2 of which are released and well-vetted. Anyone interested in testing the firewall, please let me know via the comments. A few are using it already. It’s probably the most important in that list.

In forums or groups with a wordpress topic, there are quite often questions about how to offer downloads that require a charge. One of several Wordpress shop plugins could shurely offer this, .. but really more hypothetically. If you want to offer loose download links against payment (to the eBooks for example) or certain information (with serial numbers for products for example), those shop plugins are most of the time far much too complex and expensive and therefore really overdone and in most cases also not flexible enough. The newly developed WordPress plugin wpSALE is very quickly installed and offers parts of a post or downloads only after successful payment with PayPal.

German Version
wpSALE: Mehr verkaufen unter WordPress. Unkompliziert und effizient

Jump marks

• Mode of operation
• Examples
• Screenshots
• Features
• Download & demonstration
• Version of progress
• Installation

Mode of operation
So what does wpSALE? This software, which comprehends by the way only a few kByte, notices the marked parts of the blog operator and replaces them with an alternative, promotional text, regardless if these parts are download-links, text parts or even something different. wpSALE alters the via short code marked part (similiar to wpSLEEP) to a chargable and only after payment reachable content area.

The short code (= marked part) can therefore be placed everywhere and also multiple times within a blog text. When marking the parts, the corresponding attriubutes are also defined: That is why the data has not to be entered in a complicated way and with effort in the WordPress backend - everything is already done locally within the shortcode.

Price und the promotinal text that wpSALE adds with a link for payment, are those attributes. With the help of more attributes/parameters, which are placed before or after the payment link, even more information can be added, which offers you more freedom and playground for the arrangement of the “sold note”. An Example with possible parameters for the time being:

Examples

• [wpsale cost="0,99" id="display-serial" before="Paid content!" link="Now paying via PayPal!" after="Please pay $ %cost% for viewing the content"]Your Serial: 123456789[/wpsale]
• [wpsale cost="3.99" id="download-product" before="Pay $ %cost% to download this product!" link="Now paying via PayPal!"]Thanks for buying with Paypal! <a href=”product.zip”>Click here for download the file.</a>[/wpsale]

Marking, forwarding, paid
After marking the area and saving the post, the reader can only see the alternative text and the link (before, link, after). But all of this happens intuitively: If the user decides to pay and clicks on the payment-link, wpSALE automatically forwards him to the PayPal site, where he loggs in and makes the payment. After successful transaction, PayLal forwards the user back to his previous website. The alternative text is now gone and the user can see or download the content, he paid for.

The successfull transaction at PayPal has supplied the browser with a valid cookie, that passes the verification. The advantage of this technic is obvious: The reader does not have the effort to have to register and wait for the admin review to be able to see the content that requires a charge. The course of process is just one step and thanks to PayPal quick, safe and unbureaucratic.

The possible shady side of this solution
The disadvantage is surely that the cockie can be deleted and in cause of that, the user can not access the content he paid for. This can happen by manual deletion or by the validity period of the used browser. On the other hand there is the question, if the offered content that required a charge, should be accessable for eternity, after one has paid for it. I am quite sure: No it should not. My thoughts, speculations and view about that:

• The link that forwards one to the download of the eBook, once the user has paid for it, leads to the direct downlaod: The pdf can be saved locally on his pc.
• The serial number, that is shown after successfull payment, is copied once to activate a certain program. After that, not again.

Screenshots
Settings in the Backend of the wpSALE plugin

wpSALE sales in table form

Features

• Faster, gentle code for database
• Entry of product details directly within the article text
• Protocoll of all transactions
• Uncomplicated process without registration
• Cookie validity of 1 year
• Usable from WordPress 2.5

Possible attributes in [wpsale]… [/wpsale]

• cost
  Product price in german oder english format.
• id
  Explicit ID respectively the name of the product. Ideally - as IDs do - this identification number consists only out of numbers, but this is not mandatory. PayPal shows the ID within the payment details.
• before
  Text before the payment link.
• link
  Associated text to the payment link.
• after
  Text after the payment link.

