Following on from our last post, we felt you needed more jQuery plugins. Not because you do not seem to understand the power of jQuery, but because there were more we liked and wanted to tell you about. We have also included links to a few tutorials so be sure to take a look at them, as we all feel they are pretty good. So without further ado, lets get down and dirty with some more jQuery WordPress plugins.

Shockingly Big IE6 Warning Plugin. Not only does this have to be the best name for a plugin ever, it is also a truly great plugin as it displays a warning above a blog telling people not to use IE6 and the reasons why. Go Shockingly Big IE6 Warning Plugin.

WP-Slimbox2 Plugin. This plugin utilizes jQuery to create impressive image overlays with slide out effects. Again a great plugin if you utilize pictures in your blog.

Live Blogroll Plugin. The idea of this plugin, is that it enhances the blogroll in the following ways. When the mouse is hovered over a link in the blogroll, it creates a text box which features comments and RSS details. It is powered by Ajax.

Photoxhibit Plugin. This baby allows you to use pictures from your Flickr, Picasa, and, or Smug accounts to build photo galleries for your blog. You can also upload your own pictures for this project.

WordPress Sidebar Turned Apple Flashy Using jQuery UI Tutorial. With a title like that, what can it all mean? Well basically this is not a plugin, but a tutorial to create a sidebar like the start page of an Apple. In other words, make a classy one.

How To Create Tabs Using jQuery Tutorial. Tabbed navigation is a bonus as it gives quick and easy access to various parts of your site. This tutorial will enable you to build and design your own tabs, and make you the envy of all your blogging friends.

jQuery Reply To Comment Plugin. Providing you have jQuery installed on your blog, you can add two links to a post. Normally “reply”, and “quote”.

My Page Order Plugin. As you know, setting the order of pages on your blog can be a clumsy process, and an overly frustrating one. By using this plugin, a drag and drop interface is created and thus the urge to throw things out of the window, is not evoked.

WordPress Featured Post Slideshow Plugin. This plugin allows you to create animated slideshows, which should be eye catching if nothing else.

GD Star Rating Plugin. This is a great plugin for increasing interaction between reader and you, as it allows your blog posts to be rated. Many options are available for displaying the stars as well as creating sidebars to show the most top rated articles etc.

Create A Featured WordPress Slider Using jFlow Tutorial. This tutorial will show you how to create sliding content areas where featured articles can be seen. Navigation is easily customized too.

Adding Form Validation To WordPress Comments Using jQuery Tutorial. Want to learn how to validate a form without out reloading a page and possibly losing form content? Good, follow the link and find out.

Using jQuery To Enhance A Clients Log-in Experience Tutorial. Well you don’t want your clients thinking you’re boring, so create a jQuery lightbox to make your clients feel enhanced.

These plugins and tutorials should help you make the most of your blog using the powerful jQuery to its potential. Just be sure to choose which options you want with care, and try and determine before hand what it will add to your blog.

jQuery allows for impressive animations and interactions that are easily created and utilized in your WordPress blog. If used wisely, these plugins can enhance your blog by making it far easier for your readership to read your words of genius, and participate in your blog.

This articles details some of the better plugins that utilize jQuery.

Infinite Scroll Plugin. This baby adds related pages on to the one that your reader is reading. The content it grabs is predetermined by you by using the .load() method which is an CSS selector of the HTML you have chosen. This is also knows as autopagerize, paginate, and endless pages.

jQuery Lightbox Plugin. This plugin can be used to overlay images on a page. It is compatible with WordPress 2.2 and up, and fully compatible with K2. It is well worth considering if you are using a lot of pictures on your blog.

WordPress Post Information Plugin. This simple plugin allows you to view post meta information by using the toggle function in JavaScript. It is an on demand feature.

Snazzy Archives Plugin. Snazzy is a fantastic word and should never be underestimated by man or beast. The same can be said of this plugin which allows you to select different ways to display your posts, and add special effects to make it all snazzy. Displaying videos with comments for example is just one of the many options available with this plugin

J Post Slider Plugin. This plugin allows you to create a slider navigation element, that is used for showing your posts by sliding them across the screen. The motion is constant, until a user holds the mouse over a post, and selects it by clicking it. Post descriptions also appear.

