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WordPress Plugins – Making the Most Out of Your Blog

By on May 24, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Wordpress Plugins – Making the Most Out of Your Blog

WordPress is a very successful piece of software that not only provides a platform to begin blogging it also has many addition features such as wordpress plugins. These wordpress plugins allow users and administrators to add additional functions to their blogs and will provide the tools to customise a blog or website to suit the theme and genre.

Anyone who is new to blogging may not be aware that they have free access to a variety of plug-in so it is worth having a look to see just what is on offer to you, you may just install that vital wordpress plugin that sends your blog to the top.

WordPress plugins are located in the admin area of your blog, you will need to log into your wordpress blog to be able to access them and once you have done so you will see a tab labelled ‘plugins’ when you click on the tab you will be taken to a list of wordpress plugins that are waiting to be activated. You will also be given a description of that the plugin does and what version of wordpress you will need to be running for it to work. Once you have decided which plugin you want to activate simply click activate and your done!

You can also visit the wordpress website and download a heap of new and updated plugins directly from there. You will also be able to see which plugins are downloaded most often as well as read more information on each individual wordpress plugin.

Some of the most popular wordpress plugins available to download right now are Akismet, All in one SEO pack, cformsII, WP Super Cache, Google XML sitemaps and WordPress Stats.

Google XML sitemaps is recommended as it creates compliant XML sitemaps of your wordpress blog. The plugin supports all of the wordpress generated pages so every time you create or edit a post the sitemap is updated and google and all other major search engines such as ASK and MSN are informed of any changes.

The plugin is simple to install, you simply upload the full directory to your wp-content/plugins directory using ftp. You will need to make sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz writable via CHMOD 666. You then activate the plugin from inside your blog (located under options) and begin to build a sitemap. You will not have to continuously rebuild the sitemap every time a change or update is made because this is all automatic.

WordPress plugins make search engine optimisation a lot easier, It seems that search engines are quite fond of blogs as they are constantly being updated. You can make the search engines take more notice of your blogs by installing the relevant plugins.

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Best WordPress Plugins

By on April 18, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Best WordPress Plugins

Before getting into the best WordPress plugins out there, let’s cover a couple of definitions for the uninitiated among us.

WordPress is the world’s most widely-used open source Content Management System (CMS). While it is often employed as a blog, WordPress is strong enough to run entire websites. So it isn’t just a blogging platform. WordPress is powered by PHP and MySQL, and has exciting features such as templates and plugins that make building fantastic websites relatively effortless. WordPress is used by 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites in the world, no small feat considering the breadth of options available.

Plugins are simply applications that augment the capabilities of WordPress and make it better to work with. Most plugins are free.

Here are the best WordPress plugins out there. My opinions are highly subjective, but these are plugins I want you to know about.

#1: All-in-One SEO Pack

The All-in-One SEO Pack makes on-page search engine optimization simple. For this reason, it’s my top pick. With this plugin, adding Meta tags such as title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords has never been easier. This is a good thing, as too many websites are missing these crucial elements (and missing out on online lead generation and/or online sales as a result).

#2: Askimet

Askimet allows you to quit moderating comments. It automatically checks comments left on your website against the Askimet web service to see if they look like spam or not. If it’s spam, they toss the comment out. To keep the service honest, you can analyze the spam it catches to make sure the plugin is doing its job accurately. There are two things that make using this plugin vital. One, your readers will never have to type in a CAPTCHA again. Two, your readers will never have to wait for their comment to be moderated again (this drives me nuts when we visit other blogs).

#3: Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps will produce a special XML sitemap which will allow search engines to index your blog. If that sentence makes your head hurt, just know this: it makes it easier for Google to read your website. That’s a good thing. If Google can’t or doesn’t read your website, that’s bad. You want them to read it so they can share your website with people that use the Internet. Consider this a crucial WordPress plugin if you enjoy trading your labor and/or skills for money.

#4 Subscribe to Comments Reloaded

Consider this one a cherry on the top of your delicious WordPress sundae. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded will change the way people use your blog. Without it, people just stop in, leave a comment, and never return. With this plugin, your readers can click a box saying they wish to be notified of follow-up comments via email. This email notification will (in some cases) cause the reader to return and leave a comment. This will give you more Web traffic, more comments, and it will make your blog more conversational.

