisions for your web site. Matt makes several references to Webmaster World so to be up to date with what’s going on first hand this site is essential for your research and news reference.
Related Resources:
The Easy Way To Create a Google Friendly XML Site Map
What’s all the fuss about Google Site Maps?
You may be wondering whether it is worth creating a Google Friendly Site Map as well as your html site map. Well it definitely is a good idea to have both.
Think of a site map as a learning tree. Your entire site content forms a unique and comprehensive array of content with links to every page in your web site.
You are not only providing a one-stop method to reach each page to your visitors but also provide the hungry search engine with food to spider your content.
XML Site Maps can be the back door into getting your site indexed by Google. I am not suggesting that you will increase your rankings or will be listed immediately.
However once the XML Site Map is set up in the root, main site of your domain. Google’s Search Engine Spiders can pick up all of your listed pages quickly and efficiently.
Some webmasters have reported that hundreds of their web pages have been indexed by Google. From my own personal experience I have submitted several XML site maps and all have been indexed just 6 days later!
The best and easiest way to create a Google friendly site map is believed or not FREE OF CHARGE to all!
Take the following steps to create your XML Site Map and track indexing of your web sites by Google to view the most current results of your site being indexed.
Step One:
Create a FREE Google Account here…
Once you have provided your email address and password you need to verify your email address by logging into your email inbox and simply click on the link provided by Google. That’s it!
You know have the means to track every XML site map you have created for each of your web sites.
Step Two:
Go to this website to create your XML site map with a few clicks of your mouse. XML Site Maps
Follow the first 3 steps ONLY do not complete step 4 (all will be explained later). online to save your very own site map of each web site to your hard drive.
Once you have uploaded each XML site map to your server go to your "Free Google Account" to submit each of your sites to Google to be queued for indexing.
Currently 500 web pages can be indexed for free at this great web site.
Supports creation of both XML and PHP formats.
The emergence of Google’s newest protocol means webmasters have control over how frequent Google will update your site content by allowing you to set the parameters in the code of your XML site map generating software:
For example:
• Always
• Hourly
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Never
Recommended Resources:
FREE Broken Web Site Links Checker
Fix those broken links before submitting your sites(s) to the search engines and
whenever you are updating your XML and HTML Site Maps.
List of FREE Site Map Generators online:
1. Arnebrachhold Site Map Generator
2. Audit My PC Site Map Generator
3. Block Layer Site Map Generator
4. Enarion Site Map Generator
5. Google Site Map Generator
6. Johannes Mueller Site Map Generator
7. Sourceforge Site Map Generator
8. XML Sitemaps Generator (The site referred to in this post)
9. Vigos Site Map Generator
P.S.
I have not had a chance to test the above resources so let me know how you get on with
them. I have personally used the free automated sitemap creator as described in my
step by step guide. Works like a dream!
If you know of any more similar sitemap resources add them in the "comments"
field. Thanks again for reading.
TOP TIP:
"Don’t be coerced into spending $97.00+ for some software to create a site
map. Get it done the FREE and EASY way"
Nancy P Redford
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