WP Imagefit Plugin. This plugin uses JavaScript to resize images rather than CSS or HTML to do the job. If you enjoy your JavaScript, you’ll enjoy Wp Imagefit.

Wp Wall Plugin. This is quite a clever little addition to your blog, as it adds a widget in the sidebar which displays comments. It has the full range of moderation options as normal comments, as all the hard work is done back-office via WordPress.

jQuery Comment Preview Plugin. This plugin provides live uploading of comments without the page having to refresh. It could be a good one if your blog is powered by feisty debates.

Insights Plugin. This plugin is extremely useful if you use pictures in your posts. Powered by Ajax, it creates an interface which allows you to search the following sites individually to find images in real time. Flickr, Youtube, Wikipedia, Search Google, Insert a Google Map and more…

µAudio Plugin. This is an mp3 player powered by Flash. To save load time, the links are unmodified until they are clicked, at which a point the player fades in and out depending on whether it is selected. Clever really.

Simple Modal Contact Form Plugin. This Ajax powered plugin, basically provides a good way for a reader to complete a form. It has an option whereby the reader can request a copy. It utilizes the jQuery JavaScript library and the SimpleModal jQuery plugin to work.

Events Calendar Plugin. This plugin is a more enhanced version of the basic calendar provided by WordPress. It allows you to keep track of events, hence the name.

µMint Plugin. This allows you to integrate statistics of Shaun Inman’s Mint statistic package into WordPress. What you do with them after that is completely up to you.

As you can see, there are a lot of useful plugins here to help you create a better blog for your readers. As with all plugins, it is advisable to chose them with care, and be clear about its role in your blog.

If you have followed our series on content management systems for WordPress, you would have found all manner of plugins that created anything you could ever wish for to make WordPress a viable, loveable, solid, and good, content management system. What more could you ask for?

Well quite a bit actually, and what kind of content management system is complete without a sack load of widgets. This article not only provides useful widgets for viable CMS, but also adds some more plugins which we feel can add that little bit more to your content management system that is powered by WordPress.

Widgets Reloaded. This plugin gives you widgets that allows you to have much more control. They replace the default widget and come with highly customizable control panels. As each widget can be used any number of times, this little ditty could be a useful addition to your CMS ala WordPress arsenal.

Flexi Pages Widget Plugin. If you are tired with the default ‘pages’ widget, then this could be for you. Flexi Pages, is more configurable than its default counterpart and includes these features:

 Option to display sub-pages only in parent page and related pages.
 Option to select and exclude certain pages from getting displayed in the list. Alternatively, only certain pages can be displayed by using the ‘include’ option.
 Option to include a link to the home page.
 Other options include title, sort column/order, hierarchical/flat format, show date.
 Multiple instances of the widget. Unlimited number of instances of the widget can be added to the sidebar.

In effect it breaks down and gives you more control over pages, and as you are running a CMS site, could prove useful.

Sidepost Widget. Rather than show all posts in the main blog after selecting a category, this little bundle of tricks shows the posts in the side bar, and provides a link to the posts. It also provides small blog in the sidebar for special entries, and you have the option for configuring it to show only the posts you want it to, and if it shows the full blog or post excerpts.

Query Posts Widget. This beauty of this widget is that you do not need to know any code to use it, and it provides the same functions as query_post(). All kinds of options are available such as Posts by tag, Posts by category, Posts by author, Posts by time/date, Posts by custom field key and/or value, Choose any number, Show pages, Show the full post, excerpt, or even order them in a list. All this without having to know a single line of PHP code. Now that’s what I call a plugin.

And now for some more plugins, well you can never have enough for CMS!

Search Everything Plugin. This plugin enables you to do precisely that, by increasing the capabilities of the default WordPress search. Search Every Page, Search Every Tag, Search Every Category, Search non-password protected pages, Search Every Comment, Search Every Custom Field, Exclude Posts from search, Exclude Categories from search and so on and so fourth.

