Top 10 WordPress Plugins

I thought it would be helpful for people to have something like this if you’re using WordPress.

These plugins are more for SEO, functionallity and usability of your site. Having these wordpress plugins will help with SEO efforts, spam and of course the “end user’s” experience.

Obviously the Top 10 are my opinion but I would love to hear any feedback or suggestions on other wordpress plugins that should be in the list. Maybe I can even add to this list!

Here we go… Top 10 WordPress Plugins.

1. Ah yes, the All in One SEO Pack. Love this plugin.

Some features:

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For WordPress 2.3 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.

2. Google XML Sitemaps – Easy 1 Click Sitemap Installation.

This is a very important wordpress plugin for any blog. This should just be required for crying out loud! It gives your site the ability to display a nice little road map for the search spiders to crawl through your whole site.

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

3. Akismet – Life saving spam filter

Send those damn comments to the cleaners. I’m so over all of the spam I get on a daily basis. This spiffy little wordpress plugin checks against Akismet to see how dirty the comments really are. If they look at all suspicous… peace out nasty comments. Brilliant, you’ll love it.

When you install the Akismet WordPress Plugin there is a bit more setup then adding the plugin to your (wp-content/plugins directory) and hitting activate. You will need to setup a wordpress account. Once you do that they will give you an API key which you will enter to complete the installation.

Don’t worry it’s very simple and like wordpress always does they hold you hand along the way… making installation much easier for you.

4. Share This – Post to Social Media Sites in Seconds

Let’s face it… We are some social SOB’s! The society is taking it all in and laying it all out.

I like this wordpress plugin over other Social Media wordpress widgets for two reasons.

1. It doesn’t take 10 million years to load all of the fancy logos and what not. I have used Sociable and others in the past, but they were bogging down my site like no one’s business.

2. It offers more then just allowing users to post to social media sites like the others. You know like Digg, Propeller (Netscape), Stumble Upon, Reddit, etc. You can also post it to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter. And the last thing is you can simply email it if you like.

I think that offers much more to the user, especially since everyone might not have accounts setup with the usual social sites. I like having options…

5. Tweet This – Allow users to Tweet your Posts

This plugin fetches a shortened URL from Th8.us for each of your blog posts’ permalinks server-side, then displays a link to Twitter for each post, with a cute icon. This is done automatically for each post as needed, but the shortened URLs are permanently cached (as a custom field in the postmeta table) to keep load times fast.

6. Related Posts – Show related posts at the end of a post

WordPress Related Posts Plugin will generate a related posts via WordPress tags, and add the related posts to feed.

7. cformsII – Easily add a contact form

This is a must for your contact page! It’s also very easy to integrate.

cforms is a highly customizable, flexible and powerful form builder plugin, covering a variety of use cases and features from attachments to multi form management, you can even have multiple forms on the same page!

8. WP Polls- Get your users involved with Polls

WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

9. WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Save some brain cells.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

WordPress automatic upgrade upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step.

10. WP Super Cache – Cache like you’ve never cached before!

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts…

…As this plugin is based on the older WP-Cache plugin you can switch off the Super Cache static html caching. Caching will still be performed, but every request will require loading the PHP engine. In normal circumstances this isn’t that bad, but if your server is underpowered, or you’re experiencing heavy traffic you may run into trouble. Super Cached html files will be server more quickly than PHP generated cached files so there’s very little reason not to use the Super Cache feature.

Did that make sense to everybody? Basically, you should install this plugin because visitors & subscribers of your blogs will have a much more enjoyable experience when they don’t have to wait for everything to load when they visit your site. Your pages will load much faster as Super Cache does it’s magic, creating a much better blogging party.

Well there you have it

I hope that was informative and helped point you in the right direction. This might be more of a beginner’s post but you’d be surprised how many people don’t take advantage of these simple plugins.

I would love any feedback on other plugins. I am sure I am not utilizing all of the plugins I should be using as well.