Possilbe placeholder in [wpsale]… [/wpsale]

• %cost%
  At the time being the only placeholder can be placed within the attributes before, link and/or after and will be replaced with the value from the attribute cost automatically. The advantage: The price of the product has to be set in the short code only once.

Download & demonstration
wpSALE is a software that requires an charge and can be acquired without obligation for a price of € 0,99 (€ 0,37 PayPal charge inclusive).
» Now paying securly via PayPal and downloading!

Version of progress
Version 0.5 dated 19.11.2008:

• Encryption of data (price, productID)
• Automatic cleanup of the data table
• Improving the pay process

Version 0.4 dated 07.11.2008:

• New option: Language of the PayPal login page

Version 0.3 dated 31.10.2008:

• wpSALE sales statistic in table form
• English interface
• Restructering of code

Version 0.2 dated 21.10.2008:

• Improved compatibility with all PayPal accounts

Version 0.1 dated 20.10.2008:

• wpSALE goes online

Installation

• Download plugin
• Unzip the archive
• Upload the file wpsale.php into ../wp-content/plugins/
• Go to tab Plugins
• Activate wpSALE
• Click on Settings and define within the options

Tipps

• Check that the email address of the PayPal receiver is set under wpSALE settings, otherwise there will be no forwarding to PayPal.

Donate
Does wpSALE come up to your expectations? If that is the case, I am very grateful for a ping- or trackback. Or Donate via PayPal. Thank you!

Updates
This plugin will be updated permanently. Is a new version out, I will tell you about it within the comments. » Subscribe to article comments via RSS

If you are a WordPress user, and you need to bill a client, or a roommate, here is the solution for you: WordPress invoice and billing plugin.

Why “Web Invoices”?

While I was testing this plugin I showed it to a friend of mine who said “I like Freshbooks because you can email invoice PDF attachments.” I think sending PDF invoices to your clients is stupid. What is the point? So they can print it out and keep a paper trail? And then what do they do, fax it back to you? Granted there are a lot of people who must keep a paper copy of everything, but I am a firm believer that at this point it is really counterproductive.

In any case, a Web Invoice has no PDF files, no printing, no faxing. A client gets a link in their email, they follow the link to your website, on your website is their invoice. They don’t have to remember any passwords because ther is no logging in, the link they follow is a hashed invoice ID, example:

https://company.com/invoice/?invoice_id=69b141e65b0f5d832530d41269f8dbbe.

Somebody guessing that by chance is very unlikely (nearly impossible with most regular PCs), so no passwords are necessary. After looking at their web invoice, they pay it, and a receipt is sent to them automatically, you’re done.

Why WordPress?

I know there are a lot of third-party billing/invoicing websites, and there are also a few free scripts available that can bill people. However, over the years I’ve come to realize that all the good invoicing sites cost money, the free scripts are horrible, and sending people PayPal invoices is cheap-o. Furthermore, the “good invoicing” sites that cost money always have way too many functions and tools. Typically when I am trying to get money out of somebody I am looking for the shortest and quickest way of doing that, I don’t care about time tracking and road mileage.

Furthermore, WordPress has an awesome user management system. Why not tie that user management system in with your clientele management system?

How do customers pay?

Two ways, the cheap-o PayPal, or via credit card. Either way credibility is added to your business because customers actually view their invoice and enter in their information on your website. However, once you step up to credit card processing it does add even more credibility. However, one must acquire an SSL certificate and a merchant account. I use MerchantPlus for my credit card processing, and GoDaddy for my SSL certificates. MerchantPlus is an Authorize.net reseller, so they, like many other resellers, are compatible with WP-Invoice. Altogether it costs about $50-75 to setup SSL and CC Processing, assuming you already have a website.

Click to view an actual invoice setup for demo purposes.

A Word on the User Interface

I want to mention the UI because I spend a lot of time on it. I tried to stay in sync with the WordPress look, which is about as clean as it gets. The goal is minimalism, a non-cluttered interface, but the ability to dynamically add more content when necessary.

The Invoice Overview is a very basic list, with only a few twists. I added a jQuery filtering function which searches through the table as you type. It’s a really useful function, I don’t understand why more interfaces don’t use it.

