I had set up a community website using Wordpress last week. The website provides a forum (discussion board) for the members. We all know that there are so many online forums on the web that are using platforms like phpBB (free) and vBulletin (paid), but they do not impress me. The paid one especially, is just too much for me.

If you ask me why I use Wordpress instead of a regular forum, the reason is because I need to publish news, blog posts, articles, and providing the ability for members to give their comments. We have all of those features on Wordpress right?

Thanks to Andy Staines and Steve Klasen, and the plugin that he created called “Simple:Press“, I can have a forum on my Wordpress Installation. Installing the plugin is easy, just like any other plugin that we use on Wordpress. Simple:Press is using Wordpress User Management for the membership system and user registration. To allow people to register, all we need to do is to tick the “anyone can register” under the Wordpress Option.

Simple Forum has the “post linking” feature that gives the possibility to create forum topic posts that are based on blog entries and vice versa. This option is only available for members who are allowed to post on the blog, and it can be done while they are making a new topic post. To place the forum feed in the blog easier, we can use the RSS.

footnotes:
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There are so many Wordpress themes available on the web that you can choose from. You only need to determine whether the Wordpress theme that you choose looks good for your blog or not.

Footer and header scripts are the things that you have to include in your blog. It will be an additional benefits it the theme that you choose provides an option box where you can easily add these scripts. You need to choose a theme that looks great and attractive. You also need to make sure that the theme has all of the features that you need, and makes your blog look attractive.

These are some points that you need to consider when choosing a Wordpress theme for your blog:

- User Friendliness

You need to find a user friendly Wordpress theme to make sure that the readers can easily navigate through your blog.

- SEO Optimization

SEO is one of the most important things to consider when choosing a Wordpress theme. There are many well designed blogs on the web that increases the number of on-site links to the homepage which is good for the SEO. Other things to consider are the text headings and tagline. Ultimate Blogging theme and Thesis are the best for SEO Friendly Themes.

- Social Sharing Plugins/Widgets:

Another thing to look for in a Wordpress theme is the plugins/widget friendliness. You should choose a theme that allows integration and navigation of social sharing plugins and widgets easily. There are many Wordpress themes with built in social media options that you can choose from.

- The Frequency of Update

Find a theme that is updated regularly. Regular updates will help to prevent the theme from breaking off when the important files are updated.

Recommendations from WpThemesPlugin

- Thesis

Thesis theme is one of the best Wordpress themes that you can use. This premium theme is very SEO friendly, and designed to be a solid foundation for any kind of website

- Ultimate Blogging Theme

The Ultimate Blogging Theme is suitable for bloggers who want to focus more on the marketing of the blogs, rather than dealing with messy codes. The theme is Google friendly with the option to easily put the keywords in the title tag.

- Free Theme Layouts

I highly recommend the themes from  FreeThemeLayouts.com. The themes at FreeThemeLayouts are simple, well designed, and functional. There is also a forum where people can easily get help, tips, and support.

All of the things mentioned above are the things that you have to consider when you are trying to find the Best Wordpress Theme for your blog.

WordPress 3.0 RC1, the new release candidate of Wordpress, is now available. Most of the errors have been fixed.

Here are the things that people can expect to have in this newest version of Wordpress, one of the most blog publishing platforms on the web:

1) A New Default Theme (finally!)

The default wordpress theme with blue header is replaced with an elegant theme with streamlined photo header. The theme has drop down navigation feature and many other stylish features. There are 6 sidebar areas on the new default theme (2 on the side, and 4 on the footer) and many customization options like changing background, header, etc.

2) Multiuser &Multisite Feature

This new version of Wordpress has a Multisite Wordpress option that allow the user to convert previous Wordpress installations while installing the new Wordpress installation with some simple edits to the wp-config.php file. There is also a SuperAdmin role that has administrator access to all of the sites. However, the individual sites can still have their own administrators.

3) New Menu System

This is an interesting change that can be found in this new Wordpress version that really changes everything. The custom navigational menu system enables the users to create menus from pages, categories, and external URLs. The drop down feature can be adjusted, just like the new theme that can be modified easily, and this makes customizing Wordpress become super easy. No more moving around, coding, or plugin needed just to have a nice navigation menu.

