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I am certainly finding these “Five” series of posts very educational.  There has been such great discussions around each one and I am learning a lot from all of the experience of the visitors here at the site.  I appreciate your willingness to speak up about what your likes and dislikes.  There is nothing like a spirited conversation and sharing of information to get the brain juices flowing.

So our “Five” for this post is blogroll related plugins for your website.

Feed Reading Blogroll – This plugin uses Googles index of feeds to grab the latest post date and title and display it on your blogroll.  There are several configuration options and it can organize the presentation of the blogroll links in order of the freshness of the latest post.  You will need a free Google API key to use this plugin.

Nofollow Blogroll SEO – This simple plugin puts rel=”nofollow” on non-homepage Blogroll Links. It allows you to share links with your favorite sites but not take a hit in your SEO for having sitewide links. This is a fairly new plugin in the development cycle but due to its simplicity is not likely to require a lot of development down the road.

Better Blogroll – Collecting a lot of links in your blogroll to the point they take up an entire sidebar?  Well this plugin is the solution to that problem.  It allows you to specify a specific number of blogroll links to display in your sidebar and then it randomly fills that from your entire collection of blogroll links.  So it keeps things fresh and shares the link love! This has several other features that just give added benefits to the plugin such as image links, displaying the links category and setting links to no follow. This is one of the more popular ones with almost 9,400 downloads to date.

Advanced Blogroll – This plugin allows you to display your blogroll links by category; order them by name, link ID or randomly; display with text links only, graphics only or both; select how many links to show and also opt to add the no follow attribute to the links.

Google Reader Blogroll Widget – This one lets you grab your Google Reader subscription and display it in your sidebar as a blogroll – you can even use the custom Google color schemes in your sidebar display for it.

I look forward to seeing what you use for blogrolls in the comments. Thanks and stay safe out there on the net!

Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, has confirmed that a

WordPress application for the BlackBerry will be released soon. This application will prove to be a boon for those BlackBerry owners who want to post something quickly but have no immediate access to a laptop. There aren’t any more details available as to the exact functions but it probably will be similar to the iPhone app.

Currently there exists an add-on that provides a mobile-friendly web interface, but it has many shortcomings. The application from BlackBerry will permit liveblogging and quick edits and coupled with the fact that the BlackBerry keyboard is ideal for writing; it seems possible that even full drafts can be written while on the go.

There is no information about the features which will be included in the

WordPress BlackBerry application or when the application will

be released.The iPhone

Wordpress application has apparently received considerable amount of popularity, thus the chances of success on the BlackBerry increases. Since the release date hasn’t been disclosed as yet, its only a wait that could let us know where this application stands in terms of popularity and success.

WordPress 2.8 is the latest installment of the WordPress platform, scheduled to be released on Wednesday, June 10. Millions of sites are powered by WordPress including the BBC, CNN, the NFL, the New York Times blogs, and that’s just a few of the big names.

Ok, so there’s a new version.  So what?  There are a number of massive improvements which will make WordPress even easier to use than before, however most of the new features are under the hood. Mark Jaquith, a core WordPress developer, is calling it the “Snow Leopard of WordPress” – in other words, on the surface, it doesn’t have much new but there are radical updates under the hood to make it run faster and give developers more options.

Faster Load Times

The first, of smaller features, but very important features to me, is the ability to compress both external CSS files and embedded CSS, and the same with Javascript, both embedding and external files. Why is this important? It decreases both load time for the user and saves bandwidth because of compression. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. But, this is just one of the major enhancements I’m excited about.

Now Easier to use Widgets

Yay for a new widget panel!  No more “add this widget” and gets added and having to browse the different sidebars.  Now you can drag and drop, and auto-save, on any of the registered sidebars for your theme.  See below for the example of what it looks like.  It’s a lot more useful and much easier to use now.

Plugins, Plugins, Plugins, Plugins

The second major update that is clear to see is the plugins page layout.

I run a test site that updates code every few hours from SVN so I can see what is going on with all the new code being developed and committed, so something I noticed quickly was that the Plugins page layout changed dramatically. You’ll notice that the way the plugins are grouped together now is different than it was before. With the upgraded Plugins layout, it was quite difficult to see the important plugins, so the lead developer working on it, Ryan Boren, was kind enough to add a “Per Page” option for Plugins. Now, you can easily find all your plugins on a single page by changing the Per Page option to a higher number than the plugins you have. For example, I have 55 plugins installed, so I set mine to 60 and I can easily see all my plugins.

Plugin Search

Another great addition to the WordPress codebase in 2.8 is enhanced plugin search.  For a long time, and still, plugin search is not that great.  2.8 will help fix a lot of those issues and give users a greater opportunity to find what they are looking for.