#5: TweetMeme

Guy Kawasaki once called this the most important button on the Internet. It probably isn’t at that level today, but it is certainly still highly useful when it comes to getting your message to the masses. Twitter has proven to be a highly beneficial viral marketing tool. If you have something important or interesting to say, odds are Twitter will go a long way in getting your voice heard. Within the Twitter-sphere, there is nothing more valuable than a ReTweet. A ReTweet occurs when someone that reads your content re-broadcasts it to all of their followers. When this happens, viral marketing magic happens. TweetMeme makes it convenient for your blogs’ readers to ReTweet your content, which will bring you more traffic, more comments, and (hopefully) more business.

So there you have it. Those are, in my estimation, the five best WordPress plugins out there.

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A Detailed Look at Some of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins

By on November 18, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

A Detailed Look at Some of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins

One of the most popular WordPress plugins being downloaded on a daily basis is WordPress.com Stats, in fact at the time of writing it has been downloaded more than 37,000 times. To be able to use this WordPress plugin you will need to be running WordPress version 2.1 or higher. It is also compatible up to 2.7 beta.

WordPress.com Stats offers you a really simple way of retrieving data. I sometimes find that the more complex stat systems such as Google analytics or mint provide far too much information which can be confusing especially if you are new to blogging.

Installation is extremely easy, and is done in 4 steps

1. First you will need to upload stats.php to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.2. Then activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.3. It will then ask you to enter your WordPress.com API key, you will need to do this to enable it to work.4. After a few minutes your stats will show.

Once installed you can view the stats in less than 20 minutes. It also has the added function of not including the hits of logged on users, which is especially handy if you are constantly updating and adding new posts.

This WordPress plugin will provide you with valuable information such as letting you know which pages and posts are the most popular, what people are clicking on and where your traffic is coming from. The way the information is viewed is very simple and easy to understand.

You can use the plugin on either a hosted or unhosted accounts and because all the data collection and processing is not done on your server it does not effect the load on your hosting account making it one of the fastest stats systems you can use.

Another of the most popular WordPress plugins is Google XML sitemaps. Over 1000 people per day are adding this plugin to their websites and blogs and the main advantage is because as you update or create a post the sitemap is automatically updated and the new information is passed to all major search engines such as Google, YAHOO, MSN and ASK.

You will need to be running WordPress 2.1 or higher to be able to install it and also have access to an ftp programme in order to create the files needed to install the software.

Adding WordPress plugins to your blog will not only give you access to a lot more information, these plugins are designed to make your website more pleasing to the eye and far more user friendly taking it to the next level.

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Top Seven WordPress Plugins For Your Blog

By on November 14, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Top Seven WordPress Plugins For Your Blog

Many bloggers are using WordPress and with good reason. It is the most popular blogging software in use today and one of the biggest reasons is the ability to add functionality through the use of plugins. Plugins can turn your run-of-the-mill blog into a high powered online tool capable of bringing traffic and profit to your site. Consider using the top WordPress plugins on your current WordPress blog or on a future blog. You won’t be disappointed. Happy Blogging.

7. Page Mash

This is a simple WordPress page management plugin. The Ajax interface allows you to drag-and-drop the pages into the order you like, modify the page structure by dragging a page to become a child or parent and toggle the page to be hidden from output. You can also see the id of the page which is often helpful for theme developers. If you have a WordPress site with more than just a handful of pages, PageMash is extremely helpful.

6. All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack plugin automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engine by allowing you to fine tune things like your page title and meta tags. This plugin is extremely easy to use as it works great straight out of the box. If you are an advanced user, you can customize virtually everything. And if you are a developer, this plugin has an API so your themes can access and extend the functionality of the plugin.

5. Google XML Sitemaps

Perhaps the most downloaded WordPress plugin, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin not only automatically creates a site map linking to all your pages and posts, it also notifies Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com when you make changes to you site. If you want to include pages that are part of your site but not part of you WordPress managed content, you can do that to.

4. WP Super Cache

If you have a popular WordPress website you should seriously consider running WordPress Super Cache to improve the performance of your website. If you are not caching your pages, then every time a visitor comes to your site, WordPress has to pull together various pieces of information out of a database to put your page together. If you have a high traffic site, this is can really become a problem. WP Super Cache will store a copy of each of the pages on your website so that after the page has been assembled from the database once, WordPress can rest and just keep serving the static html copy of the page. This might be a bit techie, but the idea is you can dramatically speed up your site and reduce the load on your server by using WP Super Cache. If for no other reason, use this plugin so you don’t have to panic when your friend says, “”I just Dugg your site.””