4) Custom Taxonomies and Post Types

The previous version of Wordpress already has them, but they are not in simple form. But in this new version of Wordpress, they are very easy to use. Custom taxonomy feature allows the users to sort posts other than in the normal categories or tags. There is also a color taxonomy that let the users to search by color instead of category. The custom post feature that can be found in this release candidate is just like how Tumblr arrange photos, texts, etc.

5) Customizable Username

This new version of Wordpress allows the users to create their own custom usernames. This is really a good thing that can eliminate 33 percent of security issues caused by brutal force attempts. The wordpress users can now make their usernames other than “admin”.

6) Miscellaneous Features

Other than all of the mentioned features, there are still more features such as author templates, URL shortlinks, welcome guide, automatic feeds inclusion, and many more.

What Can People do to help?

People who are interested should try to install and run this Wordpress release candidate. By using this release candidate, people can submit a ticket to Wordpress whenever they find an error, and help thousands of other Wordpress users that encounter the same error. Developers can submit their tickets to trac for fun. To help in submitting the tickets and getting errors fixed, it is also a good idea to be actively involved in mailing list, chat, forums, etc. As we all know, the community is the thing that makes Wordpress great.

People often use their web browser to test the changes that they have made during modifying plugin or theme. When there is a mistake with the code, most of the time the web browser will only display blank white screen. The problem is, sometimes the error can not be immediately visible, because the web browser in not displaying the blank white screen. However, it will be a great advantage if people can see the PHP errors instead of only seeing blank white screen.

To see the PHP errors, there is a simple constant that should be added to the wp-config.php file:

define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true);

It is not a good idea to do this on a production server, because some errors can leak important information like system paths or databases. To see the errors that occur on a production server, the reports can be put into a log file (wp-content/debug.log).

define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);

These methods can be done alone, or both at the same time.

Using WordPress 3.0 RC1, you can create your own website or blog easily. WordPress 3.0 RC1 is a platform that emphasized on aesthetics, user convenience, and web standard compliance. This platform is great for your personal publication, or any other publications. WordPress 3.0 RC1 is providing ten levels of access that you can allocate for different employees. This platform also provides features like the opportunity to write comments, protection from spam, and many more.

WordPress 3.0 RC1 is a great tool that can be used to present people’s ideas on the web. The main priorities of this platform are to be beautiful, convenient to use, and comply with the latest web standards. In short, this platform is designed to make everything simple. When you use a simple publishing platform like this, you can focus on building your content, rather than wasting your time just to configure your blog.

WordPress 3.0 RC1 is a platform designed for publishing contents that focuses on creating and maintaining personal journals. To install this platform, you need a web space on a server with PHP and MySQL databases. Once you have WordPress 3.0 RC1 installed, you can start writing and publishing your contents. In each of the entry that you made in this platform, you can insert images, videos, and sounds with ease. You don’t need to have any special coding knowledge. You can create your entries just like when you are working using a word processor. The admin panel at WordPress 3.0 RC1 has been lightened, so that it can run more smoothly and you can focus more on developing your contents.

With WordPress 3.0 RC1, you are facing endless possibilities. Beyond the power achieved through labels and categories, this platform has a wide variety of plugins and skins that you can use. You can easily find a lot of plugins and skins on Wordpress’s website. For plugins itself, there are currently 9,840 plugins available, so that there’s always a plugin for something. You can also use the search engines to find plugins and themes. There are many websites that provide them. Most of the plugins and themes are available for free. But sometimes, you have to pay for them.

WordPress 3.0 RC1 is simply the best blog publishing platform that you can find on the web.

Size: 2.25 MB
Publisher: Visit Website
Release Date: 2010-5-29
Download: Here

The Wordpress blogging platform has many strengths, and this is why it is by far the easiest platform to use, and the best. If you are new to Wordpress, there are many options to explore, and after a little use will leave you nodding your head in admiration.

To get the best out of Wordpress, it is essential that you learn about plugins, widgets, and themes. These will enhance your blog both from an aesthetic perspective, and help bring your blog to a wider audience. This way, you will hopefully attract a wider readership.

This being the case, this article deals with the essentials of what you should do to make the blog the best it can be from the beginning.