New Admin Schemas

Diving into some of the admin features, the blue color scheme received some love and has some updated features. The grey color scheme’s icons were also updated. Overall, the admin style has stayed the same though, since Automattic conducted the user experience testing back in October 2008 to draw up a new administration theme. Have they done a good job? I honestly think that yes, they’ve done a great job with it and it’s fully functional now. I was hesitant at first when they made the big change, but I really like it now.

Along with upgrading the admin schema, you can now select how many columns you want to display.  It’s really easy to move the various dashboard widgets around to customize the dashboard to exactly how you want it.   You can easily select which widgets you want to show too.  Whether you care about plugins, recent news, or you just care about posting quickly, you can edit it to your liking.

Search for Themes

Not only was the plugins browsing area upgraded, but you can also now view and search for themes!

Can’t Upload with Flash? Let’s Fix That!

For all those users that were having issues with Flash, Firefox, and uploading images, those problems should go away.  WordPress 2.8 comes with PHP SWFUpload 2.2.0.1.

Editors Note: I wish the Flash uploader would be applied to more than just images. For instance, the WordPress importer could use some love – particularly for large export files.

Automattic Highlights

A few of the highlights that Automattic is pointing out is the new ability to drag and drop, and save, in one action, widgets for your theme. IIS 7.0 URL rewriting is now supported as well, giving a little love to the Windows users. These are just a few of the highlights.

Editors Note: If you use the Thesis theme there are some incompatibilities. Anthony Ferguson has the fix in advance of an official update from DIYThemes.

Upgrading Using the SSH Method

If you’re into really quick plugin upgrades, you might already be using a script running on a cron job that upgrades your plugins every few hours.  But, there’s a slightly less geeky way of doing it.  The SSH2 method of upgrading is now more functional.  It had some problems in 2.7.x, so I helped work with the developer of that area and we made it more functional and operational.  I wrote a tutorial about how to upgrade WordPress and plugins using SSH that works seemlessly.  For my personal blog, I just click upgrade and the next screen I see is that it upgraded successfully.  I never have to enter my username or password.  It’s all stored on the server.

Other Updates

Digging into the nitty gritty, the backend received some updates as well. Dropping some database columns, for those of us that are uber geeky, which will help keep the database running smoother and cleaner. For the full list of geeky updates, check out the Development, Themes, and Plugins updates.

There are only a couple of plugins out there for automatic sitemap generation on Wordpress, that really serves the purpose. While generating a sitemap is not that all a big deal, setting it right with the right options does make a nig difference to your SEO scores. Not everyone is aware of the right settings for a sitemap, many still thinks that adding a sitemap is enough to take care of things.

Let me try and explain to you what could be possibly the right settings for generating a sitemap for your WordPress blog, and why its essential.

Today among all the sitemap generator plugins for WordPress we have, the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator Plugin is the best one available (For HTML sitemaps), because it has more control over sitemap generation and it helps us to trim down the sitemap to an effective one devoid of the frills. And Google Sitemap Generator by Arne Brachchold for XML sitemaps.

Some things to keep in mind before generating a sitemap

- A sitemap is like a route-map to the search bots. It doesn’t mean that you have to put in everything that you have on your website on a sitemap.
- Search bots will find links to your pages and will anyway crawl them, even without a sitemap (sometimes), so when you have a sitemap, make sure you add some value to it by adding in some additional info.
- Sitemap doesn’t mean a huge set of links on an HTML page, its an XML file often found at the root folder.
- Once you have a sitemap, make sure you let the crawlers know about it, either through the Webmaster console or the Robots.txt.
- Not listing a post/article on the sitemap will not make the crawlers stay away from it.

Making the right settings for the Google WordPress sitemap plugin

Here is an example of optimum setting for the Google sitemap generator.

1. Uncheck the – Add sitemap URL to robots.txt

If this is checked, the plugin will rewrite your existing robots.txt or create problems with it if its already existing. Uncheck this and add the following syntax to your Robots.txt

Sitemap: http://www.yourblogurlhere.com/sitemap.xml

2. Always check the template URL.

The sitemap generator follows a template which is by default in the plugin directory. If you have made changes to the plugin directory name/moved it, this will not function properly. So while checking the “default” option, make sure the path is right, or else you will get a broken sitemap.

3. Uncheck the MySQL standard mode unless absolutely necessary

This if checked will take a lot of memory on your server, so uncheck it unless you have MySQL errors showing up on the sitemap.

4. Limit the number of posts in sitemap

The maximum number of files that can be listed on a sitemap is 50,000 beyond which you have to split up the sitemap and use a “mother sitemap” to link to the “satellite sitemaps”. So unless you have a very large website with lots of pages (above 50k), leave it as such.

5. In Building mode, check rebuild sitemap, if you make changes to the contents of your blog

This will ensure that every time you post/edit a new article, a new sitemap will be generated.