3. NextGEN Image Gallery

If you want to display a photo gallery, show a series of product images, or just publish a slide show from your most recent vacation, the NextGEN image gallery is the plugin for you. NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. Among the many features, NextGEN Gallery includes a thumbnail generator, sortable albums, and a water mark function.

2. cformsII Form Plugin

If your looking for a free form management plugin, cformsII is an extremely powerful plugin for setting up contact forms on your WordPress site. You don’t need to know any PHP or write any code. You can visually build forms in the WordPress admin panel. Then, navigate to the page or post where you want to use the form and there is a button in the WYSIWYG editor that you click and up pops a list of forms that you have made. Simply click on the one you want and your form is inserted into your page. Update your page and you the form is live. You can specify required fields, default values, and there are plenty of styles to make your form blend in perfectly with your site.

1. Gravity Forms

If you want the best forms plugin WordPress has to offer, you need Gravity Forms. Gravity Forms is an amazing plugin for managing online forms. Some of the incredibly useful features include conditional form fields which means you can show or hide a field or entire sections of the form based on a value selected in another field. You can pre-populate form fields using querystring, shortcode, function or hooks.You can even schedule when forms are available by assigning a start date and end date for when your form is live on your site. Supposed you want to run a contest where the first 50 people that fill out the form win a prize. Gravity Forms lets you set a limit on the number of entries a form can receive. Pretty much anything you ever wanted a form to do, Gravity Forms can do it.

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WordPress Plugins, Themes & Hosting Consideration Recommendations from Search Commander Inc., CEO

By on August 1, 2011 in Randy Roedl

PubCon video content producer Vanessa Zamora sat down with Scott Hendison, president at Search Commander Inc., to discuss content management systems, specifically WordPress, the blogging platform that is one of his specialties. Hendison shared a number of his top plugin picks for WordPress development in this PubCon Las Vegas 2010 interview, including SEO Automatic’s own Core Tweaks WordPress Setup plugin that minimizes the initial content management system set up time, All in One SEO Pack and HeadSpace2 SEO for search engine optimization needs, as well as Yoast, which includes a plugin for SEO, an XML Sitemaps plugin, and an RSS footer plugin. Hendison also shared his preferred WordPress themes, pointing out that although the most popular theme to his knowledge is Thesis, a premium theme, he prefers a free theme called Atahualpa, and recommends others browse through free themes before spending money on a premium theme that ultimately might not have all of the desired capabilities. Hendison continued by sharing his recommendations with regards to selecting a Web hosting server, suggesting against shared servers that stifle page load time, now a factor in Google’s ranking system. In addition, shared servers do not provide as much security as dedicated environments, Hendison added. If looking for shared hosting, Hendison suggested Search Commanders PDXTC shared hosting service, as well as Bluehost. For dedicated options Hendison suggested Rackspace or Dreamhost.

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Can’t-Live-Without WordPress Plugins

By on October 12, 2010 in Randy Roedl

The debate rages among bloggers surrounding what are must-have plugins for WordPress. Naturally, everyone has their personal preferences that depend on what they are trying to accomplish by blogging. But I was rather horrified to read a forum post discussing WordPress plugins stating that all you need in the way of plugins, “if you have good content”, were All in One SEO Pack Google XML Sitemaps and StatPress. Now, these are great plugins and I use them all on everyone of my sites. But to say that these three are all you need, regardless of not whether your content is good, bad or mediocre, is, well, just wrong. If you want to increase your on page SEO; decrease your page load time (a key factor for ranking in Google with their latest algorithm change); hide your affiliate links and find and remove lines of code or text quickly and easily and more you need a few more plugins in your arsenal. Here is my top-ten list of great WordPress Plugins. These are all free plugins. 1) All-in-One SEO Pack–This plugin helps your SEO right out of the box, without any configuration. To increase your on-page SEO, it allows you to add title, description and keywords to make your posts more search engine friendly, but it’s not a requirement. 2) WP-Super Cache–A caching plugin is a must with Google’s new emphasis on page load speed. WP-Super Cache allows logged in users to disable caching, which is important if you are trying to do some editing on your site without the pages constantly …

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