Subscribe2 Plugin. This is a gem as it provides a subscription management service for your blog. You can create email notification for your subscribers every time there is a new blog post on a daily or monthly basis. Very cool.

Exec PHP Plugin. Allows you to execute PHP code in posts widgets etc, and features include:

 Executes PHP code in the excerpt and the content portion of your posts and pages
 Configurable execution of PHP code in text widgets (for WordPress 2.2 or higher)
 Write PHP code in familiar syntax, eg.

WP e-Commerce Plugin. Creates an elegant shopping cart that allows you to sell your services, your products, your soul etc.

This is not an extensive list of CMS plugins, but with the four parts should give you a sound infrastructure for creating a sound CMS for your WordPress blog.

With so many good plugins for converting WordPress into a quality, solid, and viable content management system, it seems silly not to bring you some more quality, solid, and viable plugins, that will make it that much easier to achieve the CMS dream.

This article features page and post management, and the holy grail of everything blog related, SEO. As always with plugins, it is advisable to choose them with care, and not just go by the ones that sound appealing. The best way is to take a step back and ask yourself which plugins are really going to work and enhance my blog.

Idealien Category Enhancements Plugin. Other than having the best name for a plugin ever, this baby allows you to manage category templates as easy as you manage posts templates. This is achieved as it gives the category a meaningful name rather than an ID number. Any views of the category will render as per the category template selected. Category templates can also be used for posts in a category too.

Pagemash/Pagemangement Plugin. The three ppps, will help you manage the order of pages, or if pages are shown at all. A very useful page management plugin.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARRP). By using a customisable algorithm, YARRP provides a reader with relevant posts to the one they are reading. The algorithm works by creating a “match score”, from tags, categories, and titles from your blog.

Exclude Pages Plugin. As you have no doubt deduced this plugin will allow you to exclude pages from the navigation menus. It adds a tick box which is ticked by default. If you untick it, the page is excluded from view. Could be handy!

WP no Category Base Plugin. As you have deduced this plugin removes your category base from your category permalinks.

Google SML Sitemap Generator Plugin. This plugin not only creates an XML sitemap of your blog which can be submitted to Google, it also updates it automatically and the update is sent to the major search engines.

All in one SEO pack Plugin. This plugin optimizes your blog by adding meta tags, keywords, descriptions, and page titles. It can be done on a post by post basis, or for the whole site.

Redirection Plugin. This plugin is especially handy if you are changing directories, or moving posts from one site to another as it keeps tracks of 301 and 404 errors, and generally helps to tidy up loose ends.

Permalinks Moved Permanently Plugin. This is a lovely plugin that helps sustain your page rank and traffic after you switch permalink structure.

SEO Smart Links Plugin. SEO smart links is an intriguing plugin, that automatically links keywords and phrases from one of your posts to another. It also links comments and post tags too. It also offers SEO management by allowing the creation of nofollows and keyword lists.

Platinum SEO Pack Plugin. This plugin despite its name which personally I find a little grating, is a pretty cool plugin. It adds features to the popular All in one SEO pack, and though more complicated is easy enough to use.

These plugins are good if you are planning to turn your WordPress blog into a content management system. It will be interesting to see in the future, if WordPress developers creates more options to make it more viable as a CMS, or if they continue to rely on plugins to the job.

Perhaps it is for the reason of support that you should consider WordPress before other CMS platforms.

As shown in part 1, there are a lot of plugins for WordPress to make it a good, solid, and viable content management system for multi-user access. As there are so many plugins to this end, we thought it would be a good idea to bring you some more of them, to help you turn your WordPress blog into a content management system.

This list deals with navigation among other things, so lets begin.

WordPress Navigation List. This snazzy plugin allows you to create your own navigation lists, by allowing you to add drop down buttons. It can be manipulated in any number of ways, and is good fun to play around with.