And of course table ordering. There is nothing more annoying then trying to reorder a table by a column and having to wait for a page to reload, here it happens on the fly.

Adding invoices is pretty damn easy. It’s best to create your recipient’s profile first, and fill out their billing information while you’re at it. By “billing information” I mean street address, city, zip, etc. The more you fill out the easier it’ll be for the recipient to simply type in their credit card number / PayPal address, and pay you.

User interface note - the text boxes adjust to how much content you type, itemized list entries are added dynamically, totals calculated on the fly, etc.

Google is the undisputed king of search. They do it well. What many bloggers may not be aware of is that you can use Google as your site’s main search engine. You don’t have to use your blog engine’s built in search.

There are two really nice benefits to using Google for your site search engine:

1. It’s Google! That means you have full power of Google search on your blog.
2. You can use Adsense for your search results and make some money on your site searches. And the CPM is usually VERY high with Adsense in this case because the ads are super well targeted.

So the question is: how do you do it? Well, I’ll show you. 

1. You need an Adsense account. So, if you’re not already signed up as an Adsense publisher, do so now.
2. In your Adsense account, click on “Adsense Setup”. Then click on “Adsense for Search”.
3. Click the “Get Started” button. You will enter the wizard for creating your search form.
4. For “Search Type”, select “Only sites I select”. In your “Selected Sites” box, type the URL to your blog. You can enter multiple sites if you wish.
5. Enter some “optional keywords” which will gear the ads displayed toward your blog subject matter.
6. You can leave all other fields as default. Continue to the next step.
7. Choose the look and feel of your search form. Continue to the next step.
8. Next, you can choose where you want your search results to appear. In order to make the search results appear within your own site, choose “open results within my own site” and specify the URL. For PCMech, I entered “http://www.pcmech.com/searchresults.php”. This is obviously not part of the Wordpress installation, but that’s OK. We’re going to create this file for you in a moment.
9. Choose the ad position and color palette and then continue to the next step
10. Assign a name to the search engine. This is for your own internal purposes later. Then hit the “Save and Get Code” button.
11. You’re going to get two snippets of code. One is for the actual search form and the other is for your search results page. Include the search form HTML wherever you want it to appear in your blog theme (likely either the sidebar or the header). You can use CSS to customize the appearance of the search form to match your site as closely as possible.
12. Now you need to create a file called searchresults.php. The code I use for this file is below. You will need to paste in your results code that Google gave you, modify as needed to suite your particular theme, and upload to your blog’s root directory.

<?php
unset($_SERVER['PATH_INFO']);
//Include current WordPress Theme Header etc.
require(’./wp-config.php’);
function maketitle() {
return ” | Search Results”;
}
//Check if we’re wrapping the WP Theme
//Get Theme settings.
$themes = get_themes();
$current_theme = get_current_theme();
$current_template_dir = $themes[$current_theme]['Template Dir'];
$current_stylesheet_dir = $themes[$current_theme]['Stylesheet Dir'];
//Initialize the WP class to be able to get the header
wp();
//Set status to 200 to override the 404 set by WordPress
status_header(200);
//Include the WP Header
add_filter(”wp_title”,’maketitle’);
get_header();
?>
[ PASTE YOUR SEARCH RESULTS CODE FROM GOOGLE HERE ]
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php
get_footer();
?>

This file will use your blog’s active theme, however you may need to do some modifications to suit your blog. You might also need to go back and define the width of the search results to fit your blog.

When you’re done, you will have a Google powered search engine within your blog

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A recent discussion has popped up on the WordPress Testers mailing list revolving around using the list as an area to receive support. Over the past few weeks, users have been publishing support questions which in many aspects, would be better served in the WordPress.org support forums. The problem with that is, the testers list is maintained and operated by people who have a knowledgeable background with the WordPress software, there are less users, and receiving answers is typically a speedier process.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to whip up a guide on how to maximize the use of the WordPress.org forum. It’s not exactly as cut and dry as you would think. This list of steps was comprised mostly by Michael E. Hancock with additional tips provided by Otto and myself.

