Finding the Best WordPress Plugins for your Blog

WordPress originally saw the light of day in 2003, and is now being used on thousands of different websites in countries all over the world. WordPress is designed to be a simple open source blogging tool that can be taken advantage of in two different ways: You can either take advantage of the hosted option, or you can take advantage of the free software download option.

WordPress offers a number of additional features that can be downloaded and installed, and these extra features are known as WordPress plugins. These WordPress plugins make it possible for you to customize your blog so that it suits you, the genre of your website and the nature of your audience as well. There are a wide variety of different WordPress plugins that you can choose from, many of which are downloadable directly from WordPress, while others can be found elsewhere on the internet. If you are new to blogging, it may be difficult for you to figure out which WordPress plugins will best suit you. Here are some of the mot popular WordPress plugins that are available online for free download.

* All in one SEO Pack

This is a WordPress blog that helps to optimize your titles, generating automatic META tags as well. It gives you the chance to override titles, setting any descriptions and meta tags that you want. Depending on what version of WordPress you are using, you can usually simply install this plugin to have it work straight away with little work or issue.

* Akismet -

This is a truly fantastic tool, helping you sort out potential spam in your blog. It will check all of your comments to analyze whether or not they are legitimate, allowing you to review the potential spam so that you may decide whether or not to keep the comments accordingly.

* Twitter Tools

This plugin is capable of integrating your WordPress blog and your Twitter account together. Twitter is a free micro-blogging and social networking service that can be easily integrated into your WordPress with the right plugin.

* WordPress Stats -

Although there are many different ways that you capture data and statistics regarding your website, most offer more information than you really need when it comes to blogging. The WordPress Stats system was designed specifically to focus on the information that a blogger actually needs.

* DMSGuestbook

This is a guestbook plugin that can be easily customized, which makes it possible for you to change colors and customize mandatory fields where users can fill out certain information that you are looking for. You can fully manage all of the user entries, and you can even edit or remove posts before they are shown on the website.

Each WordPress plugin has its own unique set of advantages and benefits that can help to turn your blog into a user friendly place. With so many different plugins to choose from, it is worthwhile to spend time searching for what is available, selecting those plugins that will benefit you, your blog and those who are visiting to read.

Originally posted 2009-02-06 08:00:54. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Principles for Good Blog Design, pt 1

tipsMost of the open source blogging platforms out there are going to come with at least a few different basic blogging designs. Some platforms call them themes, others call them templates, and others still have completely unique names for them. Most of these basic themes or templates have nothing inherently wrong with them, but customization is somewhat necessary otherwise everyone would have a blog that looked exactly the same as every other blog. Most blogging templates are really basic, and adding your own flair to them is easy. Still, many people get the whole customization thing wrong, and need to be steered in the right direction. There are some basic mistakes to how people go about customizing their blogs, and hopefully we can dispel some of them in this series on principles for good blog design.

1 – Whether you really want to or not, it is vital that you have some information about *you* in the blog. Either create an about me page, or have some information about yourself displayed in the sidebar of your blog. This should be a prominently placed section so it can be easily found, and it should be truly about who you are, rather than read like a resume.

2 – Make sure that your personal contact information is readily available, and even more importantly, easily visible. You need to at least have an e-mail address visible, and a phone number would be even better. If you want to prevent spammers from harvesting your e-mail address, use an image to display it rather than text. You can always use a free web based e-mail address such as a yahoo, gmail or hotmail address to keep from having your true personal address displayed, if you like. By posting real contact information, you are going to make yourself appear much more real. Although people may not really find reasons to contact you, you’re still indicating to your readers that you are available, which is a good thing.

3 – You should absolutely include a picture of yourself in your blog. All blogs, even business blogs, are personal, and the people who visit yours are going to want to know who you are and what you look like so that they can get to know you, and can benefit from the personal nature of your blog. It is much easier to build trust between yourself and your readers if your picture is visible and your readers feel like they know you. You do not absolutely need a picture, but it is still strongly recommended that you do have one in order to get the most out of your blog.

4 – Some of your blog posts are going to be more popular than others. Once you recognize which blog posts these are, keep them from being buried by finding a way to highlight them.

Continued in part 2 of this series.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2009-02-06 08:15:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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