Multi-level Navigation. Generally speaking, this plugin gives a professional edge to the navigation of your blog. It allows you to create a slider/flyout/dropdown menu, and creates sonofsuckerfish code to boot. The code is HTML, CSS and Wc3 valid, and to run on old browsers such as IE6 requires JavaScript.
Some of the options for this baby are:

 What content will be displayed in the menu
 Animation speed (how fast the dropdowns appear)
 Mouseover delay
 Hide delay
 Add a second menu

Yoast Breadcrumbs. As you probably know, breadcrumbs are the links that live above your posts. Normally looking like this: “Home> Articles>How to save a worm from destruction” etc. What you may not know is they are useful for SEO as they tell search engines about the structure of your site, and also, they make for easier navigation.
The Yoast Breadcrumb plugin, allows you to add these breadcrumbs to your theme.

Simple Slider Navigation. This does exactly what it says on the tin and allows you to create a simple sidebar which is predefined by your WordPress theme. This is particularly useful if you do not know too much about coding, as it creates the PHP code for you. Features include:

 Flat and multi-level navigation hierarchy for existing pages and custom links.
 Very flexible conditional appearance options.
 Out-of-the-box Suckerfish support.
 Option to add navigation links with custom title, url and target attribute.
 Unlimited number of navigation widgets.
 Optional setting includes blog posts into the navigation selection list (only pages are available by default).
 Support for custom drop-down menus CSS.

Multilingual Plugins.

If your site has a global reach then you should consider these plugins that assist translation. These are not the only remedy to crossing language barriers, but they will help you bring in an international readership.

WPML Multilingual CMS Full details of this powerful plugin can be read here. Some of its main features are listed below

• Multilingual content support based on Drupal i18n architecture
• CMS navigation allows adding drop down menus, breadcrumbs trail and sidebar navigation (all wigetized).
• Creates internal Sticky Links so that they never break

XLanguage Plugin. This plugin is quite amazing as it allows you to blog in a different language. You can either do this to make it easier for people to read in their mother tongue, or to confuse your native readership. Actually you can’t as your readers can select which version to read. It world for blog posts, tags, and categories, and the user language will select the right theme and MO files.

qTranslate Plugin. This plugin makes it just as easy to create multilingual content as easy as writing in English. Features:

 qTranslate Services – Professional human and automated machine translation with two clicks
 One-Click-Switching between the languages – Change the language as easy as switching between Visual and HTML
 Language customizations without changing the .mo files – Use Quick-Tags instead for easy localization
 Multilingual dates out of the box – Translates dates and time for you
 Comes with a lot of languages already built-in! – English, German, Simplified Chinese and a lot of others

These should come in handy, more to follow.

Though WordPress has its critics as a content management system, there are still profound advantages in using it. To this end we have found plugins that make WordPress a better CMS and which you should be able to utilize for your blog. Obviously, the requirements that you need WordPress to do as a content management system will influence which plugins you will use, and it will be up to you to assess WordPress’s capabilities as to its suitability for your requirements.

More Fields. This allows you to add extra fields on the write/edit page, and can be positioned either left or right of it. It allows you to add an extra level of categorisation to a post. So a food post which shows a receipe may be categorised as suitable for vegetarians, for example.

Custom flutter. In essence this plugin will allow you to make a custom write panel, whereby you can edit fields and add drop down boxes. This means you can tailor your needs around it, and in theory should make it easier for you and your clients to enter content, which is what content management is all about.

Post Template. This plugin is designed for people who need to enter information into the same structures. This is also good if you have writers who are unfamiliar with using CMS tools, as it effectively shows them what to do.

WP CMS Post Control. By using this plugin, you completely control what your writers can use and see. In essence this turns WordPress into a content management system. You can hide custom fields and revisions etc, to name but a few.

User Access Manager Plugin. In effect, this plugin allows you to partition areas of your blog for specific user groups, such as authors, members, and so on and so fourth. Here are some of the features.

 User groups
 Set separate access for readers and editors
 Set access by user groups
 Set access by post categories
 User-defined post/page title (if no access)
 User-defined post/page text (if no access)
 Optional login form (if no access)
 User-defined comment text (if no access

Role Scoper. This plugin focuses on permissions, by creating a CMS-like options in WordPress. By using this plugin you can create specific roles on a page-specific, category-specific, or other content specific bases.