1. A new user may want to read the Forum Rules

2. Report inappropriate posts/threads by adding the ‘modlook‘ tag to that thread

3. Link to Codex article by using the wiki code of two beginning and ending brackets. [[Template Hierarchy]] will create a link to that article in Codex.

4. Try to place your question in the correct Forum–if it is related to Plugins use the Plugins and Hacks Forum.

5. If needing to put a large code example in your thread, paste the code in a pastebin and put the link to that code in the thread.

6. Click on View Your Profile to see all your threads. Note: Currently the Threads Started feature is broken.

7. You can initiate a forum topic from a particular plugin at the WordPress Extend Plugins site. At the bottom of each plugin page there is a “Write a new topic” link that displays a form to enter the topic and automatically creates a tag related to that specific plugin and automatically selects the Plugins and Hacks Forum.

8. A new topic is started by first selecting(entering)the particular Forum (e.g. Installation) and at the bottom of the screen, the New Topic form is displayed.

9. Use the Version box when starting a new topic. If the Version isn’t listed, select Other and then type the Version in the box.

10. A tip from LesBessant - You can hide the tag cloud in Firefox by adding the file usercontent.css to the …\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.default\chrome folder. Put this in the file:

.frontpageheatmap, #hottags {
display: none;
}

11. Use the Report a Site Bug link at the bottom of the screen to report bugs with the forum software.

12. When creating a new topic, make the topic be descriptive and brief. “Help me now” is a poor topic.

13. If asking a question about a plugin or theme provide a link to download the plugin/theme.

14. Use meaningful tags. Using the same tags as the topic isn’t very useful, but using keywords from the topic is good.

15. Make use of the search before starting a new topic. Also a Google search such as “wordpress plugin cforms” will return a good list of info about the Cforms plugin.

Here is a tip provided by Otto42 - DON’T BUMP. Bumping makes your threads have a reply, which makes them not show up on the “threads without replies” list any more. Meaning that bumping actually decreases the chances of you getting any help.

Here is a tip from me to you. If you end up resolving your problem, be sure to edit the post and mark it as resolved. I’ve forgotten to do this step several times but the good news is, you can always go back to those posts via your user profile and edit them.

Conclusion:

As has been discussed on the Testers mailing list, there are many things that can be done to improve the forum experience that are out of the control of end users. For example, an improved search. Based on what I’ve heard, the search for the Codex as well as the Forum and Plugin Repository has a good shot at being implemented before the release of WordPress 2.8. While on the subject of search, I think it would be nice if the forum search provided a set of Advanced options so that I could search the forum in all threads that have been marked as resolved.

While BBPress is decent forum software (for now as Sam continues to work on version 1.0) I wonder if it’s the software of choice that meets the needs of the WordPress.org support forum. There is no private messaging, distinct thread/post filtering, etc. Not that every feature found within PHPBB3 or other forum software needs to be integrated into BBPress but I feel there is quite a bit missing at this point to provide a sound experience on the forum.

With that said, I ask you, the community how we and the powers that be can improve the WordPress.org forum. I ask that you do not take this opportunity to vent your frustrations with particular users but instead, provide feedback and ideas on how to improve the system.

How do you make a link directory? You can pay for the scripts or you can use a free plugin designed for Wordpress.

But why would you want to create a web directory? Isn’t it just going to create reciprocal links, which are pretty much worthless? Well, directories are only good for the directory owner, and not the sites listed in the directory.

To create a web directory in Wordpress, you need to download the plugin. From there, all you need to do is drop it in your Wordpress plugins file, and enable it.

How To Use A Link Directory Effectively

Say you are putting together a health-food related directory. You should solicit webmasters to submit their health-food sites to your directory, and ask them for a reciprocal link.

But you don’t give them the link for your directory. You give them the link for your other site, the one you want to promote. So now you have all of these sites linking back to your main site, and the web directory is filled with a bunch of sites. The sites in the directory don’t do you much good, but over time it can make the directory more useful, and if you put work into it, you can make a useful web directory of health-food related websites.

So now you have a useful web directory, and are getting tons of 1-way links to your main site.

So the next time you see a link directory, realize the guy running it may be a lot smarter thank you think.