Location of the Sitemap file and Post Priorities

As seen in the above image, check the “Do not use automatic priority calculation”. We will give the priorities for the sitemap contents in the next step.

Also, the location for the sitemap should be the root folder ex:- yourblog.com/sitemap.xml

Click on automatic detection and give the file name as “sitemap.xml”. Using a custom location will complicate things.

Setting Content Priorities for the Sitemap

In the priorities box, set the maximum priority for homepage > followed by posts and pages > then equal priority for all other contents like category and tags.

1 means high priority and lesser values lesser priorities.

Having a higher priority will suggest the crawlers to index those files more often with more importance. However this might get over ridden by incoming link value.

Setting crawling Frequencies for the sitemap contents

In the change frequencies box, make sure that all the values are according to your normal change rates. If you have a weekly posting cycle, change the posts to “Weekly” and if you have a daily cycle, change it to “Daily”. The idea is to give a hint to the search crawlers as to when the content on the site will be changed and what will be changed frequently. But this too will be overridden by the crawlers own judgement, so this setting is only a hint.

That should wrap up some basic sitemap settings, make sure you check your sitemap is fully working and not broken. If it is, the first thing to do is change the settings back to default and rebuild the sitemap.

Recently I came across a relatively young WordPress plugin that allow WordPress users and designers to use basically any TrueType font you have on your computer on your WordPress blog, replacing post titles, widget titles, links and so on with automatically generated SEO-smart images using your desired font. The plugin is called AnyFont and it has been developed by Ryan Peel

The generated images have a very good level of clarity, way better than the classic SWF replacement and the plugin is really easy to administrate and customize.

AnyFont plugin management

See for yourself how easy it is to set up the output style:

And the output is really good:

As I said, the output is SEO friendly, each image being given an ALT and TITLE attribute that either automatically take content from the original text, or you can set your own values.

The plugin also uses an image-caching system to ease the server load.

Click here to go to the AnyFont plugin download page.

Well, I was finally pushed to do it…send in feedback about Windows Live Writer. One of the earliest features, and one feature that’s available in pretty much every other desktop blogging application, was removed and has caused a mild inconvenience when using WLW to manage a number of blogs.

Here’s the exact message that I sent in:

In the earliest edition of WLW that I tested, it was possible to have a new post immediately started after publication without needing to hit the “New” button. This feature seems to have completely disappeared in the most recent releases.

There are options to view the entry after publication, close the writing window after publication, or open a new window after publication, but none simply to start a new post in the same window immediately after publishing an entry. Why has one of the most logical features, available in every other offline blogging software, been abandoned?

I’m suggesting that you resurrect it. Having to hit the “New” post button after publication is an unnecessary extra step, especially considering that rarely does one need to continue editing a post *after* it’s been published and continually needing to click the “New” button can become tedious, especially if someone is managing multiple blogs and has a number of entries to write.

Now it’s time to wait and see whether I receive a response (it may very well be that I’m overlooking something in the Preferences) or whether they decide to re-incorporate this feature into the software or whether I can find a third party plugin that will do it for me.

I’m also curious to see whether anyone else is perturbed by this inconvenience as well.

People ask me all the time what WordPress plugins they should use to help market their blog. These are the sixteen essential WordPress plugins for marketing your blog online and the reasons why I think they are important:

1. Google XML Sitemap - Automatically generates an XML sitemap and updates it whith each new post so Google can find all the pages of your blog you want the search engine to index.
2. KB Robots.txt - Gives you the ability to edit your robots.txt file from within WordPress so you can control what the search engines see and what they can’t look at.
3. Landing Sites - When a visitor arrives from a search engine, this plugin shows them related blog posts based on their search query.
4. Platinum SEO - The standard plugin for search engine optimization used to be the All In One SEO Pack but I’ve replaced it with the Platinum SEO, which has more options. Both plugins help you optimize your posts for search engine visibility.
5. Redirection - The Redirection plugin allows you to control your 301 redirects and monitor your 404 error pages all within WordPress.
6. SEO Friendly Images - automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes, making your posts W3C/xHTML vali.
7. SEO Smart Links - Automatically links keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. It gets in the way sometimes but by overriding parts of some hyperlinks, but it’s still worth the install.
8. ShareThis - Makes it easy for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more using the ShareThis service.
9. ShiftThis WordPress Newsletter Plugin - I have installed but not yet used this but I include it because it is the only plugin of it’s kind that I can find. It gives you the ability to publish an email newsletter within WordPress and to easily include posts and pages from your blog in your newsletters.
10. Similar Posts - It does what it says: displays a list of posts which are related or similar to the current post.
11. SMS Text Message - Allows you to update your readers via text message.
12. Widget Logic - Allows you to control where your WordPress widgets appear on your blog. Only want your blog roll to appear on the front page? Done!
13. WordPress Mobile - Makes your blog work well on mobile phones and lets you post to your blog from your mobile device.
14. WP Email - Allows visitors to recommand/send your blog’s posts/pages to a friend.
15. WP Greet Box - Shows a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. Customizable. I love this plugin!
16. FD Feedburner Plugin - Redirects all your blog feeds to your FeedBurner feed so you can get more accurate RSS subscriber data.