Role Manager. As you have probably guessed, this allows you to define and set roles for subscribers. You can also create your own roles, if you are not happy with the ones you are given at the beginning.

Member Access. This allows each page to be manipulated in terms of who can view it. The default setting is global access, and options such as limiting pages or posts to be viewed only by members can be set. The beauty of Member Access, is that the pages can be set individually to override the global setting.

WordPress Navi. Allows for a more advanced, and on the whole, funky navigation system and graphics. You may or may not want to add this to your blog.

This list is by means no covers all the useful plugins to turn WordPress into a viable content management system. We are however, trying to bring you more plugins to make this a reality over the next few posts.

Content Management Systems, come into their own if you have a blog with multiple contributors, and these plugins will help you manage your site to the nth degree. So though WordPress does have its critics, it has in its favour many options to create a good, solid CMS, and like everything else WordPress, oodles of support behind it.

It is not easy cutting it as a WordPress plugin developer. As WordPress is extremely popular among bloggers and content management system mangers, there is always plenty of demand for this niche, but as many developers have jumped on the WordPress plugin train, the competition is intense.

That being said, there are plenty of opportunities for freelance work, and so with that in mind we have brought you some more tips for WordPress plugin developers the sequel.
Maybe you can let us know if the sequel is better than the original?

The tips…

Cross-site request forgery hacking attacks, can happen to anyone. Nonce, or number used once is a very effective way of securing your plugin against this threat.

Though Cross-site forgery (CRSF) hacking attacks are bad news and you need to protect your plugins against this, to use nonces to do this is very easy to implement. See WordPress documentation to get on the right path to protect your plugin.

Though some critics do not really feel WordPress is up to the job of databasing, it is a good idea that you use the WordPress functions that it has to create database queries and insert/update information. These functions are $wpdb->prepare(), $wpdb->insert() and $wpdb->update().
The beauty of these functions are that they will ensure that the functions are properly escaped. Nifty.

Speaking of nifty, you can always see a good video of it here by Mark Jaquith. This should give you a better idea of what it is all about.

It is important that your plugins do not hog resources and become a drag. To ensure this does not happen you must ensure that they only take resources when they need to, and not as a matter of course. So by localizing them you effectively do this.

Consider this code

• $local_pages=array(’plugins.php’); // define pages we want the plugin to be activated on
if (in_array($pagenow, $local_pages))
{
// do stuff here
}
This is useful for executing certain code, (like declare additional actions and filters) only when WordPress is loading a plugins.php page:

JavaScript should also be localized when it comes to resource use, and like the WordPress plugin should only be loaded when needed.

wp_enqueue_script()function, should be used to invoke external JavaScript files.
wp_localize_script()function, should be used to pass variables to your JavaScript from your WordPress plugin, if it is necessary for it to do so. By doing this you are ensuring that you are ensuring that it is easier to manipulate, and it ensures maximum compatibility for your plugin in the future. Which can’t be a bad thing.

Read the official reference guide, here.

If you plan to go freelance, a strategy that you could adopt is to create a few plugins for free and promote them tirelessly. If they achieve notoriety, you may well be approached by companies looking to develop plugins, to make money. Should this happen, be sure to talk about money and ask for half the money in advance. Should they pay it shows they are serious and it also shows you are too.

Always be honest and up front with clients, and make sure you are charging a competitive hourly rate for your services.

Once success, tends to lead to another.

These tips for plugin developers, should point you on the right road to plugin development success. They are good and practical, and easy to follow. It is up to you in the way you choose to use them, but just be sure that any plugin you develop, is one of quality to ensure your reputation, especially if you are planning to go freelance.

The demand for WordPress plugin developers has grown with the popularity of WordPress. This amazing blogging platform, has been designed to be customized and improved from day one, and as a result plugin developers are busily employed coming up with new plugins, and improving existing ones. The ease of use of WordPress, is one reason why people love it so much.

Ubiquity. This little ditty allows you to search PHP and WordPress documentation which obviously is a great facility to have at your finger tips. Mozilla labs developed this add-on for Firefox, and as they also developed Firefox, they should know what they are talking about.