DEMO : http://link4blogs.com

What is not to love about Wordpress? It is extremely extendable, an open source project, has a selection of thousands of plugins, in addition to the support community being simply massive. Wordpress has proved itself as a great blogging platform and content management system.

For us developers and techies the out of the box capabilities is more than we ever need to manage, edit, and add content in any shape or form. However many of us don’t simply build website for ourselves, and we have to think about our clients as well.

While Wordpress has a user friendly interface it is still blogging focused, and there are some usability enhancements that could be desired when those who are not technically savvy (which fits the bill for most clients) will be the primary users.

In this situation there are a few steps to improving the interface to make it easier for our clients.

1. Tweak the Admin Panel

The administration panel is with out a doubt focused on blogging, which makes sense since Wordpress is a blogging platform. Any time you aim to create more content, “Post” is always listed before “Page” and even the labeling “Write” feels more journalistic than page focused.

While it is not a perfect solution, there is a great plugin out there that greatly enhances the layout of the latest versions of Wordpress called Leopard.

With icons and a simple sidebar it will likely be more familiar to non techies or journalists.

If you like the existing interface just fine, you might want to look into the Simple CMS plugin instead. Simple CMS is a quick and easy way to change the focus from Posts to Pages.

If you want to take it a step further, and wish tweak all labeling and names to feel more “CMS” focused, the Admin Menu Management plugin will let you configure a lot of the dashboard elements to be more client friendly.

Finally cleaning up the interface can go a long way. By default Wordpress has a lot of irrelevant information on the dashboard. Information that the average client doesn’t need to be bothered with. The dashboard editor plugin lets you remove some of these unnecessary elements.

Hopefully when Wordpress 2.7 is finally released we won’t need to install these types of plugins as the interface is greatly improved.

2. Extend Capabilities of Navigation Control

If you are building Wordpress CMS sites then chances are you are using the wp_list_pages(); method of creating navigation. This is an excellent way to let clients extend their site and add pages to the site architecture with out any editing of code.

The function does leave much be desired. There are times where you don’t want particular pages to show up in the main navigation, or only include the top level of pages. Normally this requires code tweaking, which is not client friendly. Additionally your client may want several different types of navigation? For example top navigation, utilities, footer navigation, etc… these all might be slightly different.

Again you could do some hard coding, but that makes it difficult for the client to control. So ideally we would like to give some of that control to the client.

The Navigation List plugin gives you complete control over your navigation, including graphics, styling, ordering, etc.. You can create several different navigation blocks and it all done through a great drag and drop interface.

Now clients can have powerful and easy control over their navigational blocks and areas.

3. Create Custom Write Panels

Some web sites only need a homepage and a typical text/image page for content. However many sites do need “custom content” types. Typical examples may be “houses for sale” or “product pages.” Clients could try and craft the pages in the same way for every page, but that is extremely difficult and cumbersome. It would be much easier to take some of the work away from them and simply have them fill out the details (product title, cost, description, and add a picture) rather than trying to do it manually through the write panel.

There are two ways you can create custom write panels to make creating specific types of content easier for clients.

You can do some manual hard coding, like this tutorial

Or take a look into the flutter plugin

Flutter also has some great front end editing capabilities that you could look into as well.

4. Allow More Control Over the Templates

While Wordpress does make it easy to have additional templates for different types of content, allowing clients to customize templates as needed is a nice touch. A common need for example, is to allow clients to pick which sidebar to use on any given page that they are creating.

Additionally a major drawback with the format of Wordpress style pages is that you can edit / modify a pages main content but there is no easy way to edit any other areas of content. The most typical area would be a sidebar.

Side Content is another plugin that lets you have and define different sets of widgets as “side content” that can be edited on a per page basis.

The PageMash template lets you select and customize sidebars based on widgets as well as providing an easy to use interface. It features a drag and drop ajax interface for ease of client use.

5. Create Great Revision Control

Many clients love the idea of revision control. There is a sense of safety that comes with being able to revert back to a previously flawless page/post. Many clients who are not tech savvy are worried about making a change that breaks the site. Being able to switch back to a working page in a worse case scenario is very reassuring.

There are two great plugins that extend the capability of Wordpress revision control.