There are quite a few reasons for choosing Wordpress as my personal favorite Content Managment System (CMS) – simple back end interface, Search Engine friendly (SEO Friendly), open source (so it’s free!) and my personal favorite, the massive amount of plugins that are available that add extra functionality to your website or blog.

Below I explore and discuss the benefits of 13 Wordpress plugins that I have personally used on The Design Cubicle that will give your site an extra boost and provide a better experience for your visitors (plus some other great additions you can add).

Akismet

Saves you time and frustration with spam comments. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service and filters them so you can easily scan them or delete them later.

BENEFIT: Stops all that nasty spam from getting to your reader comments.

All in One SEO Pack

An “out-of-the-box” SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

BENEFIT: Makes your blog “friendlier” and better seen by search engines (ie. Google, Yahoo, etc). Allows you to add a home title, home description, keywords (meta tags) and more.

Tip: try limiting your site to 10  keywords or less; this allows search engines to place importance on a few, dominate words providing better results when someone searches for your site.

cformsII

CformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog.

Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more.

BENEFIT: Easily customize contact forms for your website for your readers and contacts to get in touch with you. Fields can be added and customized to fit you and your visitors particular needs.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo.

BENEFIT: Improves your sites visibility providing search engines with information about your site, in particular a list of the pages on your site, making it more discoverable and SEO friendly.

Highlight Author Comments

Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.

BENEFIT: Helps your readers visually distinguish your comments from your readers.

Social Bookmarks

Adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.

BENEFIT: Get your articles easily submitted to various social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and a whole lot more. Assists in increasing your sites traffic!

Subscribe To Comments

Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

BENEFIT: Provides a way for your readers to stay engaged and connected to a conversation. Sets the ground work for a community and discussion on your blog.

Woopra

This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation.

Live track over 40 different statistical events and analytics through Woopra’s rich and efficient desktop application or from the Wordpress Dashboard. Check out more information about the features and download the desktop application on Woopra’s site.

BENEFIT: Provides you with the information you need to strenthen your site, thus improving your results and visitor interactions.

Wordpress Gravatars

Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section.

BENEFIT: Puts a face to your commentors. A nice touch to add more of a community feel to your site.

wp-cache

Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system.

BENEFIT: Speed up the load time of your site. Works like a charm for those high traffic days and social media spikes.

Also try WP Super Cache for even more responsive load times.

WP-PageNavi

Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

BENEFIT: Adds a more advanced page navagation, instead of the standard ‘previous’ and ‘next’ links – helps your readers get around more effectively.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.

BENEFIT: Help readers discover similar content and related posts – adds to a more enjoyable and resourceful visit.

1. Elegant Jewel

This is an awe-inspiring piece of WordPress Theme embellished with ornaments and voguish fashion photographs.

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2. Cherish

 

With a touch of pink and a feminine grace, this free WordPress theme offers the right occassion to cherish your love and pending nuptials.
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3. DivaLicious

This is an enticing piece of WordPress work with stunning girl vector. The 2 column theme with fixed width is embellished with hues of gray. The theme is widigetized and XHTML valid.

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4. WP Girls Talk

 

This 3 column girly WP theme appears lovely with the blend of white and magenta. For the features, this free theme is widget ready theme developed in valid XHTML and CSS.

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5. WP Ladies Vector

This is a 3 column free WP theme in shades of green.  It’s a widget ready theme in valid XHTML and CSS compatible with latest Wordpress 2.5.1 and Wordpress 2.3.

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6. Cute-red

 

It’s an elegant WordPress theme with a shades of red, pink and white. This free 2 column theme is widget ready and features search box in the header.

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7. v4ny4

 

It’s one of most square and chic WP theme for girls. With  dark background it’s a truly awesome theme.

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8. WP Lovely Rose

 

Those girls craving for a maudlin looking Wordpress theme can pick this piece. It’s a 3 column theme in valid XHTML and CSS that works with the latest WordPress 2.7.1.

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9. Lady Unicorn

 

This is a 2 column widgetized theme with an enchanting appeal. It’s an adsense ready theme with friendly sites banner spot.

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10. Pink White Valentine

 

This free romantic theme in feminine pink and white is an alluring piece for ladies. It features 3 columns, and is done in valid XHTML and CSS.
It’s compatible with the latest Wordpress 2.7.1.

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