The WordPress plugin ideas forum is exactly that. Ideas for developing new plugins. Any kind of creative, development process will sometimes stall and hit brick walls, so this could be just what you need to give the creative juices a nudge in the right direction.

WordPress plugin directory. If you are wondering what advantages there are to having your plugin hosted at this directory, then consider the following points.
- You do not pay for hosting and bandwidth
- You get SVN repository to manage your plugin versions
- You get free download statistics
- You get free promotion for your plugins

It only takes around thirty minutes to get up and running, and once you do, you have another opportunity to spread the word.

Creating a good readme file for your plugin gives you advantages in two ways. One, many people are more likely to download a plugin that has a readme file associated with it, as this provides information relevant to the plugin which are extremely useful to the user. The second advantage, is that when people start using the plugin, inevitably, questions that are support related will be asked. If you have provided a readme file then many support questions will be answered in the document, and this will also help you stay on top of the support question workload. The link above is a standard WordPress readme.txt, which gives you a good pointer in creating your own document.

Plugin in promotion is the next step after you have finished it and prepared the readme documentation. There are some tried and tested steps to follow, which are shown below.

1. Go to WordPress Plugins and Hacks forums.
2. Create a new topic.
3. Create a template for your plugin, including a description and URL. Simple but informative is the rule here.
4. To maximize the plugins exposure, create a topic at Weblog Tools Collection forum using the same template. The great thing about doing this, is that after the Weblog Tools Collection Team reviews the topic, it is added to their regular news posts which appears in the dashboard of every WordPress user. For exposure, this is pretty amazing.
5. As users look for plugnis at wp-plugins.net make sure you post your plugin on this site.
6. To gain more exposure, ensure that you add your plugin to the WordPress Plugin Compatibility list. If you haven’t done so already, you need to register.
7. Announce the plugin on your blog. Maybe over the course of a week, just to maximize the plugin’s exposure.

There are more plugin developer tips which we hope to bring you in the near future, in the meantime, these are a good place to start.

If you are a WordPress plugin designer, it is essential that you market the plugin with the same zeal that you developed it. If you do not, then your plugin may never get the wide spread appeal that it should get, and that would be a tragedy.

Following on from our post which showcased SEO WordPress Plugins, we have found some more that could be of specific help. As you know, bringing in traffic to the blog is everything, and the more of it you have the better.

So here are some more SEO plugins for WordPress, that will help you search engine optimize your blog in some way or another, and with Google, MSN, and Yahoo knowing what you are about, can only help your genius be recognised by the world.

SEO friendly and HTML valid subheadings. It is possible for some WordPress themes to confuse your sub header tags based on the page they are displayed on. As some elements of SEO are geared around optimizing the header tags, this is not really a good thing where SEO is concerned. This plugin moves the goal posts and the sub header tags down one step in the hierarchical tree by making h1 h2, and h2 h3, and so on and so fourth. Keeping everything SEO sweet.

SEO friendly Images. Images are great for blogs as they give them a certain something, the downside is they are not searchable unless they have alt and title tags. This little beauty gives the pictures alt and title tags so search engines can index them properly. Also, if someone is searching for your image and they find one on your blog that they like, it has also become a good traffic puller. Think about it.

SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin. If you have duplicated content on your blog, then this little plugin will allow you to tell search engines which one should be indexed by search engines, and which one should not. This is handy if you have work you are proud of, that is to be seen by the world, and work that should never be seen not even by you. Not that I feel you have much of the latter?

SEO Post Link. Search engines are fussy, and if the title of your blog is too long they don’t like it. It is not a marmite type of scenario either, so it is not the case that some search engines like it, some don’t, none of them do. If your blog title has more letters in it than a title of a song in the Mary Poppins film, don’t despair. This plugin will cut some of the words from the URL from a list of inbuilt keywords, so when the URL is posted it is search engine friendly. Phew! Also, you can limit the number of characters in it as well. Wonderful stuff.

