 Last week we reviewed blogging powerhouse, WordPress. In this Tech Tip, we’ll look at some tools, widgets and plug-ins to optimize your site to its fullest potential.
As stated in the last Tech Tip, there are two versions of WordPress – .com and .org. To enhance your WordPress.com site you have some basic widgets available from the WordPress Dashboard. Under the drop down menu for Appearance, you’ll find a Widget tab that displays about 30 different widgets for your sidebar(s). Unless otherwise, noted, these tools and plug-ins are for use with WordPress.org.
All in One SEO Pack
One of the most popular plug-ins, All In One SEO Pack, is streamlined for some best practices for WordPress SEO. Some benefits include:
- Fine tune Page Navigational Links
- ONLY plug-in to provide SEO Integration for WordPress e-Commerce sites
- Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
- Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
- Generates META tags automatically
- Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
- For beginners, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
- For advanced users, you can fine-tune everything
WordPress Comments Notifier
 Brought to you by Google, WordPress Comments Notifier works just like gmail notifier. It's a great tool that lets you know when new comments are posted to your blog and allows you to manage/reply/edit your comments directly from your desktop. The program sits in the System Tray and keeps checking your blog for new comments. If there is something new you'll see a popup window in the bottom-right corner of your screen. You can then open this window and moderate comments right from your desktop.
Visitor Contact Forms
 It's rare to find a web site without a way to contact the author. The safest way is via a Contact Form. No worries about bots scraping your site to grab your email address for spamming. This simple WordPress plug-in has these key features:
- Geocoding - Know the location of people contacting you
- Captcha Spam Protection
- Auto Responder
- Contact Manager
- Google Maps
- Twitter Follow
- Skype Status
For WordPress.com users, you too can have a simple contact form, just insert this code [contact-form] into the HTML section of your Contact page.
123LinkIt
In Tech Tip 257 we looked at ways to monetize your blogs and web sites through affiliate marketing. A simple plug-in, 123Linkit easily integrates WordPress with affiliate marketing. It analyzes relevant keywords and ranks them in relevancy to your post. Then it matches those keywords to the appropriate affiliate links. Write your post as you normally do and then click on "Add affiliate links". It cloaks the links and changes the keywords into regular hyperlinks.
It’s free to use, however 123LinkIt will do a 70-30 revenue share. You get 70 cents on each dollar of commission. Right now, it only works with Commission Junction merchants such as Geeks.com but they say more networks are on the way. Perfect for those who really don't want to be bothered with all that is involved with affiliate marketing but are open to making a few extra bucks.
WordPress e-Commerce
If you're looking for full service e-commerce shopping cart tool for your web site and products then consider a WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that is truly easy to use. Just like WordPress, the WordPress e-Commerce plug-in is an Open Source project, which means everything from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the WordPress community.
If you're just looking for a simple donation or subsciption payment plan try Easy Paypal.
Even More Plug-Ins
 As just stated, WordPress is an OpenSource project so people all over the world are constantly contributing to it by adding new plug-ins. You can search the Internet and find countless plug-ins, themes and tools. Mashable has a nice list of about three hundred. These aren't necessarily reviewed by the WordPress community so exercise caution before downloading any files.
As we mentioned last time, WordPress.org is where the rubber meets the road in terms of blog development. You're only limited by what code exists. The only caveat is that since it's OpenSource, it's kind of like the Wild West out there with no one entity overseeing the countless plug-ins. Check to make sure the developer has stayed on top of their project and that it is compatible with the version of WordPress you are using. You can search the WordPress Plug-In Repository for a list over 9,000 available plug-in and tools with ratings, reviews and compatibility. |
