This and That

WordPress

This will be the first part of the series and we will focus on five plugins at a time for WordPress that I find to be extremely useful. As I have said before I think that WordPress (NOTE: currently running WP v2.7.1) is one of the greatest pieces of open-source software EVER created. Yes I feel that strongly. I’m a psuedo-tech-savy individual, but if that isn’t you don’t be afraid this utility is made for you and me. That’s why I love it. Y

For the first post I will randomly pick five of the plugins that are currently being utilized here at This and That. As I add, replace and remove plugins on the site I will make an effort to document the process and let you know about any issues that occur.

1) Plugin Manager - This is one of the most practical and easy to use plugins I have seen in a long time for WP. Without this  when you find a plugin that you like, you have to download the .zip file to your local machine, unzip it and then upload that to your web server to activate via the WP Admin Control Panel. Not anymore. Via Plugin Manager all you need to do is go to the Add New section of the Plugins menu item and search for plugins by a variety of methods (term, author, tags) and when you find the one that you want click on the title of it and up pops a new window giving you all the information about the plugin, but with a new twist Install Now. Click the button and your plugin will be installed right before your eyes and it even allows you the option to activate once it is installed. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
Author’s Homepage: http://www.drunkadmin.com

2) Google (XML) Sitemap: If you create content on the web and no one knows you published it, is it really content? One could argue that there is a lot of content on the internet that no one knows about with the last reported number of blogs currently being in excess of 184 MILLION. According to sitemaps.org, “Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.” This plugin helps to let the rest of the world outside of your mom, wife, siblings and car pool know that you have a blog.
Author’s Homepage: http://www.arnebrachhold.de

3) Exclude Page(s): This is a new find for me and it already has come in hand on one of my other WP-based sites http://www.awesometownfest.com. In the past, I would have to custom edit the .php files to not show certain pages and let them remain hidden from the navigation menus, but now that has all been simplified. With this tool all you have to do is un-check the option to include the page in the navigation menus and it will still be accessible via a direct link, but will not appear in any page menus. Simple, but highly useful feature that will come in handy ten-fold.
Author’s homepage: http://www.simonwheatley.co.uk

4) Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button: If you’re creating content on the web, you want as many people to read, view or stream as humanly possible. This plugin makes that even easier. No need to leave the site just click this easy to use button and you’ll see a laundry list of options to share, save, bookmark and even email the current content. This is a feature you see everywhere and will want to have on your site. A good rule of thumb that I like to use is to give people options and this will do that for you. Some of your readers might be on facebook, while others like to use delicious and others might just want to e-mail to a friend or colleague and this has all of that with one simple click or roll-over of the mouse. You can configure it to be on the bottom of all your posts, pages or only those on the homepage of your site. It’s really up to you. Note: there is also a similar plugin from the same team that allows your users to subscribe to any, but since WordPress is easily configurable for RSS feeds I don’t use this feature.
Author’s homepage: http://www.addtoany.com/

5) Akismet: This is not the coolest or flashiest plugin available for your WordPress blog, but it will be one of the unsung heroes of your site. As seen in the comic books, power can be used for evil and there in lies the ongoing issue of having to defend against SPAM and bots that auto-post junk to your comments and clutter up your sites. If you don’t get them under control they will feed on your content and make your life hell, plain and simple. I have seen this several times when moderating message boards and on this very site before I made this new friend. Automatic Kismet or Akismet for short is looking to rid your site of spam through an “collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging” ( via akismet.com). Once you’ve installed it, (note: you will need to get a Wordpress API key) you will never have to worry about track back and comment spam on your blog again.
Author’s Homepage: http://ma.tt/

That’s all for now. Please leave comments below…