SEO Smart Links. We all know that interlinking your blog with other blogs gets the word out there. It is a good way to get people in the groove of whatever it is you are trying to do. This clever ditty will take much of the tedium and hard work out of it, by linking to URLs specified by you through a keyword system. You can also specify “nofollow” and “openwindow” commands for the broken links. If only we had plugins like this for real life!

Hopefully, now you have more SEO plugins for WordPress as well as the exciting and sexy SEO plugins for WordPress, you will soon have so much traffic to your blog, that a retirement plan in Bermuda is not out of the question. If you are not quite there yet, we are planning a third go at SEO plugins soon, so stay tuned, sit tight, and order those Bermuda brochures. You might be needing them soon!

Further to our post on enhancing your WordPress blog through social networking, we have realised that this the flip side to that is, WordPress plugins to help your commenter’s’ spread the word about their social network sites. Any help you give them helps you, as they get a chance to have their say and tell the world about what they do, by directing traffic to their social network profiles, and in the process you get to make your pitch as well. Here are some useful plugins you can use to help that process.

Retagger. This plugin allows your commenter’s to leave an icon next to their comments. If a mouse is held over the comment, the links to their social networks are revealed together with their name. Retagger supports over 180 social networks, so many are catered for by this plugin. To use Retagger, the commenter has to have a Retagger account. For this reason, you could post a post, or configure a sidebar widget to tell people how to get one and what they do.

Social Profiles. This plugin is designed for sites that have multiuser bloggers or registered users. As the plugin allows the promotion of their social profiles along with their comments, there is a good incentive for users of all types to register. The plugin allows users to enter their user names for up to 10 social networks, by adding fields for them to do this. This can be extended through modifying the PHP if you know what you are doing. When a registered user comments on your blog, the links to their social networks are displayed as either text or imagery. This, as you can imagine helps their comments stand out, and enhances their posts.

WP Twitip ID. This plugin is twitter specific, and allows users to put their twitter account user name next to their comments, which is then linked with their twitter account. As twitter is such a popular social network tool, it is highly universal and highly popular, and all your users need to use it is an active Twitter account. It works by placing a line of code in your comments template file.

Tweetmeme. This plugin is one of the unique ones that allows you to promote either your blog posts, while promoting your social media profile. Most social media plugins do one or the other. This one works a little like Digg and provides “vote” buttons on your blog post. This allows readers of your blog pot to easily retweet your blog posts. The default setting will begin tweets with RT@tweetmeme…together with the post title and the URL of your blog. This is customisable however, by updating the settings to list your Twitter username, and thus the tweet is changed to RT@YourTwitterIDHere…via@tweetmeme. This no t only allows people on Twitter to view your post, but to see your Twitter ID too. Other options that are available are to select the position and size of the button, as well as providing the ability to display it on your RSS feed.

The social networking revolution simply cannot be ignored, and these plugins together with the ones in our previous post, provide a capability for you and your readerships to promote each other in the wider social network community. The advantages of this are both mutual and far reaching, and should generate whatever it is you are hoping to achieve, as your profile will be raised to a point where the traffic generated will keep your site in view of not only your readerships but a wider audience too.

There are over a 120 million blogs out there in the blogsphere, so making your post stand out from the crowd is a bit of a challenge to say the least. This has been recognised by the WordPress community and addressed, as there are now plenty of plugins that search engine optimize your blog. These will make the posts pull through on related searches to your blog.

Below are some good SEO plugins for WordPress, so have fun, and try not to use them all at once. Not that I can stop you.

All in one SEO pack. Every blogger seems to love this plugin, as it does a little of everything SEO for your post. It helps you choose your post title, avoid duplicate content, and many other little tasks that make all the difference to pushing the blog up the Google page.

Automatic SEO links. This baby allows you to manipulate links for SEO use. You can choose a word or phrase for automatic linking, both internal and external, set anchor text, choose if it should be “nofollow” or not, and so on and so fourth. Also, you only have to do this for one word in a post, and its done. No spamming your posts with numerous links to the same thing is needed.

Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin is essential for SEO, as search engines are what it is all about. Ask, MSN and Yahoo are also supported.