Theme

We have dedicated whole articles to this very topic, but in essence is about creating a mood. Try and think of it as a feeling rather than an appearance, and obviously the theme should be related to your blog. A music blog for example, may want a theme of a venue or club. One that rotates around music learning, may want to give the feeling of learning scales in a studio. Try and think about what you are after and apply your theme accordingly. Try not to get to entangled in specifics of columns, and sidebars. Just try and recreate online, what you would like to experience offline.

Plugins and widgets.

Plugins, are for me one of the best inventions known to humanity. It must rank number three after the flushing toilet and the wheel? Anyway, plugins add features to your blog, and either work in the background, and handle functions such as search engine optimization, and statistical data collection, or they enhance the appearance of the blog, often creating sidebar widgets. The beauty of plugins is they are largely created by Wordpress users to address limitations of the basic Wordpress platform, and in doing so improve Wordpress overall. Many are free, though a donation to the creator is polite, and they all are very easy to install. When finding plugins, only use ones that are compatible to your version of Wordpress. Ideally, your current version of Wordpress should be the most recent.

Widgets are elements that sit in the sidebar and generally make it easier for your readers to do, or access something. Some are used solely for display purposes, and some are just for fun. There are all kinds of widgets that have practical functions too. The general rule is less is more, but rules are meant to be broken. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Personally, I just drop in the ones I like, and don’t worry too much about anything else.

The essential Wordpress plugins you should be thinking about installing for that first blog are:

Platinum SEO plugin. All things SEO related are contained in this plugin, as spreading the word of your blog is just as essential as writing one.

Google Analyicator plugin. This plugin makes your Wordpress pages visible on your Google Analytics account. This way you can see what posts and pages are popular, and which ones are not. Other data from Analytics is also visible such as the sources of your blogs traffic, and how many visitors the site is receiving.

XML Sitemap plugin. This plugin is another must, as it creates an XML sitemap of your blog which is food and drink to Google’s webmaster tools. Here you can see how many sites have linked to yours, what keywords conjure impressions on search engines, and gauge the healthiness of your blog.

WP Captcha Free. This plugin puts a captcha on your comment posting but only if the poster is non human. This clever plugin works on timing, and is indeed a work of genius.

Other Plugins you should consider are ones that go to promote the mood of the theme. If your blog is about cookery, then a plugin that lists menus from different restaurants could be a great one for your site.

My own site is all about my freelance writing endeavours, so I have opted for an intimate theme that gives the feel of reading long into the night. The plugins and widgets I have opted for either go to promote story telling, or have a functional use such as social networking.

Once these have been installed, and are working you are then ready to write your first blog. Whatever the subject matter, the content has to be vibrant, relevant, and compelling, no matter how small the niche. The themes, the plugins, the widgets are great, but none can override stale content. Content is King, all the rest of it are members at court.

When writing the blog, think about what is the most important and most interesting elements to it are, and concentrate on bringing these to the foreground. Try and imagine what you would want from your blog if you were a reader, and strive to bring that to life.

Other factors which make blogs more popular are:

Pictures – A picture grabs a readers attention and can break up large passages of text, which can be off putting to many web readers.

Content – As mentioned before keep it compelling, vibrant and relevant. You may want to consider short paragraphs if possible. One thing to remember about a blog is that titles catch the eye, so a more creative one will probably get more readers.

Posting regularly – It is better to post regularly than erratically. So the key is to stick to a schedule. A post here and a post there, does not aid your quest to retain readership.

Many new bloggers are tempted to post all the time, which is great if you can do it, but if the content is not hitting the right chords, then this will make little if not no difference to attracting and retaining readers. Remember that content is truly King, so if you are going to post make sure that the content is as described above. Two good posts are easily worth five average ones.

Promote discussion – Discussions always go well with blogging, so it is a good idea to try and get people to join in with the post. As long as you’re not deliberately controversial, you will find more interest from your readers if they can put forward their view on a post.

Attracting readers

After your blog has been written the next stage is to get people to read it. You could be the next Shakespeare, and not a soul would know because your words are read by no one else. Wordpress and blogging is all part of the web 2.0 phenomenon, like social media. Therefore social media is a good tool to get visitors to the blog.

The following provide good foundation for social media exposure.

Twitter, write a blog, tell your followers

Digg, write a blog, get digg to show it

Delicious. Same as above just slightly different

Facebook. Creating a page for your blog and link it to twitter is always a good idea.

My Space. Tell the world about your space.