More to come…

Looking for a great MP3 player for your WordPress Blog?

I searched everywhere looking for a great MP3 player and I think I have finally found a easy to use MP3 WordPress Plugin.

Introducing the “Audio Player WordPress Plugin.”

I have mentioned my brother, Isaac Farr’s website on here a few times.  When I created his site I obviously needed a reliable MP3 player to help him promote his music through his website.  That’s when I came across the Audio Player WordPress Plugin.

You can view the MP3 player in action on Isaac Farr’s website here.

Examples of the Audio Player

Installation and FAQ’s

Requirements

Audio Player requires WordPress 2.1 or higher and is compatible up to WordPress 2.5.1

The player is compatible with Adobe Flash Player 9 and above and requires JavaScript to work properly.

The admin panel and the player were tested in the following browsers:

• Firefox 2 and above
• Internet Explorer 6 and above
• Safari 3.0
• Opera 9.0 and 9.5

Note: The automatic close feature doesn’t work in Opera 9.0. It does work in 9.5. Opening a player doesn’t automatically close any other open player.

New install: First time installing Audio Player on your WordPress blog

1. Download the plugin zip file
2. Extract the contents of the zip file to your local hard drive
3. Upload the audio-player folder to your WordPress site in the wp-content/plugins folder
4. The folder structure of your blog should look like this:
5. 
6. Log in to your WordPress admin and go to the Plugins section. You should now see Audio Player in the list of available plugins
7. Activate the plugin by clicking the activate link
8. Now go to the Settings section (Options for WordPress pre 2.5) and select Audio Player where you can configure the plugin

The developer of this plugin has great documentation on his site here, 1 Pixel Out and he also has a site completely dedicated to this wordpress plugin: WordPress Audio Player

Activating the Plugin

Here’s a quick run down on activating the plugin and inserting it into a post/page.

• You’ll need to access your site via FTP and create a new directory called “audio”.
• Copy your .MP3 or whatever audio files into the directory.
• Inside wordpress go to the plugin settings page and on the general tab, set the default audio location. (e.g. “/audio”) SEE EXAMPLE:

• Inside the post or page you call for the file like so:

• View your post/page!

I hope you enjoy this MP3 WordPress plugin as much as I have.

Still have questions?  Leave a comment and I’ll try my best to get you through any problems you run into.

More to come…

By the way, I take quite a bit of time posting these so any feedback, comments or if these tutorials are helping you guys I would more then appreciate it

—

P.S. – You can Follow Me on TWITTER.

Top 5 WordPress Plugins Ya’ll!

I thought it would be helpful for people to have something like this if you’re using WordPress.

These plugins are more for SEO, functionallity and usability of your site.  Having these wordpress plugins will help with SEO efforts, spam and of course the “end user’s” experience.

Obviously the Top 5 are my opinion but I would love to hear any feedback or suggestions on other wordpress plugins that should be in the list. Maybe I can post another one that is the “Top 10 WordPress Plugins”

Here we go… Top 5 WordPress Plugins.

1. Ah yes, the All in One SEO Pack. Love this plugin.

Some features:

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For WordPress 2.3 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.

Download the All in One SEO Pack.

2. Google XML Sitemaps – Easy 1 Click Sitemap Installation.

This is a very important wordpress plugin for any blog.  This should just be required for crying out loud!  It gives your site the ability to display a nice little road map for the search spiders to crawl through your whole site.

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

Download the Google XML Sitemaps

3. Akismet – Life saving spam filter

Send those damn comments to the cleaners.  I’m so over all of the spam I get on a daily basis.  This spiffy little wordpress plugin checks against Akismet to see how dirty the comments really are.  If they look at all suspicous… peace out nasty comments.  Brilliant, you’ll love it.

When you install the Akismet WordPress Plugin there is a bit more setup then adding the plugin to your (wp-content/plugins directory) and hitting activate.  You will need to setup a wordpress account.  Once you do that they will give you an API key which you will enter to complete the installation.