Headspace2. By using this plugin, you can add meta data to your posts, and add specific JavaScript and CSS files to. The plugin will also suggest names for your tags among other things.

Meta Robots WordPress Plugin. This gives you greater SEO control over your blog by adding robot meta data to it. This gives you the capability to add “nofollows”, prevent indexing of search pages, disable author and date-based archives, and prevent indexing of your login page.

No follow case by case. This plugin give you greater control over comments by allowing you strip the “nofollow” command from comments and then reapply it to the ones you do not wish to support.

Platinum SEO plugin. This plugin comes packed with features, such as 301 redirects for permalink changes, avoid duplicate content, auto generation of meta tags, and post slug optimization, to name but a few.

Redirection. If you have ever had the problem that you want to move a page on your blog but are worried that it wont pull through on searches, then this plugin can help. It helps with 301 redirects, records a log of 404 page errors so you can correct them, and sets up an RSS feed for errors.

SEO blogroll. If you are worrying that sites you link to are benefiting by feeding off your page rank and this is bothering you, then you can use this plugin to stop it. You can separate sections for the groupings of links with an unlimited number in each, and you can give each of them the “nofollow” attribute. That will do it!

SEO for paged comments. This plugin in applies to more to users of version 2.7 as it tidies up duplicate content so it does not appear on each page. Pretty nifty when you think about it.

These SEO plugins should help you bring traffic and attention to your site. It is always good to share the love, and these should help you do exactly that. If you do not SEO your blog then you could be wasting your genius, and that would be very, very, sad.

Plugins are an excellent and essential part of WordPress, as they enhance many aspects of your blog. They may not all be of relevance to you, but the ones that are, generally can make life a lot easier as they streamline the administration of your blog, and can help determine the direction of it. These are plugins are very handy if your blog is just beginning or in its early stages.

These plugins listed below may be of use to you. To use them just put them into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory, and turn them on in your dashboard.

Wp Spam free is a great plugin that eliminates spam bots from controlling comments, and even does away with CAPTCHA, though this is the best anti-spam there is.

Ultimate Google Analytics allows your blog to automatically sync with your Google analytics account. This allows the same features to apply to it, so it is easy to track who is visiting your site, from what links, and where they are based. This information works well with Google Adsense.

Speaking of which All in one Adsense and YPN plugin links your Google Adsense account with your WordPress blog. It also does the same for your Yahoo equivalent. Once you provide the publisher channel ID, it automatically creates the ad codes in your posts, which is nifty I’m sure you’d agree.

Feed WordPress allows your blogs to be easily viewed from a feed reader. It works by syndicating your work to make it easily viewable. People in the blog world, use feed readers all the time, and this plugin makes it simple for them to manage your posts.

Add to any, is a plugin that allows you to share your blog across all the popular social networking sites. This is the best way to share your views across the globe, and therefore it is a must have plugin.

Insights is a plugin that allows you to connect to many dynamic websites such as flickr and Google maps. It will help improve the effectiveness of your posts, which is marvellous.

Global Translator. This plugin will help you translate your posts into fourteen different languages very easily. If your blog has a true global audience in non English speaking countries, this plugin will make your life that much easier.

About me widget is a simple widget that allows you to copy and paste a clean-cut, CSS-able/customizable interface, designed for the sidebar of your WordPress blog. Though it is fairly straight forward to do yourself, it is always far simpler to do copy and paste.

NextGen Gallery, is not really an essential plugin, but could come in handy if you are using pictures on your blog. This plugin allows for Jquery’s Lightbox and Thickbox galleries without the hassles of integrating code.

ilastfm plugin connects your blog to your ilastfm account. This creates a sidebar widget that can display CD covers. A great way to share music with your readership.

These plugins can really enhance your WordPress blog. The beauty of plugins is that they make everything much more convenient for both you and your readership. A little thought, and a little application, and you will get the best out of each and everyone of these plugins.

If you are serious about blogging, then these essential plugins, will make your life that much easier, and make your readers lives, that much easier too. The beauty of WordPress is that they are easy to download and apply, so your blog benefits almost straight away.

This is particularly useful, if you are just about to launch a new blog.