WordPress Category Archive

12 useful WordPress plugins – 2011

19 Replies Kaushal Gandhi

WordPress is very popular among bloggers and writers today. One of the reasons is because it offers many of plugins that can help make your blog even better!

WordPress PluginsThere are an almost endless number of plugins you can find on WordPress, but it is important to limit your use to a few, as too many plugins can have an adverse effect on your host. The question is, which ones should you use?

Here are some options that can certainly be useful:-

1) Google XML- Sitemaps

This helps search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask to index your blog and informs them when you add new posts. These maps also help users to browse well through your various posts and find what they are looking for.

2) DiggDigg

Through this plugin you can insert buttons of various social networking sites on your WordPress site like Facebook like, Facebook share, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn and many others.

3) Insights

Insights help you add more information to your blog. You can insert Flickr images, YouTube videos and interlink various posts to your advantage.

4) WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache converts WordPress PHP scripts into html files, thus reducing load and down time.

5) WP-DBManager

This plugin helps you manage your blog by providing ways to repair, backup, restore, and optimize database.

6) Akismet

Akismet helps you keep a check on spam by checking your blog comments and submitting to your admin such comments for review.

7) YoastWordPress SEO

This SEO plugin helps bloggers in optimising page titles and keywords into XML sitemaps.

8) Contact Form 7

Through Contact Form 7, users can create, manage and customize contact forms on their blog.

9) LinkWithin

This plugin adds thumbnails of relevant posts on your blog.

10) Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP)

YARPP provides information of pages and posts which are related to your new entry thus giving the reader a chance to read more matter on the topic.

11) WP Page Navi

It helps in navigating through the site and provides the various posts with page numbers.

12) Google Analytics Plugin

Google Analytics is a good tool to track your blog and thus access information like outbound clicks, page views, and other metadata.

Whether you are a leisure blogger or a blogger for money, it is important to be familiar with and equip yourself with necessary plugins, as these can make your thought-sharing experience easier and more convenient.

So continue sharing relevant information and happy blogging!

How to show more screen options in WordPress

15 Replies Christopher Roberts

I have noticed that most of the other authors on this blog have failed to write a short excerpt for their article. It’s usually really easy and takes seconds to think of a short phrase to sum up, or entice people into reading your article.

When Marc (from the 360 Blog) wrote his most recent article, I emailed him to ask him why he never filled in the excerpt field, as he is now eligible to apply for author status, but that requires each article to have an excerpt.

Marc emailed back and told me

“You mentioned that you would like a short excerpt written, but there wasn’t a place to do that.”

Out came my thinking cap!

I then realised that when I had started Technology Bloggers, when creating a new post, the excerpt field wasn’t showing ether. The trackback field didn’t show, nor did the discussion field etc.


Do you have problems with

  • Excerpt field not showing when creating a new WordPress post
  • Trackback field not showing when creating a new WordPress post
  • Discussion field not showing when creating a new WordPress post
  • As well as other custom fields not showing

well if so I have your solution!

Screen Options.

The 'Screen Options' button in the WordPress admin consoleYou see at the top right of the admin console there is your name, log out etc. well just below that you should see a tab that says help, and next to that a tab that says ‘Screen Options’.

Click ‘Screen Options’ and it will pull the tab down to revile loads of new fields which you can choose to show or not.

The WordPress 'Screen Options' for creating a post in the admin consoleLike to work light? You may just want the publish box and the article writing area. Prefer to go into detail? Tick/check the ‘Categories’, ‘Post Tags’, ‘Custom Fields’, ‘Send Trackbacks’ etc. boxes for a more advanced view!


Under ‘Screen Options’ you also have the option or changing the screen layout. You can decide how many columns your dashboard uses, to display your selected widgets. On the homepage of the dashboard you can split it down in 1,2,3 or even 4 (if you have a very wide screen) columns. On posts pages you can choose to split the view down to two columns, or just the one.

Ever asked yourself ‘how can I show more comments in the WordPress admin console?’, if so, ‘Screen Options’ could help here too. Just click it and you can show as many or as few comments as you like. I have it set so that the WordPress comments page shows 50 comments per page, although I sometimes change it 🙂

Good luck bloggers with using WordPress the way you like it!

ReplyMe – a great WordPress plugin!

38 Replies Christopher Roberts

ReplyMe is a fantastic plugin, which I am very proud to announce that Technology Bloggers uses to notify users when their comment has a reply.

Why use ReplyMe over other subscribe to comment plugins?

Well with normal subscribe to comment plugins you get sent an email every time there is a new comment, even if it’s nothing to do with your comment. You also have to remember to tick the little box at the bottom of the comment box to say that you want to receive updates.

What is ReplyMe?

ReplyMe is a fantastic plugin which allows you to receive updates (without subscription) when your comment has been replied to. This means that you don’t need to sift through hundreds of irrelevant comments, you get your comment and the reply delivered directly to you by email – free of charge 🙂

In Technology Bloggers ReplyMe emails you get to see your comment and the reply to that, along with a link to the article, and the comment that replied to yours.

ReplyMe (Plugin) LogoIf the new comment needs no reply, you can read it in your email without even having to visit the blog. If you want to reply, just click the link and you are ready to continue the conversation!

A good blog has a community on-site and off. This can be through social media, but it can also be through using great plugins like ReplyMe to ‘continue the conversation’!

If you read Ari Herzog’s blog, Draggon Blogger, Christopher Roberts Philosophy Blog, Blogging Bookshelf or The Sales Lion, you will probably have seen ReplyMe in action before. Technology Bloggers has it’s own unique style of delivering the email, but the principle is the same 🙂

For details of how you can customise the plugin, check out Justin’s article on it.

If you want to see ReplyMe in action post a comment below, and I will gladly reply to show you.

If you are interested in using ReplyMe on your blog, check out it’s plugin page 🙂