Revision Control

Revisions

6. Improve the Easy of Linking

If you have ever had to teach a client how to link to another interior page in Wordpress you will know how difficult the linking interface of Wordpress can be. It would be much easier to get a list of links to pages that exist for selection, rather than having to type it in manually.

AWS Easy Page Link lets you do just that.

7. Enhance Multimedia Support with Utilities

The web has become a rich multimedia experience, so it is no surprised a lot of websites not only need the ability to have multimedia on the site, but also add multimedia over time.

Two of the most common multimedia needs are the ability to add video, and to work with images. In a perfect world all clients would have the tools and knowledge to open, edit, resize and save images. However rarely is this the case.

So the Scissors plugin is a perfect fit for all your basic image editing and resizing needs, all through the administration panel.

And for those sites that need video the all in one video pack makes working with and posting video extremely easy.

8. Give them Control Over Contact Forms

It is rare to come across a site that doesn’t have at least one contact form. Many sites now have several contact forms. Beyond that, simply working with contact forms can be a pain.

Why not give the client control over their contact forms? Contact Form 7 makes it easy to create different contact forms and insert them into posts and pages. It features some worthwhile CAPTCHA spam protection.

9. Do Some Branding and Customization

I just wrote an article about branding your administration area. What came out of that were some great suggestions for plugins to brand the login / registration panels and the administration panel.

The Custom Admin Branding plugin will let you swap out logos in the administration panels for your own, or your clients (depending on how you want to brand Wordpress).

WP Admin Theme Extended will let you easily adjust and tweak the color scheme of the administration panel. Again this will let you either pick your branded colors, or your clients for the administration panel.

10. Ensure Everything is Backed up Regularly

You never know what, when and why something will happen to a website. You can’t count on clients to backup their site themselves, and I doubt you want to be in the business of managing backups for all website you create.

The DB Backup plugin has auto scheduling with a wide variety of options and methods for backing up your important Wordpress database.

I just got word that the first beta release of WordPress 2.7 is now available to the public. You can download your copy here (WordPress 2.7 Beta 1). Ultimately, it is not recommended that you use this version on a production website but rather, install it on a sub-domain or on a local server.

By the way, the public release of WordPress 2.7 will not be available on November 10th as originally scheduled. Instead, considering this design has a lot of visual design elements as well as features, it needs a lengthier testing period. Thus, November 10th will be aimed as the date that a Release Candidate will be made available. It looks like it could be the end of November before we actually see WordPress 2.7 available to the public. Of course, this all depends on how the testing period goes.

If you happen to install the beta version on your site, come back and let us know what you think of the new version.

One of the cool benefits of using Wordpress as a CMS (Content Management System) is the ability to use plugins which allows you to add on extra features with just a few clicks.

I am going to showcase the particular Wordpress plugins I use on this blog and the reasons for doing so.

Akismet

It is one of the best spam filters going around. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

Why? To stop spam from reaching your blog comments.

All in One SEO Pack

Out-of-the-box Search Engine Optimisation for your Wordpress blog.

Why? To get better search engine ranking results.

Better Comments Manager

Better Comments manager allows you to view your comments post wise, it also allows you to reply to your comments from within the admin panel without you having to visit the site to respond to comments.

Why? To save time when replying to blog comments.

cforms

cforms 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.

Why? To easily create forms on your website. You can see this page as an example.

Chunk Urls for WordPress

This plugin shorten urls in comments so that they won’t break your site.

Why? Some commentators leave a full web address in their comments, this plugin shortens it to a smaller and still clickable link.

Commentluv

A plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. It will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html. I have currently disabled this plugin in the past week due to a small glitch it made on my website (it put >> at the header of my site) however it is a great plugin.

Why? To give your commentators some link love and to encourage commenting.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

Why? To accurately record how many subscribers you have on your blog.

Google Ajax Search

Adds a Google AJAX Search box on your site. Options include searching your site through Google Blog Search and/or straight up Google, a second search option is available that is perfect for flickr.

Why? For a more accurate search result. You can find an example of this at the top right of this blog.

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 and autmatically upload it to Googles servers for you.

Why? Get your pages searched my Google more often.