Don’t worry it’s very simple and like wordpress always does they hold you hand along the way… making installation much easier for you.

Download Akismet

4. WP Super Cache – Cache like you’ve never cached before!

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts…

…As this plugin is based on the older WP-Cache plugin you can switch off the Super Cache static html caching. Caching will still be performed, but every request will require loading the PHP engine. In normal circumstances this isn’t that bad, but if your server is underpowered, or you’re experiencing heavy traffic you may run into trouble. Super Cached html files will be server more quickly than PHP generated cached files so there’s very little reason not to use the Super Cache feature.

Did that make sense to everybody?  Basically, you should install this plugin because visitors & subscribers of your blogs will have a much more enjoyable experience when they don’t have to wait for everything to load when they visit your site.  Your pages will load much faster as Super Cache does it’s magic, creating a much better blogging party.

Download WP Super Cache

5. Share This – Post to Social Media Sites in Seconds

Let’s face it… We are some social SOB’s!  The society is taking it all in and laying it all out.

I like this wordpress plugin over other Social Media wordpress widgets for two reasons.

1.  It doesn’t take 10 million years to load all of the fancy logos and what not.  I have used Sociable and others in the past, but they were bogging down my site like no one’s business.

2. It offers more then just allowing users to post to social media sites like the others.  You know like Digg, Propeller (Netscape), Stumble Upon, Reddit, etc.  You can also post it to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter.  And the last thing is you can simply email it if you like.

I think that offers much more to the user, especially since everyone might not have accounts setup with the usual social sites.  I like having options…

Download Share This.

Well there you have it.  I hope that was informative and helped point you in the right direction.  This might be more of a beginner’s post but you’d be surprised how many people don’t take advantage of these simple plugins.

I would love any feedback on other plugins.  I am sure I am not utilizing all of the plugins I should be using as well.

More to come…

I had a buddy of mine talking to me about the Social Media craze and he asked a pretty good question.

Can you automate your social media?

For example, you have a blog right?  Then you have a twitter account right?  Then Facebook account, MySpace account, Digg account, Flickr account… AH!

It’s hard enough for most of us to keep track of our usernames and passwords.  But social media truly can helpful and if you use them right they can be very powerful to promote yourself, business or ideas.

Here’s where I am getting at… sometimes it gets overwhelming to have to re-write everything you just wrote in your blog in all of your other accounts, sites, etc.  So what can we do to help automated this?

I have been doing some research about this particular topic and I have chosen to start with Twitter.  Twitter seems to be the hottest thing right now since Big League Chew (love that stuff, especially the grape flavor) so I thought that would be a good place to start.

Right now I am testing out 3 Twitter Widgets or Plugins that work with WordPress.

Not only do they work with WordPress but… of course it talks back and forth with Twitter.  Here are the plugins I have installed.

Twitter Tools – Alex King

WP Twitter

Twitter Updater

Now, unfortanetly the theme I use currently doesn’t allow me to use the plugins with all their features. (Displaying in my sidebar.)  But, I have used these themes to see all of their features.

Already Twitter Tools is leading the race.  I noticed with others, my site would take some time to load because the Twitter Updates on the sidebar were taking so long to load. (If you use Twitter you know that their servers sometimes can’t take the traffic!)

Twitter Tools, like I said is great!  It automatically updates your Twitter account when you are posting blog post, editing, and so forth.

But, here is my favorite part so far. When you are in your WordPress Dashboard and you click the “Write” tab you are giving a new sub option.  The usuals are new post, new page, new link and now a new one shows up, “Write Tweet”  How cool is that?  So right from my blog dashboard I can make an update on my Twitter account.

I think this one might pull away with my vote but I am interested to see what others have thought?

Anybody have comments or found something better for WordPress and Twitter to communicate?

—

P.S. – You can Follow Me on TWITTER.