There are hundreds of other social media out there, that can be utilized to bring you exposure. Some are more appropriate than others. Many social media sites can be linked to each other, which saves you time in getting the message out there.

It can be a daunting prospect when you first start blogging. New worlds and new methods will open up before you, but you will have fun exploring them, and soon it will feel like you have been blogging for years.

It is possible to display your Wordpress blog on Facebook, and connecting them is not as hard as you may think. There are plugins designed to do exactly that, and with everything social network based, anything that allows you to spread the word can only be a good thing, especially as Facebook applications tend to snowball, and gain more followers.

To integrate the blog you must use the Wordbook plugin, which was developed by John Eckman in 2009. The advantages of using the plugin are clear, as your blog now has two lives, one from the original web page, and one on Facebook.

To set up the connection, you use the above plugin and the Facebook API’s. You will need the following information to connect them.

Root directory of your blog.
Secret – You will receive this from Facebook after registering as a developer
API Key – You will receive this from Facebook after registering as a developer
Wordbook plugin.

Follow these steps to connect the two.

Register as a developer on Facebook, you must already have an existing FB account to do this. Follow this link to register. Once you have agreed the terms and conditions you will receive the following:

Secret

API Key

You will need these later.

You will be asked to submit the “post-authorize call back URL”, and the post-remove call back URL”. In both fields you enter the root directory of your blog with a trailing slash. Effectively, these handle authorizations when a user posts or removes the application.

Next create a canvas page, and enter the root directory with a trailing slash in the “Canvas Call Back URL” field. If you miss the slash, then internal links on your Wordpress blog will not work with Facebook.

Under canvas page settings, you are given two options to render the page. iFrame, of FBML. FBML is Facebook’s XML scheme to use Facebook tags such as profiles and so on, and it also access procedures. The Wordbook plugin however, works using iFrame. This option should make the application work a little faster, and only internal links will have to be adjusted on the blog to make them work.

After this is complete install the Wordbook plugin. This installs using the normal Wordpress method. If you are unsure how to do this, follow this link.
Once installed you can enter the API key and secret into the relevant fields via the settings panel. You will also need to enter the URL of the canvass page, to enter in the canvass page field. In this field be sure you only enter the name of the blog AND NOT http://apps.facebook.com/. So for my blog I would just enter “Teahon”, and not http://apps.facebook.com/Teahon

The only thing left to do is to choose your options from inside the setting panel on your Wordpress blog, and you’re done. Play around a little bit and see what suits you best.

A quick note about privacy on Facebook and how it views websites and blogs. When you link your blog with Facebook, it will view it as another application, and subsequently it will pull through any personal details such as date of birth etc. This is how Facebook creates its social networks. This will also allow the administrator of the blog information about you as a user.

However, by connecting your blog to Facebook, there are possibilities of communities being established around it, and thus with it advertising opportunities you would not normally have had.

In the social networking world, the better connected all your social networking sites are, the better the traffic you generate. In many cases this is the name of the game.

Many bloggers start out by using a free blogging tool such as blogger. In the first instance this makes sense as it has many advantages if you are a complete beginner. It is free to use, you do not need to know anything about web design to start using it, and you do not need your own domain name to get going. It is often a question of hitting the keys to bring your message to the world.

Very often though, you feel that you need to add more to your blog to take it that extra step forward. The blog is fine for what it is, and you may well have attracted a strong readership, but blogger and co. can only be taken so far. It is a little like riding a motorcycle, you start out with a 100cc, but pretty soon you want a 750!

This is where you start thinking about Wordpress. If you dabble in contributing to the web it is almost impossible not to have come across it in some way. It has many users and has won many plaudits, and really, unless you have particularly sophisticated needs for your blog, this is the where you should be looking to take your blog up to the next level.

Wordpress has many strengths

One of the amazing things about Wordpress is that it is completely customisable. The range of free themes is simply breath taking. Many websites feature them for download, and these are a good way to get you up and running. As time moves on, you may fancy a change or just simply want to move in a different direction, so you may want to buy a theme for your blog. These themes are normally the crème de la crème of web design.

As you learn about Wordpress you will no doubt learn about web design. This could be because you have to fix a problem, but just become a little curious, or most likely install a plugin or widget. You may also want to design your own theme, especially if you are familiar with Photoshop and other graphic design applications.