Homepage Excerpts

This plugin shows excerpts on the home page rather than full posts. You can customise how many you want to display as full posts.

Why? Useful to shorten page load times on the front page.

My FTP

A WordPress FTP like plugin that can be used to manage folders and files via the WordPress admin panel.

Why? To save launching FTP Clients or logging into your control panel to upload files. This is useful if you travel a lot such as myself and are always in your admin panel.

NextGEN Gallery

This is a great plugin that allows you to have a customisable photo gallery with cool effects.

Why? Check out my graphic design portfolio to see it in action.

NoFollow Free

Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options. Supports multilingual and a Top Commenters sidebar Widget.

Why? To encourage more commentating and to let loyal commentators benefit from commentating on your blog. Read more about nofollow here.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

Replaces admin menus with a CSS dropdown menu bar. Saves lots of clicks and page loads!

Why? Save heaps of time by shortening your page loads and clicks in your Wordpress Admin. A must have.

Random Redirect

Allows you to create a link to your blog which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog in a StumbleUpon-like fashion. You can also specific in the URL `random_post_type` or `random_cat_id`.

Why? So people can browse your website in a random manner. Pretty useful for someone new to the website or those looking for something random. You can test it by clicking here.

Robots Meta

This plugin allows you to add all the appropriate robots meta tags to your pages and feeds, disable unused archives and nofollow unnecessary links. You can read about robot meta tags here.

Why? To disable posts or pages that you do not want appearing in Google Search results.

RSS Feed Signature

Add a customised signature or tag-line to your RSS feed(s).

Why? You could use this for any reason. Personally I use it for copyright, ebook advertising and related posts.

Simple Tags

Extended Tagging for your blog. It features Auto Completion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags and more.

Why? A very powerful tagging system. The related posts feature is what I find most useful.

Subscribe To Comments

Subscribe to Comments is a plugin that allows commentators on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments.

Why? It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.

SRG Clean Archives

This plugin is designed to display your archive listings in a clean, uniform, single-query fashion that’s Search Engine friendly on a dedicated page or in your sidebar.You can see it in action on my blog.

Why? Never have to worry about updating your archives.

Twitter Updater

Updates Twitter when you create a new blog or publish one.

Why? Saves me time as I do not have to Twitter about new blog posts, It does it for me. I also have my Twitter updates sent to my facebook account automatically so advertising is all automated. Very useful.

Ultimate Google Analytics

Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.

Why? To track your website stats in Google Analytics.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the Wordpress installation to the latest one provided by Wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. It also has a one click automatic function.

Why? Save a lot of time and effort by using the one click upgrade option.

WP-Cache

A very fast caching module that speeds up your site. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. You can even tweak the plugin to make your site even faster. Another option is SuperCache however I am yet to figure out what plugin is better?

Why? To make your site run faster and more responsive.

WP-Polls

Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It supports multiple selection of answers too.

Why? To easily host polls such as the Mac or PC one I held earlier.

WP-Print

Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

Why? Let your readers easily print your articles without your sidebars or advertising.

WP Widget Cache

Cache the output of your blog widgets. It will significantly reduce the sql queries to your database and speed up your site. Quite a new plugin which works great.

Why? To make your site run faster and more responsive. Works in conjuction with WP-Cache and SuperCache.

If you are after some more great Wordpress Plugins I would check out this powerful list of wordpress plugins and this must have wordpress plugins post.

What are some other plugins that you couldn’t live without? Are there any here that could be replaced with something better?

1. AdSense-Deluxe WordPress
AdSense-Deluxe is a WordPress plugin offering advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts.

Adsense Deluxe WP Plugin

2. Adrotator
Ad Rotating Solution for your Ads. I think this simply sums up what you need to know.

Adrotator Plugin

3. Buy Me a Beer
This WordPress plugin allows your readers to donate money to you via PayPal. The plugin is widget enabled.

PayPal Donation WordPress Plugin

4. BankRollin
The only sure way to avoid being detected by Google for paid links is through contextual links. I am sure you have heard of this by now, you can download the free version which requires a link back to the site otherwise, get it for an affordable price.

WP BankRoll Plugin