Tech Toys

Do you know why should you move from Blogger to paid hosting service? Plugins! Most of us run Wordpress as a blog system and we all know two biggest benefits it provides over the rest blog scripts. One of them is huge community growing larger every day and the second one are plugins, lots of plugins. Gadgets that make your life easier. Plugins are a must for every serious blogger and here I’ll give you some useful tools you just can’t live without.

1. Akismet
Akismet or Automattic Kismet is spam filtering plugin which checks your comments on spam. I get flooded with about 200 comments every day and I can’t imagine myself removing them manualy. This tool really saves the day. It’s included in wordpress from version 2.0 and above but in case you don’t have it you should get it immediatly! To install Akismet you’ll need a wordpress API key which you can get on their website for free.

2. FeedBurner FeedSmith
Don’t you hate it when you don’t know how many subscribers you have? I know you have registered at FeedBurner but your favorite blog layout usualy has a regular feed link included so you can’t track the subscription properly. Your worries are over because at FeedBurner’s they have a solution to your problem. Originaly made by Steve Smith - FeedSmith is a neat little plugin that redirects all regular feed actions to your FeedBurner address so whenever a visitor on your blog clicks feed://http//yourblog.com/index.php/feed/ it redirects it to http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourblogfeed.

3. Google Sitemap Generator
I’ve written about the need for Google Sitemaps before in my article Baby Steps In SEO For Wordpress so I’ll just cut the long story short. Google Sitemap Generator is a must because once you install it you can forget about it, it does all the work for you. It generates sitemap for your blog and notifies Google whenever a change has been made to your blog so the search engine can update it’s database. If you understand the need for SEO you will install this.

4. Get Recent Comments
Developed by Krischan Jodies, Get Recent Comments plugin captures excerpts of most recent comments and trackbacks on your blog and displays them in your sidebar. You can see who has posted recently and it makes it easy to reply to those comments as you don’t have to search for the certain post. It also adds a credibility to your blog as well as a feeling that your blog is alive. The plugins is very easy to configure.

5. Show Top Commentators
Encourage more discussion from your readers by displaying their names and number of comments they have made on your blog so far. What’s more important, it links to their websites so people will be more desired to comment because you give them free links. Everybody wins. The plugin is easy to install and requires no configuration, you can download it here and visit the author’s website by following this link.

6. Related Entries
This plugin generates a list of related posts based on the text of the current blog entry. It’s a great way to show your readers similar posts that you’ve written on the subject. This can help you gain more popularity and add a proffesional look to your blog. The plugin has been written by Wasabi and can be downloaded on his wiki where he explains how to use it.

7. Redirection
If you don’t want to get banned by Google for duplicate content you must use permanent redirection on your blog. Redirection is a server telling a browser that a certain page no longer exists. Everybody has duplicate content, we make it unintentionally and most of the time it’s the software’s fault. Untill now you tortured yourself with .htaccess but UrbanGiraffe has a plugin that does the hard work for you. You will no longer need to edit your server file, everything is done within wordpress area. Read about the features on the official webpage.

8. WordPress Database Backup
Although I preffer manualy backing up your database you may love this tool which helps you out if you’re not hard-cored geek who likes to do things on his own. With the setup of Database Backup you can stop worrying about your blog’s security, in a way. Set the back-up cronjob to 24h and go on vacation. It may take some resources if you schedule the plugin to operate daily but you’ll be able to get all the info back if a malicious hacker decides to deface your blog.

9. InScript
This is a brilliant work from the same author who made Redirection plugin. InScript provides the capability to insert and modify data without needing to modify any wordpress files. So if you want to add PHP code in your blog post you do it with this plugin. No hard work, no sweating. UrbanGiraffe provides few examples on his page such as modifying post title and editing date formats but you can do much more with it. If you’re embedding scripts to your post, this is a must have.

10. AdSense-Deluxe+
What a beautiful way to add Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network code to your blog. With this master tool you can make your monetization work easier. You can move the ads across the blog, so you generate as much CTR as possible, edit them in many ways or just block them. Ads don’t show in your RSS feed, even if it’s full feed, and you have a sandbox installed so you ca preview your ads before you publish them. Since AdSense-Deluxe is not updated anymore, Didzis decided to take action and improve it so you have AdSense-Deluxe+. Both plugins are abandoned but they work with today’s wordpress 2.* system. Be cautios, David Kierznowski has discovered some major vulnerabilities in the code so be sure to use his latest version of AdSense-Deluxe.

11. WP-Wap
You should take this plugin into consideration if you plan to grow your business. Mobile market is very important because more and more people use cell phones every day and marketing & advertising have grown in mobile industry. You shouldn’t ignore this because 9/10 people use cell phones in Europe and they all present your potential customers. Reveal yourself in the world of portable and handheld and install this plugin so your blog could be visible from outside the office. Download it here.

12. WP-o-Matic
This is from the official website: WP-o-Matic is a Wordpress plugin that will allow you to create posts automatically from feeds. With its simple interface, you just type in the feed url, select in which categories you want to create the posts, and you’re ready to go. What’s beautiful about it is that it’s free. People pay hundreds of dollars for such tools and you can get it absolutely free. Visit the website for more information.

Plugins can take a lot of resources, especially memory and many bloggers complain about their memory limit and wordpress cache system failing. Most shared hosting providers will limit the memory usage to 8Mb but you can alter this with a little trick. Login to your FTP account and find .htaccess file in your public_html directory. If you can’t find it then you will have to create it otherwise edit it and add the following line php_value memory_limit 12M. This increases your memory limit to 12Mb which is more than enough for wordpress. I hope you like my choice of plugins and thank you for your time.

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