The theme makes a blog. The content is important, but a good theme not only enhances the content but contributes to it. Good themes will be appealing on the eye and layout the information just as you want it. I firmly believe that you do not chose the theme but the theme chooses you.

Wordpress is also incredibly well supported and has many contributors to its development. The open source platform is constantly being updated, and should you run into any problems, Wordpress has so many contributors that you will find that the problem has been encountered and fixed before.

This has risen to Wordpress’s many plugins and widgets. These also help not only to enhance the appearance of a blog, but also have many practical applications such as SEO, RSS feeds, and traffic recording. They can also be fun and who knows, you may try designing a few of these too.

It is also very easy to monetise your blog through the use of Google Adsense and other kinds of advertising for your blog. Once you have gained regular traffic, it is often just a question of choosing the right ad.

Wordpress’s phenomenal success is easy to understand and is simply a class way of telling the world about your genius. If you are looking to take your blog to a new level, then you should look no further than Wordpress.

Following on from our previous article, we could not in all conscious leave you without more ways to get the most with RSS feeds. These are extremely handy as you know, and makes it easy for your readership to hang on to every word of wisdom you write. This can only be good, as we know.

Our previous RSS post dealt with how to analyse and track RSS feeds, and how to configure and manipulate them. Though there are several here which can do that, there is also a few that allows you to add different, or additional information to what is shown in your blog, and one which allows an additional feed that you can manipulate.

So here are some more RSS plugins we feel you will find useful. As before, just install the ones you really need, as too many and your blog will be as fast as a Skoda!

RSS Atom Avatar. You can add avatars should you wish to an RSS feed without this plugin, but it is a very hard feat to accomplish, like mountain climbing and printer maintenance.

RSS Footer. This lovely plugin allows you to add a note at the bottom of an RSS Feed, so you can display extra content for subscribers more easily, your copyright, and so on and so fourth.

Special Feed Items. This is handy for drawing attention to a post in an RSS feed. It adds a Unicode heart to a post, so the eye is drawn to it. This does not change anything on your actual site.

RSSupplement. This little ditty lets you add extra information in your Wordpress feeds, such as copyright notices, post author credit and sociable buttons. Handy!

Disable RSS allows you to disable the facility. It is aimed at people that use Wordpress as a content management system, rather than a blog.

Old Post Promoter, is a clever little gadget that randomly selects an old published post from your site, and republishes it on the RSS feed. So examples of your genius that you thought were lost can reappear as if by magic. It does not work though, if your permalink structure includes dates.

Private RSS. This allows you to send out an additional RSS feed. This is handy for posts you only want a certain number of people to see, or subscribers. Many have used the main RSS feed to provide their readership with an outline for their blog posts, while the additional Private RSS feed, is for their subscribers, and contains full posts.

Soj Tag Feed. This plugin, allows you to create a feed about a specific tag in your blog. So if one of your tags is about “driving” for example, then any posts that fall under that tag are sent in the feed. Pretty good if you think about it.

The concept of RSS (Real Simple Syndication), has added a very nice touch to the world of social media, and Wordpress especially. The ability to have access to a blog and indeed many blogs, has been made a whole lot easier through RSS.

It is aspects such as RSS that have made the concept of social media what it is. In essence it is having everything under one roof, that was available previously, just not really called social media.

For this reason it is important that you look out for plugins for features such as RSS, and use them wisely and with care. If chosen correctly, your blog will stand out from the crowd and please your readership.

As we all love social media, we all know that RSS Management though not knew, is a good extra component to make it easier for your readers to follow your genius, and words of wisdom. As the best blogging tool in the world, Wordpress, has many options to add, tweak, and generally have fun with RSS Management.

Real Simple Syndication, (RSS), plugins are shown below. These should come in handy to record, track, and make it easy for your readership to hang onto your every inspired word. As a note of caution, just choose the ones that you need rather than what you like the sound of. Too many and the speed your blog moves at, will be comparable to a large political organisation.

Feed Campaign Tagger. This little gem will allow you to track what people are looking at from their RSS feeds from your site. It tracks the links they click on which is how you can determine what they’re up to. With this information you can refine your site for your readership, if you wish.

Feed Subscriber Stats. This plugin enables visitor tracking from the dashboard, rather than looking at the front page of your site. This back office function works via feedburner. It in essence, it gives you that little bit more information which means you don’t have to switch between screens.

