WordPress - Tag 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!

Learn from the best for success in blogging

16 Replies Christopher Roberts

This is the sixth in a series of articles in which I hope to share with you my knowledge of how and why Technology Bloggers has been so successful, so fast. Learn more about this series by reading our Technology Bloggers success article.

Ever heard the phrase:

Learn from your mistakes, but if possible, learn from others mistakes.

Well, this can also apply the other way around.

Learn from your triumphs/successes, but if possible, learn from others triumphs/successes.

If you learn what works from others, you can be successful much faster, as you can avoid all those newbie blogger blunders. What lovely alliteration 😉

Homer Simpson slapping his hand to his forehead, whilst shouting 'D'oh!'

Learn from your mistakes, or better still, learn from others mistakes

So who did I learn from? Many great bloggers that I have been following for some time, as well as myself. I had run three blogs (and still run two of them) before I started Technology Bloggers, and I had learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t in my time.

For example, my ‘recent commenters’ widget on my philosophy blog showed me how important competition is. A lack of comments on my social blog and now retired technology blog taught me that not giving readers the ability to comment was probably a bad idea. My comment enabled, WordPress powered philosophy blog affirmed this.

But as I mentioned earlier, most of my leaned ‘success strategies’ are from other bloggers. Justin (from Dragon Blogger) taught me how it was important to create a comment policy. Justin and Ari, (from AriHerzog.com) taught me that GASP (Growmap Anti-Spambot Plugin) is one of the best anti-spam plugins available.

Chadrack (from Web Income Journal) runs a monthly top commenter contest using a ‘Top Commenters’ widget, this showed me that it would be wise to add a ‘Top Commenters’ widget to Technology Bloggers to thank commenters and encourage competition. Chadrack and Diana (from Elephants Eye) showed me the importance of reading your commenters responses and replying to them if you feel their comment needs a reply.


Lillie (from Lillie Amman’s Blog) compiles a list each month, thanking her readers for their comments, I used a similar method to thank our readers in my the importance of comments post.

One of the most important lessons I learned is that you need to be kind to your readers and writers. For that reason, Technology Bloggers is a dofollow blog. We have dofollow comemnts and use KeywordLuv luv to help you get the most out of your commenting experience. We also use dofollow CommentLuv 🙂

A whole host of great blogs, as well as past experience has shown me that it would be wise and fair to be a 100% dofollow blog.

You are not on your own out there, their are other bloggers too. Find the successful ones, learn why they are successful, and then use this to make yourself successful.

Over and out!

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!