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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.