Feedage Tracker provides buttons which enable people to subscribe to your site. Of course if they do not like your site, they wont press the buttons. This is a nice idea none the less, and it also provides subscriber stats as well.

Feedstats. This baby provides all sorts of useful RSS stats, and you can configure them to, to make the information provided more relevant. How many people are subscribing, what pages they’re visiting, and time on site are a few options you may find useful.

RSS Link Tagger. This plugin makes your RSS feed compatible with Google Analytics, which obviously means that all the Google Analytic toys are there to be seen.

RSS Image. This plugin effectively replaces the “align” tag which was removed by Wordpress to bring it into line with web standards. This is handy for aligning pictures in your blog, as it makes it so much more easier, and keeps a lot of hair on your head.

This plugin allows you to make it easier for readers to access certain pages or categories of your blog. So now category pages, tag pages, search pages, author pages, and comment feeds for single articles and pages, are at the fingertips of your users.

Feed Comments Number will display the number of comments in a post as an image rather than text. This can be preferable to standard text as it dynamically updates faster in the feed. It simply displays “Add a comment”, if there is none.

Media RSS, as the name suggests is all things media related to your RSS. In effect it means you can add various types of media in your RSS feed, like video for example.

These handy little tweaks and plugins for RSS will make your blog more accessible and more easily manipulated for the reading pleasure of your readership. This not only makes your Wordpress blog easier to use, but it also makes it more appealing to your readership, because in essence, you have made it easy for them to read the blog.

RSS is being used more and more by people to access blogs, so it is something you should be at least thinking about, if not looking into. Anything that enhances your blog has to be good.

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.

Any Google search for “WordPress plugins” will return millions of hits on the subject. Most will be lists and tips in some way, “Top ten Wordpress plugins”, and generally speaking, they do tend to feature some of the best plugins available to Wordpress. They do however, tend to feature the same, and the old saying of once you’ve read one “Top ten Wordpress plugins” article, you’ve read them all, is kind of true.

This is now no longer the case, as this “Wordpress plugin” list, lists the ones that are not called Askimet, or Adsense Deluxe, but features little known but extremely useful plugins, not often featured on these lists.

Head Meta description

This plugin is easy to install and will place a meta description tag on every page of your Wordpress blog. This will be based on the first few words of the page, or it will be based on post excerpts. Search engines still give credence to meta description tags, which makes this underrated plugin, a good one to have.

Exec-PHP

As Wordpress utilises PHP code, this plugin ensures that PHP code inside static pages or posts is recognised by Wordpress. This is extremely useful as plugins and other Wordpress features wont run in static pages or posts, without it. Though there are a few plugins that claim to the same job, this one is by far the most reliable.

Custom Query String

It can be frustrating if you want to list a certain number of posts on the homepage, or some on a different page, or some on another, and as you well know, from the control panel, this cannot be done. Enter Custom Query String plugin to save the day, and allow you to do what you always wanted to do, but could not.

Clean Archives

Nearly every Wordpress blog has an archive where blogs are stored by month. This wastes precious space, and in general is a complete waste of time. This plugin lists them on a dedicated page, on a month by month basis. This structure is far more efficient, and presentable. You may need Exec-PHP to get it working properly.

Chunk URLs

Well we’ve all had URLs that are made up of endless letters and symbols, posted on our blogs. Not only do they look unsightly, they also could break how your website is displayed on certain browsers. Chunk URL simply condenses the string to a manageable length, and you can dictate how long the length will be.
Sig2feed

This plugin simply puts a copyright symbol on your feeds, with a link to your site. A very good method of stopping feed stealers.

Feedsmith

This plugin is used to track accurately how many feed subscribers your blog has. This is one of the many indicators of success for your blog, and so could prove highly useful.

Jerome’s Keywords

By installing this plugin, you will be able to create tag clouds, tag individual posts and create an internal tag system. You can also generate a dynamic meta keyword tag. So this is a good one.

WP Cache

This plugin’s role, is to lighten the load on the server. This is especially useful for a sudden influx of traffic from social networking sights. The plugin also increases the responsiveness of your website, and is very road bust. It works by creating static versions of your pages and uses them instead of querying mySQL database.

We hope these not so well known plugins prove useful to you, and that you can use them to their full potential, as they will help your blog in many different, useful ways.